Daily Virtue

On this fourth Sunday of Advent, we take time to reflect on the familiar patterns and practices of Catholic faith, life, and worship. It also presents an opportunity for shaping family life, developing customs, and practicing family piety, all of which can help us to assimilate the beauty and truth revealed in the comings of the Lord. Deacon Keith Fournier writes that they invite us to break from the monotony of daily life in order to participate in something bigger than ourselves. They connect us to the One who always comes to those who are prepared. They are occasions of grace. However, they must be chosen in faith and practiced in love. They must spring from the reservoir of a genuine belief in the Risen Lord Jesus Christ. We need to hear this clarion call to prepare the way for the Lord, which is the very message of Advent. We live in an intermediate time between the first and the second comings of Jesus Christ. Advent is our calling as we are a people who prepare the Way. Bernard of Clairvaux, a Franciscan friar, wrote of the three comings of Christ: We know that there are three comings of the Lord. The third lies between the other two. It is invisible, while the other two are visible. In the first coming, He was seen on earth, dwelling among men; in the final coming,” all flesh will see the salvation of our God, and they will look upon Him whom they have pierced.” The intermediate coming is a hidden one; in it, only the elect see the Lord within their own selves, and they are saved. In His first coming, our Lord came in our flesh and our weakness; in this middle coming, He comes in Spirit and in power; in the final coming, he will be seen in glory and in majesty. Because this coming lies between the other two, it is like a road on which we travel from the first coming to the last.

In the Church of the Visitation, behind the altar, there is a painting that depicts the scene of the Visitation. It’s a picture of two peasant women, both pregnant, greeting each other. Everything about it suggests smallness, littleness, obscurity, dust, small-town, insignificance. Fr. Ron Rolheiser writes that what you see is two rather plain-looking women standing in the dust of an unknown village. Nothing suggests that either of them or anything they are doing or carrying, is out of the ordinary or of much significance. Yet, and this is the genius of the painting, all that littleness, obscurity, seeming barrenness, and small-town insignificance makes you automatically ask the question: “Who would have thought it? Who could ever have imagined that these two women, in this obscure town, in this obscure place, in this obscure time, were carrying inside of themselves something that would radically and forever change the world? What these obscure peasant women were gestating and carrying inside of themselves would one day change history more than any army, philosopher, artist, King or Queen, or entertainment star ever would. Inside of themselves, they were gestating the Christ and the Prophet. These births changed the world radically. There is a lesson in that: Never underrate, in terms of world importance, someone living in obscurity who is pregnant with promise. Never underestimate the impact in history of silent, hidden gestation. We might well meditate on this image: Insofar as we have real significance, we all live in obscurity, pregnant with promise, silently, in a way hidden from the world, gestating that which will change time and history. If we understood this, there would be more peace in our lives and one of the raging fires inside of us would torment us much less. Invariably, we sit inside our own lives, and we feel unknown, small-time, undistinguished, and frustrated because almost all of our riches are still unknown to others. We have so much to give to the world, but the world doesn’t know about us.

If you take some time to consider God’s plan for the arrival of the Messiah, it seems like He was doing everything He could to make it seem as improbable and impossible as possible!

• God waits for nearly six hundred years of the nation of Israel being in exile, being almost totally wiped off the map before He sends the Messiah.
• He doesn’t send the Messiah when Israel is at the pinnacle of its power (David, Solomon) but when it is at its lowest.
• He does not come in power, but weakness. Not as a military commander, but as a baby.
• He is born to a poor, unwed teenage girl from a town so small it would not have even appeared on a map. This girl is a virgin, so she cannot conceive naturally.
• Her betrothed husband nearly divorces her on discovering the pregnancy. At the time of Jesus’ birth, there isn’t even the safety and comfort of a room for the delivery, but he is born in a stall for livestock, and shortly after his birth he is nearly killed by a murderous Herod.

It is like God is doing everything He can to show that, “Nothing will be impossible with God.” No matter how stacked the odds are against God, He always wins. Nothing is impossible for Him. And since God is the sovereign Lord over history, this means that He is working to make events happen as they do–He is intentionally make the circumstances more dire. But, why? So, he can show His marvelous power in the face of what is normally impossible for men. God is so set on displaying the power of His mighty arm that He will choose the most unlikely, impossible of circumstances simply to demonstrate His superior wisdom, power, and grace. So, dear friends, I ask you again: what feels impossible to you? Do you believe that you have an omnipotent Lord who is not limited? Let’s not dishonor God by hedging our bets as we pray. Let’s not subtly teach ourselves and our families that there are just some things that really are impossible for God. In Mary’s story we see something that feels personally, nationally/socially, and physically impossible be overcome by God’s power. Maybe you are left thinking that God could never restore your family, never could heal your marriage, never could bring your wayward children back home. Remember: nothing is impossible for God.

The Gospel reading today from Luke looks at two of the characters in Advent: Elizabeth and Zechariah, the parents of John the Baptist. It would be fair to say that they have a little more going for them in terms of being candidates in God’s service. Zechariah was a priest and came from a generation of priests. Elizabeth, too, came from a family of priests. The nature of being a priest would have meant that Zechariah was literate and able to read and write, a skill that would immediately have placed him as a leader in his community. Luke carefully stresses that Zechariah and Elizabeth “were upright in the sight of God, observing all the Lord’s commandments and regulations blamelessly,” not just the letter of the law, but its spirit too. And that is the key. God uses all types, including religious ones, but the heart matters, not the outward acts. I am struck by the mercy and love God shows. He chooses Elizabeth to be the mother of John the Baptist. Elizabeth was childless, and in the culture of the ancient Middle East, that was regarded as a terrible thing to be, even arousing suspicions that God was punishing you. And yet, into this sadness, God brings his mercy and compassion. Indeed, the very name “John” means “God has shown favor.” Lastly, I am struck by the way that joy and praise keep bubbling up to the surface. When Elizabeth meets Mary, the baby in her womb leaps with joy, and she is filled with the Holy Spirit. She bursts into praise – “Blessed are you among women… but why am I so favored that the mother of my Lord should come to me?” When John was born, we were told that her neighbors and relatives shared her joy; people were filled with awe and wonder, and the news spread throughout the hilly Judea. And that Zechariah, recovering his power of speech, also erupts in joy and celebration: “Praise be to the Lord, the God of Israel because he has come and redeemed his people.” There is something extraordinary about the infectiousness of their joy. They can’t help sharing their wonder, awe, and happiness with others. I wonder if we can do the same. Can we share our joy with others, the joy of a God who calls us, the joy of a God who meets us in thin places, the joy of a God who has shown us favor and gives us glimpses of the goodness of his kingdom? Like Elizabeth and Zechariah, let us marvel and wonder at God’s goodness and share our joy with others.

How do we maintain the belief that God came down from heaven, took on human flesh, conquered all suffering, and altered the course of human history? Fr. Ron Rolheiser writes that it isn’t easy to believe amidst all the evidence that seems to contradict it, but its credibility is contingent upon it being correctly understood. Christmas is not a magical event, a Cinderella story without midnight. Rather, its very center speaks of humiliation, pain, and forced fleeing, which is not unlike that being experienced by millions of refugees and victims of injustice on our planet today. The Christmas story mirrors the struggle that’s being experienced within our own world and within our own tired hearts. Incarnation is not yet the resurrection. Flesh in Jesus, as in us, is human, vulnerable, weak, incomplete, needy, painfully full of limit, and suffering. 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 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, strikes, selfishness, and bitterness linger. In the words of Avery Dulles: “The incarnation does not provide us with a ladder by which to escape from the ambiguities of life and scale the heights of heaven. Rather, it enables us to burrow deep into the heart of planet earth and find it shimmering with divinity.”  George Orwell prophesied that our world would eventually be taken over by tyranny, torture, double-think, and a broken human spirit. To some extent, this is true. We’re far from being whole and happy, still deeply in exile. However, we need to celebrate Christmas 2024 heartily. Maybe we won’t feel the same excitement we once felt as children when we were excited about tinsel, lights, Christmas carols, 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, our joys, and our shortcomings. The word was made flesh. That’s an incredible thing that should be celebrated with tinsel, lights, and songs of joy. If we understand Christmas, the carols will still flow naturally from our lips.

Jesus may have been immaculately conceived. However, as the gospels make clear, much of his origins is as jolting as any contemporary church scandal. For example, in giving us the origins of Jesus, the gospels point to as many sinners, liars, and schemers in his genetic and historical lineage as they do to saints, honest people, and men and women of faith. Beyond these less-than-saintly characters in Jesus’ lineage, we see that some of the institutions that shaped the Jewish faith were also less than saintly. Institutionalized religion back then suffered from many of the same problems it has today, including the corrupt use of power. Indeed, Israel itself (perhaps justifying the deed by referring to what Jacob had done to Esau) seized the land of Canaan from those who had a prior claim to it, claiming ownership by divine privilege. We see, too, that the lineage that gave us Jesus built itself up not just on the great and the talented but equally on the poor and insignificant. In the list of names that make up the ancestors of Jesus, we see some that are famous but also others who cannot claim specialness or significance. Jesus’ human blood, scripture tells us, was produced equally by the great and the small, the talented and the talentless. Renowned biblical scholar Fr. Raymond Brown tells us that God writes straight with crooked lines, that we shouldn’t accept an overly idealized Christ, and that our own lives, even if they are marked by weakness and insignificance, are important too in continuing the story of the incarnation. The God who wrote the beginnings with crooked lines also writes the sequence with crooked lines; some of those lines are our own lives and witness. A God who did not hesitate to use the scheming as well as the noble, the impure, and the pure men to whom the world harkened and women upon whom the world frowned – this God continues to work through the same mélange. If it is a challenge to recognize in the last part of Matthew’s genealogy that totally unknown people were part of the story of Jesus Christ, it may be a greater challenge to recognize that the unknown characters of today are an essential part of the sequence. Christianity isn’t just for the pure, the talented, the good, the humble, and the honest. The story of Jesus Christ was also written and keeps being written by the impure, by sinners, by calculating schemers, by the proud, by the dishonest, and by those without worldly talents. Nobody is so bad, so insignificant, so devoid of talent, or so outside the circle of faith that he or she is outside the story of Christ.

In today’s Gospel from Mathew, Jesus is asked by what “authority” he is doing the miraculous things people are seeing. Fr. Ron Rolheiser writes that there are, as we know, different kinds of power. There’s a power that flows from strength and energy. We see this, for example, in the body of a gifted athlete who moves with authority.  There’s power, too, in charisma, in a gifted speaker or a rock star. They, too, speak with a certain authority and power. But there’s still another kind of power and authority, one very different in kind from that of the athlete and the rock star. There’s the power of a baby, the paradoxical power of vulnerability, innocence, and helplessness. Powerlessness is sometimes the real power.  If you put an athlete, a rock star, and a baby into the same room, who among them is the most powerful? Who has the most authority? Whatever the power of the athlete or the rock star, the baby has more power to change hearts. The Gospel texts, which tell us that Jesus spoke with “authority,” never suggest that he spoke with “great energy” or “powerful charisma.” In describing Jesus’ authority, they use the word “exousia,” a Greek word for which we don’t have an English equivalent. What’s “exousia”? We don’t have a term for it. Still, we have a concept: “Exousia” might be described as the combination of vulnerability, innocence, and helplessness that a baby brings into a room. Its very helplessness, innocence, and vulnerability have a unique authority and power to touch your conscience. It’s for good reason that people watch their language around a baby. Its very presence is cleansing. However, a couple of other elements, too, undergirding the authority with which Jesus spoke. His vulnerability and innocence gave his words an extraordinary power, yes. Still, two other aspects also made his words powerful: His words were always grounded in the integrity of his life. As well, people recognized that his authority was not coming from him but from something (Someone) higher whom he was serving. There was no discrepancy between his words and his life. Moreover, his words were powerful because they weren’t just coming from him, they were coming through him from Someone above him, Someone whose authority couldn’t be challenged, God. You see this kind of authority in persons like Mother Teresa and Jean Vanier. Their words had a special authority. Mother Teresa could meet someone for the first time and ask him or her to come to India and work with her. Jean Vanier could do the same. A friend of mine shares how, when meeting Vanier for the first time, Vanier invited him to become a missionary priest. That thought had never before crossed his mind. Today, he’s a missionary. What gives some people that extraordinary power? “Exousia” is a selfless life and a grounding in an authority that comes from above. In persons like Mother Teresa and Jean Vanier, you see the powerlessness of a baby combined with a selfless life grounded in authority beyond them. When such persons speak, like Jesus’, their words have real power to calm hearts, heal them, change them, and, metaphorically and really, cast out demons from them.

I know that, alone, I cannot see, hear, or touch God in the world. But God in me, the living Christ in me, can see, hear, and touch God in the world, and all that is Christ’s in me is fully my own. These wonderful words from Henri Nouwen bring into our hearts and minds the simplicity, purity, and innocence from God are our very own because they are truly given to each of us to be claimed as our most personal possessions. Henri goes on to say that all that there is of love in me is a gift from Jesus, yet every gesture of love I am able to make will be recognized as uniquely mine. That’s the paradox of grace. The fullest gift of grace brings with it the fullest gift of freedom. There is nothing good in me that does not come from God through Christ, but all the good in me is uniquely my own. The deeper my intimacy with Jesus, the more complete is my freedom. Waiting is, first of all, a waiting together. One of the most beautiful passages of Scripture is Luke 1: 39-56, which tells us about Mary’s visit to Elizabeth. What happened when Mary received the words of promise? She went to Elizabeth. Something was happening to Elizabeth as well as to Mary. But how could they live that out? I find the meeting of these two women very moving, because Elizabeth and Mary came together and enabled each other to wait. Mary’s visit made Elizabeth aware of what she was waiting for. The child leapt for joy in her. Mary affirmed Elizabeth’s waiting. And then Elizabeth said to Mary, “Blessed is she who believed that the promise made to her by the Lord would be fulfilled” (Luke 1:45). And Mary responded, “My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord” (Luke 1:46). She burst into joy herself. These two women created space for each other to wait: They affirmed for each other that something was happening worth waiting for. Here, we see a model for the Christian community. It is a community of support, celebration, and affirmation in which we can lift up what has already begun in us. The visit of Mary to Elizabeth is one of the Bible’s most beautiful expressions of what it means to form community, to be together, gathered around a promise, affirming what is happening among us.

Today, we celebrate the memorial of the great Spanish mystic St. John of the Cross. Bishop Robert Barron writes that we find ourselves, St. John of the Cross taught, amid a good and beautiful world, but we are meant finally for union with God. Therefore, the soul has to become free from its attachments to finite things to be free for communion with God. When John of the Cross speaks of the dark night of the soul, he is speaking of a purifying passage that an individual undergoes, transforming one kind of life into another. This transformation, as articulated by John, is understood as something that pertains mainly to prayer. Rarely is it understood as something that has to do with our entire lives. However, what John describes in his concept of the dark night of the soul is really the paschal mystery, the movement from death to new life, the movement from Good Friday to Easter Sunday. This movement has to do with the transformation of our whole lives. Thus, John’s outline can serve as a paradigm of paschal transformation. The dark night of the soul traces the pattern that love, service, and prayer must pass through to be transformed to new and eternal life. Like all purifications, this one is painful, especially if one’s attachment to these finite things is intense. It will often manifest itself, John of the Cross said, as dryness in prayer and a keen sense of God’s absence and even abandonment. In this process, God is not toying with the soul; instead, he is performing a kind of surgery upon it, cutting certain things away so that its life might intensify.   

We’re called to live in the light, but we tend to have an overly romantic idea of what that should mean. We tend to think that to live in the light means that there should be a kind of special sunshine inside of us, a divine glow in our conscience, a sunny joy inside us that makes us constantly want to praise God, and an ambiance of sacredness surrounding our attitude.  But that’s unreal.  What does it mean to live in the light? Fr. Ron Rolheiser writes that to live in the light means living in honesty, being pure and simple, being transparent, and not having part of us hidden as a dark secret. All conversion and recovery programs worthy of the name are based on bringing us to this type of honesty. We move towards spiritual health precisely by flushing out our sickest secrets and bringing them into the light. Sobriety is more about living in honesty and transparency than it is about living without a certain chemical, gambling, or sexual habit. It’s the hiding of something, the lying, the dishonesty, the deception, the resentment we harbor towards those who stand between us, and the addiction that does the real damage to us and to those we love. Spiritual health lies in honesty and transparency, so we live in the light when we are willing to lay every part of our lives open to examination by those who need to trust us. To live in the light is to be able always to tell our loved ones where we are and what we are doing; not to have to worry if someone traces what websites we have visited; to not be anxious if someone in the family finds our files unlocked; to let those we live with listen to what’s inside our cell-phones, see what’s inside our emails, and know who’s on our speed-dial; to have a confessor and to be able to tell that person what we struggle with, without having to hide anything; and to live in such a way that, for those who know us, our lives are an open book.