It’s Christmas and all our worries- the food, the dinner guests, our families, the presents- seem to be multiplied. Jesus’ birth is supposed to bring us peace, but instead, during this time of the year, it seems that what we have least of is peace.
And we go to Christmas Eve Mass looking for a little bit of peace. We hope to listen in the Gospel that beautiful Christmas story that we all love with the starry night, the angels, the shepherds and the little lambs (or at least we assume that there are lambs if there are shepherds). But instead of that story, we have to listen to a long list of names: the geneology of Jesus! (Matthew 1:1-25) All these unpronounceable names. Names like Jeconiah, Zerubabbel and Rehoboam. Forty-two names. What does that have to do with Christmas?
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A reflection for the 2nd Sunday in Advent, Year B. The readings are Isaiah 40:1-5, 9-11, Psalm 85, 2 Peter 3:8-14 and Mark 1:1-8.
Do you know the Lord’s Prayer in Latin? Pater noster (our Father), qui es in caelis (who art in Heaven), sanctificetur nomen tuum (hallowed be thy name). Now this is the line I want to share with you: Adveniat regnum tuum. It means, “Thy Kingdom come,” or “may your Kingdom come.” The verb “to come” is “Adveniat” in Latin. Adveniat. Sounds familiar? That’s where we get the word “Advent.” It means “to come”, “coming”. That’s what we pray every time we say the Lord’s Prayer: We are praying for the Advent of our Lord: the Second Coming.
And what do we do when we’re expecting someone who’s coming? I don’t know about you, but we clean the house. In fact, we only clean when someone is coming. Actually, we periodically invite people over, just to force us to clean – otherwise we would never clean! And we don’t just clean, but we also de-clutter. We take all the stuff off the table; we sort it; get rid of the stuff we should have gotten rid of weeks ago and the other stuff gets put away somewhere where no one can see it. That’s what we do at Advent: we clean; we de-clutter; we take out the trash. That’s why Advent is a penitential season. That’s why we wear purple. But it’s different than Lent. Lent is penitential in a sacrificial way: We focus on prayer, fasting and almsgiving. Advent is penitential in an “anticipation” kind of way. We are preparing with anticipation for a special guest.
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Titus Destroying Jerusalem by Wilhelm von Kaulbach
A reflection for the 1st Sunday, Advent year B. The readings are Isaiah 63:16b-17, 19b; 64:2-7, Psalm 80, Corinthians 1:3-9 and Mark 13:33-37.
I was at a high school last Friday and I noticed how different the students behave when the teacher is not in the room; even if there is a guest speaker. (Sometimes they are better behaved without the teacher!) And I remembered when I was in High School. We were a very close group of about 30 students in my class; most of us had been together since kindergarten and we were tight. We covered for each other. If ever we were without a teacher and for some reason we were up to something that we didn’t want the teacher to know about, we would put someone on watch. We had a teacher who would give us an exam and then he would leave the room. Undoubtedly some people (not me!) would cheat. But the only way they could get away with it, was if someone kept watch. Don’t want the teacher coming in to catch you doing something you’re not supposed to be doing, or not doing what you’re supposed to be doing.
Last week, also, I was watching a documentary about World War I (since it’s the 100th anniversary this year) and the story was about a 19-year old French soldier who had been given the night watch at the trenches and had fallen asleep. But despite the pleadings of his commander, who said that it was his own fault – he shouldn’t have given this young tired man the night watch – the young soldier was court-martialed and sentenced to the firing squad. Apparently the French army did this a lot. They had to make an example of him, because you can’t fall asleep while you’re on night watch – not during a war!
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A reflection for the 30th Sunday in Ordinary Time, year A. The readings are Exodus 22:20-26, Psalm 18, Thessalonians 1:5c-10 and Matthew 22:34-40.
Which is the greatest commandment of the Law? This was a real question at the time of Jesus. People would gather around the water cooler at work and talk about which commandment was the most important. It’s like today, everyone talking about whether we need more security at the Parliament or people talking about which diet is better or what we need to do to be happy. That was a question that a journalist once asked Pope Francis: What is the secret to happiness; the secret to having joy in your life.
The scholar of the law in today’s Gospel reading is not just trying to trick Jesus – he’s actually asking him a real, valid question that people had at the time – like the journalist asking Pope Francis what’s the secret to being joyful.
Let me give you a little background. Today, in post-Temple Judaism, which we call rabbinic Judaism (maybe some of my Jewish readers can correct me if I get this wrong) – we commonly accept that there are 613 commandments in the Torah: 613 commandments in the Law of Moses. This does not include the 10 commandments. We’re talking about all the other commandments contained in all the 5 books of Moses. These are called the Mitzvot (mitzvah means law; mitzvot is plural). Many of these laws have to do with priestly service. The Levites were the priests and they had very specific laws as to how to do their job and how to offer sacrifice and serve at the Temple. These are the levitical laws and most of them are in the Book of Leviticus. There are also laws about food; what to eat, what not to eat and how to eat (like not to eat worms found in fruit, Lev 11:41 or not to eat the limb removed from a living beast, Deut. 12:23, or not to slaughter an animal and its young on the same day, Lev 22:28). There are laws about offering sacrifice and about ritual purity and impurity (what makes one pure or impure); laws about marriage (like marrying a widow of a brother who has died childless, Deut 22:5), about clothing (like a man shall not wear women’s clothing or a woman not wearing men’s clothing, Deut. 22:5); about agriculture and how to breed your animals (like not to sow grain or herbs in a vineyard, Deut 22:9 and not to cross-breed cattle of different species, Lev. 19:19); about idolatry (like not to tattoo the body, Lev 19:28, or plant a tree for worship, Deut 14:1). There are also criminal laws and laws about judicial procedure and punishment; laws about property (like never to settle in the land of Egypt, Deut 17:16). There are laws about employment and how to treat your slaves; laws about how to conduct business; laws about how to treat the stranger and the foreigners (like in today’s first reading from the Book of Exodus), how to treat the poor and unfortunate; laws about prayer and blessings; laws about signs and symbols (like every male offspring must be circumcised, Lev 12:3) and of course, laws about God. A good Jew knew about all these laws. Pharisees were strict with all these laws and a scholar of the law, was, well, an expert in all this Law.
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deacon pedro 