Keep
your eyes open!...
Christmas, 2018
THE TRIB TIMES WILL RETURN IN MID JANUARY 2019, GOD
WILLING (James 4:15).
MERRY CHRISTMAS TO ALL FROM OUR FIRST GRANDAUGHTER EVELINA and her future sibling!
BLESSINGS FOR A
JOYOUS NEW YEAR!
(Luk 2:15-20) And
it came to pass, after the angels departed from them into heaven, the
shepherds said one to another: Let us go over to Bethlehem and let us
see this word that is come to pass, which the Lord hath shewed to us.
And they came with haste: and they found Mary and Joseph, and the
infant lying in the manger. And seeing, they understood of the word
that had been spoken to them concerning this child. And all that heard
wondered: and at those things that were told them by the shepherds. But
Mary kept all these words, pondering them in her heart. And the
shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things they
had heard and seen, as it was told unto them.
POPE FRANCIS:
The lights of the Christmas tree remind us that Jesus is the light of
the world, the light of our souls that drives away the darkness of
hatred and makes room for forgiveness.
THE SHIELD OF FAITH: Christmas Wishes from Padre Pio's Letters
MEDITATION: INCARNATION – GOD IS WITH US
Christmas celebrates Christ’s birth into these things, not his removal
of them. Christ redeems limit, evil, sin and pain, but they are not
abolished. Given that truth, we can celebrate at Christ’s birth without
in any way denying or trivializing the real evil in our world and the
real pain in our lives. Christmas is a challenge to celebrate while
still in pain.
The incarnate God is called Emmanuel, a name which means
God-is-with-us. That fact does not mean immediate festive joy. Our
world remains wounded, and wars, selfishness, and bitterness linger.
Our hearts too remain wounded. Pain lingers.
For a Christian, just as for everyone else, there will be
incompleteness, illness, death, senseless hurt, broken dreams, cold,
hungry, lonely days of bitterness and a lifetime of inconsummation.
Reality can be harsh and Christmas does not ask us to make
make-believe. The incarnation does not promise heaven on earth. It
promises heaven in heaven. Here, on earth, it promises us something
else – God’s presence in our lives. This presence redeems because
knowing that God is with us is what ultimately empowers us to give up
bitterness, to forgive, and to move beyond cynicism and bitterness.
When God is with us then pain and happiness are not mutually exclusive,
and the agonies and riddles of life do not exclude deep meaning and
deep joy.
However, we need to celebrate Christmas heartily. Maybe we won’t feel
the same excitement we once felt as children when we were excited about
tinsel, lights, Christmas carols, and special gifts and special food.
Some of that excitement isn’t available to us anymore. But something
more important is still available, namely, the sense that God is with
us in our lives, in our joys as well as in our shortcomings.
The word was made flesh. That’s an incredible thing, something that
should be celebrated with tinsel, lights, and songs of joy. If we
understand Christmas, the carols will still flow naturally from our
lips.
MEDITATION: HEART'S PROTECTION: A corner must be kept in every heart For the Christmas scene joy always to impart
Here is a precious account of how
Christmas may have protected the Immaculate Heart of Mary from being
overcome by her intimate participation in the Passion of her divine Son
–
“The ecstatic bliss of my giving
birth came over me like the essence of a flower, enclosed in the living
vase of my heart, for the rest of my life. An indescribable joy. Human,
and superhuman. Perfect joy.
“When my heart was pierced every
evening of my Son’s life with the painful reminder, ‘One day less of
waiting, one day closer to Calvary,’ and when my soul was smothered in
pain as though a wave of torture had swept over it, being a wave in
advance from the flood of torment that overwhelmed me on Golgotha, I
would in spirit lean over the memory of the bliss of Holy Night that
had remained alive in my heart, like one would lean over a narrow
mountain gorge to listen to the echo of a song of love, or to see in
the distance the home of one’s joy.
“That was my strength through life,
especially in the hour of my mystic death at the foot of the Cross. God
was punishing the two of us, me and my gentle Son, for the sins of a
whole world, but in order not to tell Him that the punishment was too
terrible and that the hand of His Justice was being laid too heavily
upon us, I was obliged, through the veil of the bitterest tears that
ever woman wept, to fasten my heart on that Holy Night, that memory of
light, of bliss, of holiness, which rose up before me on Golgotha as a
comforting vision from inside my heart to tell me how much God had
loved me – the vision had come to me there on its own without waiting
for me to seek it out, because it was a holy joy and everything holy is
infused with love, and love gives life even to things seemingly
lifeless.
“Here is what we need to do when God strikes –
- Recall the times when God gave us joy, so that we can say even amid the torment, “Thank you, God. You are good to me.”
- Accept to be comforted by remembering a gift from the past,
to strengthen us in moments of present suffering, when we are crushed
to the point of despair, like plants being crushed in a storm, so that
we will not despair of the goodness of God.
- Make sure that our joys are of God, in other words not just
human joys of our own choosing and all too easily not of God, as is
everything we do if it is disconnected from God, from His divine Law
and Will. We must look for joy from God alone.
- Keep in mind God’s Law and Will for past joys as well,
because recalling a memory that spurs us on to do good and to bless God
is not blameworthy, it is to be encouraged and blessed.
- Shine the light of past joy on present darkness to make the
darkness so bright that even in the blackest night we can see the holy
Face of God.
- Sweeten a bitter chalice with a relished memory so as to be
able to endure the horrible taste and drink the chalice down to the
last drop.
- Sense by the precious memory that we cherish, the sensation
of God’s caress even while the thorns press in on our forehead.
“There you have the seven sources
of happiness opposed to the seven swords, such as they pierced my
Immaculate Heart. They form my Christmas lesson for you, and together
with yourself I make a present of them to my favourite children. I
bless them all.”
EXCERPT FR RUTLER'S WEEKLY COLUMN: Twice
did our Lord speak of Sodom, saying that its fate was less severe than
that of anyone who by an act of willful pride, rejects Him and all that
He requires in the way of obedience to His truth (Matthew 10:15;
11:24). Such severity is the outcry of the Christ who wants that none
be lost and that all be saved. This is a reminder never to infantilize
the Babe of Bethlehem for, while He may whimper in the manger, this is
the Voice that made all things and judges all at the end of time. And
in His humility by making Himself frail and fragile in a stable, He
reveals a mercy more powerful even than an exploding meteor.
“For their sake He remembered His covenant and showed compassion
according to the abundance of His steadfast love” (Psalm 106:45).
Ladder
of Divine Ascent excerpt: Step 26- "On discernment of thoughts, passions,
and virtues"
39. What are the particular offspring of the eight
deadly sins? Or which of the three chief sins is the father of the other
five (minor sins)? I learnt from the holy men the following: 'The
mother of lust is gluttony, and the mother of despondency is vainglory;
sorrow and also anger are the offspring of those three (i.e. cupidity,
sensuality, ambition); and the mother of pride is vainglory.'
Third Week of Advent, 2018
(Zep
3:14-15)
Give praise, O daughter of Sion: shout, O Israel: be glad, and rejoice
with all thy heart, O daughter of Jerusalem. The Lord hath taken away
thy judgment, he hath turned away thy enemies: the king of Israel, the
Lord, is in the midst of thee, thou shalt fear evil no more.
VATICAN NEWS: Reflections for the III Sunday of Advent
EXCERPT NATIONAL CATHOLIC REGISTER: We Are Created for Joy
On the Third Sunday of Advent in
1944, a young priest painfully wrote, while handcuffed, a smuggled
reflection from his prison cell in Berlin. It would be Father Alfred
Delp’s final Advent. Just months later, he was executed for his
faithfulness to the Church and his opposition to Nazism.
Even while in solitary confinement, under the threat of death, this priest found joy as he reflected on Gaudete Sunday.
“Man should take joy as seriously
as he takes himself,” he wrote. “And he should believe in himself,
believe in his heart and in his Lord God, even through darkness and
distress, that he is created for joy. … We are created for a life that
knows itself to be blessed, sent and touched at its deepest center by
God himself.”
FR RUTLER'S WEEKLY COLUMN:
There could be no easier subject for comment than happiness. The best
classical pagan philosophers, even if they did not believe a Creator
intended that humans should share in his “delight” at what he had made,
taught that we were meant to be happy. Some nineteenth-century
“Utilitarians” like Jeremy Bentham, thought that this happiness meant a
sense of pleasure without pain.
As usual, the ancients like Aristotle were more sophisticated than many
intellectually clumsy moderns and made a connection between pleasure
and virtue. They called this “eudaimonia.” That is to say, you cannot
honestly feel good unless you do what is good, and you cannot do what
is good unless you yourself are good. But as “only God is good,” real
happiness demands that humans give God permission to impart His
goodness to our souls. It is possible to fake happiness, and that is
why there is so much unhappiness in our culture, which disdains virtue.
One can create an illusion of happiness, but it is a kind of moral
stage set, and its falseness is revealed in the frightening explosion
in drug use, and the seventy per cent increase in suicides among young
people in the past decade.
Real happiness is not the result of painlessness, but comes from
dealing with pain the right way. This is why the Scriptures curiously
remark almost nonchalantly: “It is better to go to the house of
mourning than to go to the house of feasting” (Ecclesiastes 7:2a).
Jesus promises a joy that “might be full” (John 15:11), and at the same
time He was a “man of sorrows” (Isaiah 53: 3). On Gaudete Sunday, which
means “Rejoice,” the Church sneaks a peak into the joy of Heaven.
Here is the confidence that man’s destiny, willed by God and which can
only be thwarted by the selfish will of corrupted humans, is
participation in endless happiness. The word for this is more than
happiness based on happenstance, but joy rooted in eternal harmony,
effectively only with God. The ancient Greeks stretched for a truth
that they could not fully express: real happiness, which is joy, is the
state of holiness.
This is why Saint Paul says that Christians must rejoice “always”
(Philippians 4:4a). Always – and not just after a Happy Hour at
McGinty’s tavern, or holding a winning ticket at the Kentucky
Derby--because the creature’s source and object of all joy is the
Creator.
Chesterton asked rhetorically in his Ballad of the White Horse: “Do you
have joy without a cause?” His point: there is no joy without a cause.
That would be like having health by chance. Joy is joyful precisely
because it has a cause that never fails. Approaching Christmas, the
Church sings in astonishment that the Word was made flesh, and when He
left this world, He promised that He would never leave us comfortless.
ADVENT RESOURCES
USCCB ADVENT CALENDAR: Advent 2018
DYNAMIC CATHOLIC: Best Advent Ever!
CREIGHTON UNIVERSITY'S ONLINE MINISTRIES: Praying Advent and Celebrating Christmas
CATHOLIC APOSTALATE CENTER: Advent: the "Little Lent"
Ladder
of Divine Ascent excerpt: Step 26- "On discernment of thoughts, passions,
and virtues"
38. It is difficult to overcome former bad habits;
and those who keep on adding further new ones to them either fall into
despair or get no benefit at all from obedience. But I know that to God
all things are possible, and to Him nothing is impossible (Cf. Job 42:2,
Luke 1:37).
Second Week of Advent, 2018
(Luk 3:3-6) And
he came into all the country about the Jordan, preaching the baptism of
penance for the remission of sins. As it was written in the book of the
sayings of Isaias the prophet: A voice of one crying in the wilderness:
Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make straight his paths. Every valley
shall be filled and every mountain and hill shall be brought low: and
the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways plain. And all
flesh shall see the salvation of God.
ST LEO THE GREAT: "This gift exceeds all gifts that God should call man son, and man should name God Father".
FR JOSEPH ESPER: Seeking the Gift that Matters
BC CATHOLIC: God not only forgives us, but adopts us
ADVENT HYMN: Charles Coffin (1676-1749)
On Jordan's bank the Baptist's cry
announces that the Lord is nigh.
Awake and harken, for he brings
glad tidings of the King of kings!
Then cleansed be every life from sin:
make straight the way for God within,
and let us all our hearts prepare
for Christ to come and enter there...
FR RUTLER'S WEEKLY COLUMN:
All creation emanated from the voice of God uttering: “Let there be
light.” There was nothing and no one yet to hear it, only God himself.
As animate creatures came into being, they were able to make sounds,
and some of them are beautiful, but only human beings have the gift of
being able to consciously praise God by a right use of intellect and
will. One of the Advent mysteries is “Judgment” and, in addition to our
Creator’s assessment of us, it includes the use of speech as a correct
expression of human dignity. To “take the Lord’s name in vain” does not
diminish God, who is eternal, but it does corrupt our dignity in
relation to him as his sons and daughters. Poor Job’s wife knew this
when she told him, albeit ill-advisedly, “Curse God and die!” (Job 2:9).
If we use profane language, our Creator does not wash our mouths with
soap, but he becomes less accessible to us. “Profane” actually means
“outside the temple.” Our culture is degraded by an increasing use of
vulgar speech. There are plenty of artful ways to insult, but when
script writers and stand-up comedians resort to coarseness, they reveal
their lack of verbal skill, not to mention their lack of self-respect.
It is worse for a woman to use vulgar language than for a man. If this
is a double standard, it is so in a good sense, for by nature the
female is meant to civilize the male. Invoking Eusebius of Nicomedia,
and Aristotle before him, “The corruption of the best is the worst.”
Cole Porter remarked on this degradation even back in 1934 in a
somewhat insouciant way: “Good authors, too, who once knew better
words, / Now only use four-letter words. / Writing prose, / Anything
goes.”
One way to discipline the use of speech is to make a quiet act of
reparation when someone curses. Simply utter to yourself the holy name
of Jesus. Save for the angels, we are the only creatures who can do
that.
While Advent hymns are often blocked out by Christmas music sung too
early, they are among the Church’s most beautiful sounds, giving voice
to the anticipation of Christ’s birth and the prospect of his Second
Coming. Among them is one translated by Edward Caswall, an Oxford
classics scholar who converted to Catholicism in 1847 and joined John
Henry Newman’s Oratory in Birmingham three years later. There is
nothing in his vocabulary that needs to be bleeped or asterisked,
although such speech may confuse and even scandalize those in our
present day who grunt like animals instead of singing like humans, who
are—after all—only a little lower than the angels:
Hark! A thrilling voice is sounding;
"Christ is nigh," it seems to say;
"Cast away the works of darkness,
O ye children of the day!"
ADVENT RESOURCES
USCCB ADVENT CALENDAR: Advent 2018
DYNAMIC CATHOLIC: Best Advent Ever!
CREIGHTON UNIVERSITY'S ONLINE MINISTRIES: Praying Advent and Celebrating Christmas
CATHOLIC APOSTALATE CENTER: Advent: the "Little Lent"
Ladder
of Divine Ascent excerpt: Step 26- "On discernment of thoughts, passions,
and virtues"
37. Those who hear of treassure hidden in a certain
place seek it and, having discovered it, take trouble to keep what they
have found; but those who get rich without trouble readily squander their
possessions.
First Week of Advent, 2018
(Jer 33:14-16) Behold
the days come, saith the Lord, that I will perform the good word that I
have spoken to the house of Israel, and to the house of Juda. In those
days, and at that time, I will make the bud of justice to spring forth
unto David, and he shall do judgment and justice in the earth. In those
days shall Juda be saved, and Jerusalem shall dwell securely: and this
is the name that they shall call him, The Lord our just one.
POPE FRANCIS: “I
hope you will live out Advent in this way as a time of consoling
newness and joyful expectation. If fear is holding you down Jesus
invites you to turn your gaze to heaven, from whence He will come.”
ZENIT: Archbishop Follo: May the joy of the Advent be the joy of the encounter of Love
CATHOLIC SUN: Finding the heart of Jesus this Advent
ARCHBISHOP CHARLES J. CHAPUT, O.F.M. CAP.: Cleansed and conformed to God’s Will: Advent 2018
“Father, We Thank Thee, Who Hast Planted” has long been one of my
favorite hymns. Its tune, taken from the sixteenth-century Genevan
Psalter, is eminently singable. The hymn text — when not corrupted by
that politically-correct scoundrel, “alt.” — is even better. For
Francis Bland Tucker’s lyrics put twenty-first-century congregations in
touch with the second generation of Christians, and perhaps even the
first, by combining various phrases from an ancient Christian prayer
book and catechism, the Didache.
Scholars continue to debate whether the Didache, more formally known as
The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles, comes to us from the second or
first Christian centuries, but the weight of academic opinion now
favors the earlier date. Thus, the Teaching (“Didache” in Greek) links
us to what biblical scholar Raymond Brown called “the churches the
apostles left behind”: the Christians who were taught by those who were
taught by the Lord himself. Singing “Father, We Thank Thee, Who Hast
Planted,” we are praying as second-generation Christians, formed by
those who had known the Lord Jesus and were witnesses to his
resurrection, prayed.
That should be both a consolation and a challenge as the Church
prepares to begin a new liturgical year in this season of Catholic
grief and anger. Why? Because the primitive Eucharistic Prayer found in
the Didache, and the hymn that Father Tucker wrote from it, remind us
that the Church is always in need of purification: “Watch o’er Thy
Church, O Lord, in mercy, / Save it from evil, guard it still. /
Perfect it in Thy Love, unite it, / Cleansed and conformed unto Thy
will.”
That the Church needs cleansing is not much in doubt as Advent 2018
dawns. And that cleansing will necessarily involve everyone in the
Church. All of us are called to live chastity as the integrity of love.
All of us are called to support each other in meeting that lifelong
challenge — by prayer, counsel, example, and fraternal correction when
necessary. No one should doubt that, in this matter of the integrity of
love, living “cleansed and conformed” to the divine will can be
difficult, especially in today’s cultural circumstances. That is all
the more reason for intensified prayer and penance in Advent and
throughout the Church year, asking the Lord to watch over his Church in
mercy, saving it from evil and guarding it from the Evil One.
Reaching too easily for “Satan” as the explanation of a Church crisis
or a historical disaster should be avoided. Ignoring Satan is just as
dangerous, however. And the Evil One is surely a factor in sowing the
evil with which the Catholic Church is contending today. Sexual
predation has as many causes as there are sexual predators, but each
act of sexual abuse is a manifestation of evil and of a victory for the
Evil One. Malfeasance among bishops — whether it be rooted in
cowardice, a false notion of the imperatives of institutional
maintenance, or personal corruption — is not just a matter of
managerial mistakes; the failures of the shepherds touch the mysterium
iniquitatis, the “mystery of evil,” and that should be recognized at
every level of the Church’s life. The people who wrote the Didache knew
that, it seems. So should we.
At the end of one liturgical year and the beginning of a new year of
grace, the Church reads from the apocalyptic literature of the Old and
New Testaments. Whether the seer is Daniel in Babylon or John on
Patmos, the message is similar: Do not flee from difficult, even
horrific, situations, but live responsibly even when things seem to
fall apart — perhaps especially in those moments when the foundations
seem to be crumbling. Here, too, is a lesson for this season, in which
so many Catholics are saying, “I have to do something.”
That’s true; we all do. We must all intensify prayer and penance. We
should all be inviting to church those who have left out of boredom,
anger, confusion, or disgust. We should all support the good priests
and bishops we know, and we should firmly call clergy who are wayward
to a change of heart and a change of life. It may seem as if Jesus is
asleep in the storm-tossed boat, and we should call to him for help.
But he also expects us to do something, and “something” will always be
close at hand.
ADVENT RESOURCES
USCCB ADVENT CALENDAR: Advent 2018
DYNAMIC CATHOLIC: Best Advent Ever!
CREIGHTON UNIVERSITY'S ONLINE MINISTRIES: Praying Advent and Celebrating Christmas
CATHOLIC APOSTALATE CENTER: Advent: the "Little Lent"
Ladder
of Divine Ascent excerpt: Step 26- "On discernment of thoughts, passions,
and virtues"
36. Let us try to
learn Divine truth more by toil and sweat than by mere word, for at the
time of our departure it is not words but deeds that will have to be
shown.
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