Rev. James A. Wallace, C.Ss.R.

Dec 13 2024

Our Extravagant Bridegroom

Weddings of the famous have become known for their extravagance. Syndicated radio host Diane Rehm once recalled how she and her husband had gone to two weddings over a few months, each costing over twenty thousand dollars, and neither marriage lasted a year. It seems that as expenses have increased, longevity has decreased. Even so, our faith holds up one marriage whose extravagance is located in its fidelity: Christ’s love for his bride, the church.

One of the less remembered titles Jesus applies to himself in the Gospels is the bridegroom. When asked why his disciples do not fast, he replies that as long as the bridegroom is present, there is no fasting. It is a time for celebration. Jesus remains the bridegroom the Father sent to woo God’s people. The generous and extravagant abundance of the bridegroom comes across in today’s miracle at Cana. Even though he has said his hour—that is, the hour when he reveals the extravagant love of God—has not yet come, still Jesus yields to his mother’s request to remedy the embarrassment of a wedding without wine.

The moral: when the Bridegroom comes, there will be endless joy. Ordinary Time begins with this marvelous story, proclaiming that God’s generosity cannot be overestimated. We see it in the gifts St. Paul mentions in his letter to the fractious Corinthians, gifts that continue to be given. Such abundance and variety of gifts reflect God’s extravagant love for us. Such gifts are given for the good of all.

Consider/Discuss

What does the image of Jesus the Bridegroom say about your relationship with him?
What gifts of a generous God do you see in your own life and in those around you?

Responding to the Word

Lord Jesus, you remain the bridegroom come to reveal your Father’s extravagant love. In union with many of the saints, we dare to call you the spouse of our souls. May we revel in your passionate love shown on the cross, and reveal that love to those most in need of it.

Dec 13 2024

Baptized for Mission

For many people, the end of the Christmas season carries a touch of sadness. Joy gives way to January. The liturgy, however, turns our attention to the work that lies at the heart of the mystery of the Incarnation. This feast of the Lord’s baptism is the final feast of the Christmas season, serving as a bridge from Christmastime to Ordinary Time. It presents Jesus as God’s “beloved Son.” His baptism placed Jesus on the road of his mission: to reveal the Father and to begin to bring about the kingdom of God in the world.

Our first reading helps us understand Jesus’ mission in light of an unknown Old Testament figure called the Servant. The book of the prophet Isaiah contains four poems called the Servant Songs: 42:1–7; 49:1–7; 50:4–11; 52:13–53:12. These songs speak of a servant on whom God has poured God’s spirit to be God’s agent in the world and bring justice to the nations. The Christian community hears these songs in light of Jesus. St. Paul likewise quoted an early hymn (Philippians 2:5–11), singing of Jesus as one who emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, becoming obedient even unto death on a cross.

Our baptism brought us into the Body of Christ, setting us on the path of continuing Jesus’ mission. When the Holy Spirit came upon us, we became God’s beloved children in Christ and the mission of Christ, which is the mission of the church, became our mission.

Consider/Discuss

Do you connect your baptism with your work in the world?
What can you do, as part of the church, to bring God’s justice to the world?

Responding to the Word

Good Father, you have sent the Holy Spirit upon your people to serve the world by working to bring about the victory of justice. Give us the strength to persevere in this work and do not allow our zeal to break any bruised reed or quench any smoldering wick. Let us do our work in gentleness, kindness, and peace.

Dec 13 2024

Rise and Shine!

Early on in Tennessee William’s play The Glass Menagerie, the always pushing and prodding mother, Amanda, comes into the living room and awakens her sleeping son, Tom, by shouting at his stretched-out figure on the pull-out couch, “Rise and shine! Rise and shine!” An irritated Tom yells back, “I’ll rise, Mother, but I won’t shine.”

By the end of the Christmas season, many of us may have similar feelings. Winter doldrums, whether or not accompanied by freezing weather and power-threatening snowstorms, often motivate little more than a slow motion arising with little emanating radiance.

But the light of this crowning feast of the Christmas season does not depend on us. Light comes to us, as it did to the magi and to the shepherds in the fields, and as it did to Bethlehem, to Nazareth, and eventually to Jerusalem, Samaria, and from there out to the ends of the earth. The Light comes to us as gift, as grace. This Light enables Jews and Gentiles, men and women of North America, South America, Europe, Africa, Asia, Oceania, and the Middle East to look at each other and recognize brothers and sisters rather than strangers, aliens, even enemies.

The feast of the Epiphany expresses God’s will that all creation come to know the God revealed in Jesus Christ who continues to shine forth in light and love. The promise of the feast is that all of us are capable of absorbing and reflecting this light so that the whole earth may be delivered from its darkness.

Consider/Discuss

Do you see yourself as a reflector of God’s light, someone with a capacity to provide an epiphany for others?
What helps or hinders you from recognizing all men and women as your brothers and sisters, beloved of God?

Responding to the Word

Lord Jesus, you continue to come into the world as light that pushes back the darkness. Continue to enlighten our minds and hearts, opening them to receive you in whatever way you come to us. Help us to find you in our daily lives by removing whatever prevents our seeing your light.

Dec 13 2024

God of Blessing

As a boy, I remember our parish priest would visit my grandparents’ house. Before he left, my grandmother would always ask his blessing and all of us would kneel to receive it. Another childhood memory sees my mother dipping her finger in a small holy water font that hung on the bedroom wall and sprinkling some of the water over my brothers and me in blessing every night.

We begin the New Year hearing an ancient blessing in today’s first reading. What a beautiful way to enter into the new year as we gather, calling on God to bless us, to keep us, to let the divine face shine on us, to look on us kindly and to give us peace. These words tell us who our God is and what God wishes to give us—blessing. In Mary, our mother, we see what it means to live out of God’s blessing and bring Christ to the world.

In the fullness of time, God blessed creation with Jesus, our Savior, who came to call us to a freedom that is the true blessing of the adopted children of our Abba (Father)-God. Jesus continues to ask God’s blessing on us, standing with us, and blessing us with his peace. Today we ask God to bless our world with the peace that the world cannot achieve on its own. Today we ask Mary, the Holy Mother of God, to pray with us as we join her in reflecting on the One whom the angels named as our Savior.

Consider/Discuss

What blessing do you ask of God as this new year begins?
When have you last blessed someone (other than when someone sneezes)? Whose blessing would you ask?

Responding to the Word

God of blessing, look kindly upon our world as we begin this new year of grace. Bless all those who work for peace and drive out from the hearts of all your children any temptation to take up arms against another. Mary, our mother, bless us with peace.

Dec 13 2024

Jesus, Family Man

If you were to choose an adjective to accompany “family,” what would it be? Holy? Or is it more likely to be “dysfunctional”? If culture reflects reality, our greatest American playwrights hold up families falling apart as the norm: Eugene O’Neil’s Tyrone family, Tennessee Williams’ haunted Southern siblings, Arthur Miller’s Willie and Linda Loman and sons, and, most recently, the families of Tracy Lett’s August: Osage County and Jon Rabin Baitz’s Other Desert Cities. Behold, the American family!

And yet, granting that every family, like every person, is imperfect and on occasion wounds each other in both small and big ways, we do find holiness in families. It is the holiness that we see in Mary, Joseph, and Jesus, who cared for and respected each other, a holiness that witnesses to the power of God’s grace at work in hearts open to it.

In today’s Gospel we see this gracious care in the worry of parents who could not find their son. We hear it in Mary’s anxious words to Jesus, in Jesus’ fidelity to his dual parentage—earthly and heavenly—and in the simple statement that “he went down with them and came to Nazareth, and was obedient to them.”

As members of the human family, imperfect and even sinful, we too are graced with a capacity for “advancing in wisdom and age and favor before God and one another.” Each of us is called to holiness, to a fullness of being made possible by being open to the loving touch of God’s grace made visible in the Incarnation.

Consider/Discuss

Do Mary, Joseph, and Jesus have anything to teach us about what it means to be family?
What does it mean to be a “holy family”? Is it a matter of doing “holy” actions, or saying “holy” words?

Responding to the Word

Loving Father, you have created all who have ever lived in your image and likeness. Help us to recognize all others as our brothers and sisters and to honor, respect, forgive, and love them as your children. Together, enable us to bring your peace and justice, healing and reconciliation to our world.