Holy Family

Message in a Minute for Dec 29:

Today we celebrate the feast day of the Holy Family.  A day when we remember and venerate the blessed family from Nazareth, Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.  I think that the Holy Family is one of the most important feasts for our daily lives, because, last time I checked, every one of us was born into a family.  Every family is different.  We all have the crazy uncle, the angry sibling, the odd circumstance.  We all see difficulties and obstacles in our families. So, when we look at the Holy Family it might be quite easy to just write it off: that’s it, of course they are holy, one is the son of God, one is the Immaculate Conception, and the last was known as a righteous man and is remembered as a saint.  Of course, they are going to be a holy family, we don’t have a shot.  

In some ways this is true.  None of our children are the incarnate word of God, none of us are the Immaculate Conception.  Still, all of our families are called to be Holy Families.  All of us are called to be Holy, we all live in families… therefore, our families are supposed to be holy.  How do we get there?

Let’s turn to the Holy Family for inspiration.  In the Holy Family we see a blueprint for holiness in the family.  First, there is a tremendous trust in God.  Mary was approached by the angel and she says yes to God’s will.  Joseph was approached by the angel in today’s gospel and he says yes to God’s will.  

Now, we probably don’t receive divine messages by angelic messengers, but each of us are called to know God’s will, to seek him in our daily lives, to grow close to him, to trust in him, to allow him to aid and guide us in our decisions.  This is especially true in our family lives.  Each and every member of the family can draw close to God.  Each of us can grow in our life of prayer.  We should lean on God and ask him for direction and guidance.  But, we should also pray for our families.  Each day we should pray for the members of our family, by name.  Each day we should thank God for the members of our family, by name.  Each day we should pray for guidance, bring our specific issues, problems, and circumstances to God.  Name them, pray for them, be open to God’s guidance.  Just think what family life would be like if each and every member of every Christian family spent some time every day praying for the good of the whole family.  I think it could be life changing.  So, the lesson from the Holy Family, is that each member of the family needs to trust God and grow close to him.

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4th Sunday of Advent

Message in a Minute for December 22^nd:

Today is the last Sunday of Advent.  Our season of patient waiting is almost over.  In just a few days, we will celebrate the birth of Christ our Savior.  In these last few days, we hear the “O” antiphons at Mass.  These antiphons are prayed during the Alleluia.  These antiphons have been used since the 8^th century.  Each of the antiphons invites the Lord to come to us, but does so by using Old Testament imagery.  These have been turned into the Advent hymn “O come, O come, Emmanuel.”  So, as we come to the end of the Advent, “Emmanuel” becomes our focus.  

I had the fortune of studying ancient Hebrew for one year.  I certainly am not an expert at the language.  But, it helped me to see how Hebrew constructs words.  Very often, words will be joined together.  For example, the word for God is “EL.”  But, to say “my God” one simply says “ELI”.  My and God are joined together into one word.  The same thing is happening for “Emmanuel.”  EM means “with”, MANU “us”, EL “God”.  So, Emmanuel is three words all joined together: God With Us.  

Emmanuel is a simple word, and yet the ramifications are tremendous.  “God with us” is an amazing proclamation of faith.  God is not far and distant; God is near and close.  Though we cannot see God, we know that he is near.  The child of Bethlehem proclaims this simply fact: Emmanuel.

Adam and Eve sinned and lost their friendship with God.  We do the same when we commit our sins.  Sin causes us to drift away from God.  Yet, God overcomes the distance.  God closes the gap that was caused by Original Sin.  Jesus Christ truly is Emmanuel: God with us.  This one-word changes everything.  

Take a few moments this week before the craziness of Christmas goes into full effect.  Pray the O Antiphon for Sunday and ask Jesus Christ, Emmanuel to come and be our savior: Antiphon for December 23: O Emmanuel, our King and Giver of Law: come to save us, Lord our God!

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Gaudete Sunday

Message in a Minute for December 15:

Today has always been one of my favorite days of the liturgical year.  This is Gaudete Sunday.  It is one of my favorite days, not because I get to wear these fancy Rose vestments (ok maybe they are pink…), but because we light our third candle.  This Gaudete Sunday is a signal the Christmas is coming soon.  Indeed, it is beginning to look a lot like Christmas with cold in the air and decorations on people’s houses.  The day is quickly coming.  So today is a day of Joy, amidst our patient waiting of Advent.  I think this mirrors our life in many ways.

It is certainly true that there is a great deal of patient waiting in this life.  We wait in our cars, we wait in our homes, we wait at banks, restaurants, you name it.  There is a great deal of waiting.  In fact, I think that the modern parent probably spends half of his/her life sitting in a car waiting on kids.  I know that I don’t like to wait, I’m not very patient, I like things to happen right away.  But, what makes waiting bearable is always what is at the other end.  As long as we keep our goal in sight, we are able to wait with patience.

The same is true in our life of faith.  We are in the season of Advent, which asks us to patiently wait for the coming of Christ at Christmas, but also prepares us for the arrival of Christ when he will come again.  Sometimes life seems all too full of waiting for God that we might tend toward losing our patience.  This is why we need to keep the goal in our sights.

This week’s Rose vestments help us to do this with Christmas.  This symbol is a blending of the purple of Advent and the white of Christmas.  It is almost like Christmas is starting to break through the purple of Advent.  So, by setting our sights on the end, which is Christmas, it fills us with joy as we continue to wait.

It shouldn’t be any different as we prepare to meet Christ on the last day.  The joy of his coming should break into our daily lives, filling them with joy as well.  Let’s keep a lookout for all the times that we catch a glimpse of the joy of God’s kingdom breaking into our lives.  These glimpses help us to stay patient as we await the fullness of the kingdom of God.

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Update

Hello everyone,

I don't know how many people access this blog.  I know that I don't update it that frequently except for my homilies.  Well, I've been switching to a new kind of communication source.  I call this the Message in a Minute.  I'm using a service called Flocknote, which will send the MIM to email or text.  So, I've decided to discontinue this blog and switch everything over to MIM.  You can sign up for the MIM using the contact info below.  Also, I will post the MIM here for a few weeks to help the transition.  Thanks for reading this blog and I hope we continue to be in contact.

God bless,
Fr Jake

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Good grain

2^nd Sunday of Advent year A 2019 2:

St John the Baptist gives us an interesting image in the gospel today.  We hear that the coming messiah will baptize with the Holy Spirit and with fire.  When I hear that I think of the sacrament of baptism.  We are baptized with the Holy Spirit and give the baptismal candle, the fire that represents Jesus.  But, then he says that the messiah will have the winnowing fan and he will clear the threshing floor.  This sounds like an image of the second coming, when Jesus will gather all his disciples to himself.  This threshing image is interesting, and we probably don’t think about it too often.

When I was in seminary, I was fortunate enough to take some classes in Greek.  As you probably know, the New Testament is all written in Greek.  I find it fascinating to read the Bible in the original language, because all translations have their limitation.  Now, it just so happened that this passage was one of the verses that we studied in our Greek class.  In fact, we all had to take turns reading the Greek out loud as we worked along with the translation.  Now, as you can imagine, the word “winnowing fan” is not a very common word.  And to make matters worse, it’s kind of a weird word to pronounce.  The Greek word is “ptuon”.  My friend John, who is a priest in Charlotte diocese, was reading out loud when we came to that word.  And he sort of butchered it.  So, the professor corrected him.  Then John went ahead and tried again.  Another failure and another correction.  He tried a third time and still was unable to say it.  So, the professor misunderstood John’s problem.  He thought he couldn’t remember that ptuon meant winnowing fan.  So, he stopped class and went to the chalkboard.  He drew a big picture of what a winnowing fan looks like, and he went into a 10-minute discussion on how a winnowing fan works.  My poor friend John was quite embarrassed.  And as his good friends, we all gave him grief, of course.

But, that lesson really came back to me this week as I was praying and reflecting on that image of the winnowing fan.  This is how it worked.  All the grain would be out on the threshing floor.  The winnowing fan is like a big pitchfork.  The farmer grabs the grain and tosses it into the air with the winnowing fan.  As it’s falling back down to the earth, the wind catches all the parts of the grain that are light and fluffy, like the stalk and the covering of the grain, while the grain, which is heavier, falls back down to the earth.  It’s a pretty ingenious way to separate the wheat from the chaff.  Nowadays we do all this with our big machines.  But, in the ancient days, this would be one of the methods used to purify the grain.  

Now, John the Baptist says that the Messiah is going to do that with the human race.  He is going to separate the wheat from the chaff, and he will do so with his ptuon, his winnowing fan.  So, we all want to be the grain, right?  Not the chaff.  We want to be gathered into the Lord’s barn and not burned in the fire.  

So, what do we need to do?  We need to become nice and heavy so that when the wind blows, we fall back down.  Now, I’m tempted to say that we should all just eat lots of Christmas cookies and we will get nice and heavy.  But, that’s not the kind of heavy we are talking about.  Rather, we need to become substantial.  In our character, in our conduct, in our actions, we need to be people of substance.  To me, there is nothing lighter and more insubstantial than sin, selfishness, ego, pride, etc.  These things are light and fluffy, and they will be carried away by the wind.  But, charity, goodness, kindness, love, these things are substantial and heavy.  These won’t be blown away by the wind.  

So, in our prayer this week, we can ask God to show us the places where we are light and fluffy, we want these to be blown away by the wind of the Holy Spirit.  And we can ask God to help us increase in our goodness, kindness, love, and humility.  These are the heavy things that will last.  Advent is a time to be ready for the ptuon of Christ.  May we become good grain, gathered into the Lord’s keeping.