Saint Mary of the Immaculate Conception Roman Catholic Church

Dear Good People of Saint Mary,

Merry Christmas! What an amazing cycle of celebrations we had this year at Saint Mary! Every Mass was year-full or very full, everyone seemed at peace. The music was truly beautiful and led all of us more deeply into the beauty that lies at the center of the fact of the Incarnation: the love of God. Love was the spirit  everywhere, Masses both here at church and at Holy Cross Academy, everywhere, wishes of happiness and blessings.

It is the usual follow-up to be so very thankful to all who have contributed to making these liturgies happen—especially this year, it seemed like we all worked together so well, we were ready. To all our decorators and ministers of liturgy—to all our choirs, musicians, cantors—to everyone who helped decorate and put it all together here in the office, thanks. It really is the best work in the world to do. Thank you.

Something happens to you after you have been a priest for a while about these privileged seasons, something that I’ve only become aware of recently. This thanksgiving I feel has gradually extended in the form of sincere welcome to all who join us for Christmas. I think this needs to
be said. Too long we have stood in judgment of those who might attend at Christmas and Easter. And I want to be clear that what I’m about to say is not that it doesn’t matter if you miss Mass on Sunday and Holy Days—I am just so glad that so many attend Mass to celebrate the moments of Jesus’ Birth, his Passion, his Death and Resurrection.They are personal moments whose meaning we may not be able to express, exactly, but they move us at the center of our being. They are  sources of contentment in lives that otherwise lack something. They bring peace in the middle of any level of battle that you may be waging in your hearts or families. They remind us of God’s love which we cannot deny, no matter how hard the world may try to convince us otherwise. God’s love becomes visible. You can hold it.

Anyway, I’m just glad that people come. And filled with gratitude, where I used to think it was more of a bother to accommodate so many… I’m sorry for these attitudes in the past, I truly believe that they are in the past now.

The Church has always taught that to be minimally Catholic you must attend Mass and receive Holy Communion (if you can) at least once a year between Ash Wednesday and Pentecost Sunday. Of course, if this is the only time you might attend  Mass, then it also must necessarily involve sacramental confession. This is what has been  called (sadly) the “Easter Duty.”

It is a great temptation for those who attend every week to be judgmental of those who do not. Yet, who knows what somebody might be going through in their life? Some people really are busy (though some really aren’t) and have to put food on the table for their families, which  means that work schedules and family obligations keep them from joining us many Sundays. For many, especially those who are sick, or have  been abused (20% of people alive today?) or  abandoned, disillusioned about family, community, feel deep pain that is so hard to reconcile, are uncertain of their worthiness to be a part: it takes all they have inside of them to show up and be seen in the context of the family of God.

Are we not all sinners?

Imagine what damage we might do at that moment if we were to choose to judge them rather than be here to welcome them home. It might be a long, long time before they get the strength together to do it again.

Schedules are busy. That is why we have Masses at every waking hour during the weekend. If your weekend is so busy that you can’t make it to any of our Masses, then maybe your weekend is too busy. I ask you to do what you can to work that out.

This weekend we reflect on God’s epiphany:  how he is made manifest in the Christ child to the wise men from the East—to all those at the time who were not of the house of Israel, the chosen people—to us. God wanted to tell us that he is here for all people—even the fortune tellers and pagans. He calls everyone. So then, why shouldn’t we?

We are now in the process of bringing one another to the manger. The angels who bring the shepherds, the star that brings the wise men. We, who bring each other to come and see the Mystery that is before us today.

God bless you.

Dear Good People of Saint Mary,

As Pope Francis said in his general audience last week, Jesus chose to come to the world as part of a family. The mystery of the incarnation of the Son of God, which opens a new chapter in the universal history of man and woman, “occurs within a family, in Nazareth. He could have come spectacularly, or as a warrior, an emperor… No, he came as the son of a family, in a family,”  he emphasized.

God can do anything he wants, and he doesn’t do anything by accident.

Today we are challenged to look at the family in its most basic form. Joseph was a man of integrity, righteous and true and loving. We imagine him providing a humble and safe home for his  wife, Mary, and her child, Jesus. It is clear that he was not affluent or proud. The silence of Scripture accounts shows him quietly protecting,  doing what is necessary to preserve this family, sometimes courageously. In the Bible he pays attention to God’s voice, but never speaks himself.

Mary, likewise, only points to her Son: “Do whatever he tells you.” So receptive, devout, reflective, yet so unmovable that she will not miss even a  moment by his side on the way to Calvary, at the cross, or at the tomb and beyond. In her lowliness lies the real power of God: “My soul magnifies the Lord.” What we see in the God-made-man, Jesus, in his humanity we must also see in her: hers was the only human DNA that gave birth to the Son of God.

They lived in relative obscurity. We don’t really know what he was up to for most of his life. Sometimes I think this is the most fascinating  and mysterious fact of the whole thing, that the most interesting Being ever to live on this earth, this God-man, stayed mostly invisible for most of his life, unknown. Nearly all of it, unless you all the time up to his presentation in the temple “public.” His work of three short years in the public eye, certainly his most productive years in terms of teaching and example, doesn’t mean that he wasted the rest of his years; the Son of God wouldn’t waste anything. He spent it in Nazareth,
where the family settled after they fled for their lives as refugees in Egypt, until the time he left Nazareth and came to the desert, afterward to be baptized by John.

The large part of Jesus’ life on this earth was spent in the context of this family life in Nazareth. I can’t imagine their family would have been any different than yours or mine, except that it would have been the simple life of the day. There would have been no electricity. Nothing that works by electricity. No running water. When I was in the Dominican Republic a great part of our day was spent just getting water from the river. In those days all a family could be was a family, together, always present to each other, eating and laughing, talking and praying, learning and teaching, growing together, working and hoping for tomorrow.

Somehow we need to get back to Nazareth. We are far from there.

The Pope continues: “Every Christian family – as  Mary and Joseph did – must first welcome Jesus, listen to Him, speak with Him, shelter Him, protect Him, grow with Him; and in this way, make the world better. Let us make space in our heart and in our days for the Lord. This is what Mary and Joseph did, and it was not easy: how many difficulties they had to overcome! It was not a false or unreal family. The family of Nazareth calls to us to rediscover the vocation and the mission of the family, of every family. And so what happened in those thirty years in Nazareth can also happen to us: making love, not hate, normal; mutual help common, instead of indifference and hostility. It is not by chance that Nazareth means ‘she who preserves,’ like Mary who, as the Gospel tells us, ‘treasured all these things in her heart.’ From then on, whenever there is a family that preserves this mystery, even if it should be at the outer reaches of the world, the mystery of the Son of God is at work. And he comes to save the world.”

They set a high bar to meet, right? I don’t think any of us can say that we came from a perfect family. Often, the ones who want to appear most  perfect are the ones that most need our love and support. On this feast of the Holy Family, let’s make a commitment. To defend the love between members of our family. To strengthen our marriages so parents can love their children from their own store of love. To look again at each other— to stop using the word “sibling” but consider truly what the word “brother” or “sister” means in the plan of God. Such an exalted and beautiful and blessed place to be, our families.

God bless you.

Dear Good People of St. Mary,

When I was home recently I asked my brothers if anyone was interested in keeping the log that has sat on our hearth since 1968. You see, it isn’t any log, it carries for me many memories of our vacation in 1968 when I was seven years old and we went to Wyoming and Colorado. While in Wyoming, my Dad, who I now realize was twenty-five years younger than I am now, had this crazy idea to take a tree trunk from a petrified forest park in Wyoming. As I remember it, these logs were just lying around as if they had dropped from the sky, for miles. There was a broken-down fence with gates that were open; I clearly remember knowing that we were stealing, but it was very exciting. We—my Dad, me and my eight year-old brother John—hoisted this thing weighing what seemed like hundreds of pounds, into the little red wagon we had been dragging my brother Bob around in, then put it in the station wagon, and this log became our travel companion for the next week until it found a home on our hearth. Actually, we rescued a number of them, but this was the granddaddy of all that we pilfered.

The log is something of a marvel; it’s a little hard to wrap your mind around it. It looks like a tree trunk, with bark and all, but it is stone. It was a mature tree that lived 225 million years ago. I wonder what prehistoric bugs are still preserved inside?

Somebody asked me why I wanted it? Such a heavy log-looking rock. So I’ve been thinking about it. It is the same reason we take out the same Christmas ornaments each year and put them on a new (or a newly assembled) tree that takes up space in our home. Sometimes each one of these ornaments carries a different memory with it. I used to enjoy putting up the tree with the family, we would recall different things—this one used to hang on our grandparents’ cotton-white tree with the color wheel that threw changing colors up on it. This one we bought in Venice. That one we made the year we moved to the farm… We would put the tree right in the middle of our great room floor and invite all the memories back into our home.

It’s the same reason we come back around each year to familiar songs and prayers. We decorate with old and newly-created decorations hopefully so that when we walk into church it is newly-assembled to feel fresh and new, and worn, and familiar and home. We have a Eucharist, and in our thanks come to mind all the beautiful and even sometimes tired and always renewing miracles of Jesus. His call is today, throughout the years. The whole family is back in the room, even those who are gone, and we find our anchor, this is really our place, and God is here. I am grateful that you are here with us for Christmas.

Too many people are off on their own today without an anchor, without a story. Let’s write the story for our generation and generations to come, together, here. Let’s enter into the Mystery of Christ as it unfolds this beautiful season, and enfolds us in love.

God bless you, and merry Christmas!