Solemnity

Dec 13 2024

Scripture Study for

Sirach’s instruction on family living provides a glimpse into a way of life that brought happiness in the past. It is meant to encourage similar behavior that will bring the same happiness in the present and the future. Its focus is the respect and obedience that children (both sons and daughters) owe their parents (both mother and father). The final verses exhort the adult son to care for his father in his declining years. The picture portrayed is quite moving. Like all biblical teaching, this instruction on respect and care for one’s parents is intended for the adult child, not a minor.

The Colossians are told that they are God’s chosen, holy, and beloved people. Therefore, they should act accordingly. All the virtues they are called to live out are relational. Directed toward others, they require unselfish sensitivity. The motivation for such self-sacrifice is the forgiveness that the Christians themselves have received from God. The list continues with an admonition to love, the highest of all virtues. The peace of Christ, which is placed before them, is an inner peace that comes from a right relationship with God and therefore true harmony with others.

Today’s Gospel reading provides us with the only glimpse we have into the early years of Jesus. While the key element in the passage is the Christological self-declaration of the young Jesus, the context of the account depicts a very religious family unit and an equally submissive son. Although a popular tradition (found in some religious art) suggests that Jesus was teaching in the temple, the text does not state this. He was merely part of the exchange of ideas. There is no conflict between Jesus’ responsibilities of sonship in his relationship with Joseph and Sonship in his union with God, for he is faithful to both. Approaching adulthood, he assumes a public role; after his striking appearance in the temple, he returns to a life of obedience to his parents.

Dec 13 2024

Scripture Study for

Contrary to the Marian interpretation captured in many depictions of the Immaculate Conception, the Genesis story states that it is the offspring of the woman who will have his heel on the serpent’s head, not the woman herself. This part of the story is really about the antagonism that will always exist between human beings and the forces of evil. Human beings will always have to battle temptation. However, this feast that celebrates Mary assures us that, regardless of the cunning nature of temptation, good will ultimately triumph.

Paul insists that the blessing of God comes to us through the agency of Christ. The blessings themselves are distinctively of a spiritual, even cosmic, nature. First is election in Christ. Though Paul suggests a kind of primordial predestination, there is no sense here that some are predestined for salvation and others are not. The point is that salvation in Christ is not an afterthought; it was in God’s plan from the beginning. The salvation ordained by God through Christ is the cause and not the consequence of righteousness. Adoption, redemption, forgiveness of sin, and the gifts of wisdom and insight are all pure grace, gifts from God, bestowed on us through Christ.

Mary’s Immaculate Conception sets her apart so that she might miraculously conceive Jesus, the event described in today’s Gospel reading. The opening angelic greeting, “Hail, full of grace! The Lord is with you,” emphatically states her extraordinary dignity. She is here invited to be the vehicle of salvation for God’s people. As in other stories of angelic appearances to women (Hagar, in Genesis 16:7–16; the mother of Samson, Judges 13:2–7), Mary interacts directly with God’s messenger, without the mediation of her father or intended husband. She is not only free of patriarchal restraints; her words show that hers is a free response to God. The expectations of the past are now being fulfilled; God’s plan is being accomplished through Mary.

Dec 13 2024

God’s Passionate Love for Us

Behold our mothers: Eve, mother of all the living, and Mary, mother of the Lord and of all his disciples. These two women reflect conflicting human urges: to stretch out our hand to seize what promises to make us godlike, or to bow our heads humbly before the living God, offering ourselves in service.

The two narratives are instructive. In Genesis, after their disobedience, Adam and Eve begin a life of finger-pointing and blame, of regret and recrimination, choosing a world where Eden can no longer be entered. In today’s Gospel, after fear and confusion have given way to acceptance and assent to God’s word, Mary goes forth in joy to assist her life-bearing cousin Elizabeth.

In Romans, St. Paul complements these images with those of the old Adam and the new Adam, Christ. God’s will was set aside by the former, but embraced by the latter. While our baptism empowers us to live in Christ, this can be set aside. A choice is before us: to live as autonomous, self-centered children of Adam, or as adopted, obedient children of God in the risen Lord.

Various forces threaten to separate us from yielding to the divine plan that we be holy and blameless in God’s sight, both in our identity as church and as individual disciples of the Lord. But this feast reminds us of the power of God’s grace to transform us, just as it did a frightened young woman into the brave singer of the Magnificat, the God-bearer of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

Consider/Discuss

Do you think this feast only speaks about Mary and what was done for her so she could be the mother of Jesus?
Do you see yourself as being “graced”? Are you “blessed in Christ, with every spiritual blessing in the heavens”?

Responding to the Word

Loving and generous God, you have blessed us from our beginning and destined us to give you praise and glory for all eternity. May we live lives of holiness now and come to the full enjoyment of eternal life. We ask this in the name of Jesus and through the intercession of our Mother Mary.

Dec 12 2024

Jesus Saves. How Do We Respond?

Music begins to run through my head as I think about today’s Gospel: “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom. Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” It brings up memories of communal prayer with candles in the dark. It fills my heart with peace. God is here. God is with us. We are wanted. We are cared for. We are loved.

And yet, it wasn’t like that. The thief on the cross who first uttered those words was not wanted and he was not cared for. He was in pain. His lungs were collapsing from the weight of his body. The midday sun baked his naked skin. He was dying of suffocation and exposure. He knew his guilt. But by some grace of God that swelled up within him, he turned to an unknown radical also hanging there and pleaded, “Remember me when you come into your kingdom.”

In that moment, all of Jesus’ invitations come together: “Come to me, all you who are heavy laden.”

“I am the Good Shepherd. I know my sheep.”

“I come that they might have life and have it abundantly.” God’s rescue mission to save the world was not yet finished. There was one more, still hanging there, reaching out in hope to the King of kings. The thief too was wanted. Jesus did not reject him. From below, the Savior was deluged by sneers and jeers: “If you are a king, save yourself!” He did not. He saved the thief. He saved you. He saved me.

Here at the conclusion of God’s redemption story, you and I are so wanted. So cared for. So loved. It all comes together in the cross: The cross, our hope.

The man on the cross, our king.

The king, our future home.

“Today, you will be with me in paradise.”

Consider/Discuss

In the gloom of the cross, God showed the repentant thief a flicker of light. But it depended upon him what happened then. He could have rejected that offer. But he didn’t. He reached out to Jesus to save him. God’s grace wells up in strange moments: periods of pain, times of anguish, seasons of joy. How can we look carefully at ourselves to recognize whether we too are accepting those offers of eternal light in the midst of our darkness? Or do we sometimes let them pass us by?
It has been a pleasure to walk with you through these past three years of writing Living the Word reflections, my friends. I hope that you continue to say “yes” to the working of God, for this world needs saints whose undivided loyalty is to the Lord. On this final Sunday of the church year, how is Jesus your King right now?

Living and Praying with the Word

Jesus, in your majesty, we bow before you as our King. You know our hearts. You know where our loyalties are divided. You know that we want to put you first in our lives. Yet we try and fail, move forward and then regress. Give us the strength, no matter what, to pick up and follow you wholeheartedly once again. We want to give you glory. We want to lift you high. We want to be with you forever in Paradise. Praise and glory to you, Lord Jesus Christ!

Dec 12 2024

Scripture Study for

When David was first anointed king, after the deaths of Saul and his son Jonathan, he was king only over his ancestral tribe of Judah (2 Samuel 1:1 — 2:4). Only after various court intrigues and the death of Saul’s other son (and heir), Ishbaal, did David become king over all of Israel. Representatives of the northern tribes (collectively called “Israel”) approach David, noting that it was he who led Saul’s armies in their battles against the Philistines (“leading them out and bringing them back”). They have also heard that God has chosen David to be king and shepherd of Israel (1 Samuel 16:1–13). David agrees to rule over them, an arrangement formalized with a covenant, witnessed by God.

Paul begins his Letter to the Colossians by commending them for their faith in Christ and “love that you have for all the holy ones,” and prays they will continue to be filled with knowledge of God’s will so as “to live in a manner worthy of the Lord” (1:3–10). They should also be continually thankful to God the Father, who has made them heirs of the glory shared by Christ and all the “holy ones in light” (either angels or all the other saved, or both). Those who have been baptized have been delivered from the snares and power of evil that inhabit the world and infect the human heart, and they are now members of Christ’s kingdom. In other words, they are the beneficiaries of a divine rescue mission and are now safely under God’s power rather than under the power of sin.

It is hardly surprising that Pilate would be dismissive of any claims that the prisoner before him, apparently a typical Galilean peasant, should be the king of the Jews (Luke 23:1–4). Nor is it surprising that Herod and his soldiers would treat Jesus “contemptuously and mock him,” and then clothe him ironically in “resplendent garb” (23:11). Certainly from any normal, earthly perspective there was nothing remotely regal about Jesus. In Luke’s Gospel he refuses even to defend the claim that he is a king, responding to Pilate only, “You say so.” The crowd at the foot of his cross also sneers at the very idea. What is surprising, however, is that one of the thieves on a cross next to Jesus does recognize that Jesus is, in fact, a king. It takes astonishing faith to say to a fellow condemned man, dying on a cross next to you, “Remember me when you come into your kingdom.” Jesus’ kingship was not of the sort that the world would or could recognize. Only those with the eyes of faith could see it.