December1 in Year B 11

Thursday of the First Week in Advent to Thursday of the Third Week in Advent

Click on any date to go to the Thought for that Day

Morning Offering: O Jesus, through the most pure heart of Mary, I offer you all the prayers, works, joys and sufferings of this day for all the intentions of your divine heart, in union with the holy sacrifice of the Mass. I offer them especially for the Holy Father's intentions:

Pope Benedict's general intention for December is: "That the nations of the earth, through knowledge and mutual respect, may grow in harmony and peace."

His mission intention is: "That children and young people may be messengers of the Gospel and that their dignity may always be respected and preserved from all violence and exploitation."

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Entrance Antiphon Cf. Ps 119 (118): 151-152 You, O Lord, are close, and all your ways are truth. From of old I have known of your decrees, for you are eternal.

Collect Stir up your power, O Lord, and come to our help with mighty strength, that what our sins impede the grace of your mercy may hasten. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

John was born near Vercelli in northwest Italy in the early 13th century. Little is known of his early life. He entered the Dominican Order in the 1240s and served in various leadership capacities over the years. Elected sixth master general of the Dominicans in 1264, he served for almost two decades. Known for his tireless energy and his commitment to simplicity, John made personal visits — typically on foot — to almost all the Dominican houses, urging his fellow friars to strictly observe the rules and constitutions of the Order. He was tapped by two popes for special tasks. Pope Gregory X enlisted the help of John and his fellow Dominicans in helping to pacify the States of Italy that were quarrelling with one another. John was also called upon to draw up a framework for the Second Council of Lyons in 1274. It was at that council that he met Jerome of Ascoli (the man who would later become Pope Nicholas IV), then serving as minister general of the Franciscans. Some time later the two men were sent by Rome to mediate a dispute involving King Philip III of France. Once again, John was able to draw on his negotiating and peacemaking skills. Following the Second Council of Lyons, Pope Gregory selected John to spread devotion to the name of Jesus. John took the task to heart, requiring that every Dominican church contain an altar of the Holy Name; groups were also formed to combat blasphemy and profanity. Toward the end of his life John was offered the role of patriarch of Jerusalem, but declined. He remained Dominican master general until his death. (AmericanCatholic.org)

Scripture today: Isaiah 26:1-6; Psalm 118:1 and 8-9, 19-21, 25-27a; Matthew 7:21, 24-27

Jesus said to his disciples, Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash. (Matthew 7:21, 24-27)

Perseverance A young student has just finished his Honours degree and has qualified for entry as a candidate in a doctoral program. He has identified his area of interest and has presented his research proposal. It is accepted, and he begins his work with enthusiasm. He works on his data, reads around his chosen field and takes his notes. Fr. Ted Tyler

The weeks pass as do the months and he sees his very busy supervisor. But he can’t seem to make easy progress. Despite his success during his first degree, writing is not coming easily. He suffers blanks and impasses. His supervisor is harassed with his own work, has to keep up his own research and writing of publishable articles, has other doctoral candidates, and is loaded by his department with the teaching of new fields in his subject. In fact, his supervisor finds the business of research students a nuisance and proves not to be all that helpful. And so it goes on, and our young doctoral student gradually runs aground, making little or no progress, becoming depressed, losing interest, and finally giving up. The difficulties have defeated him. Any number of examples could be given of giving up the struggle when under sustained pressure. Of course, in many instances in life the difficulties are indeed insuperable and are a signal that a different course ought be pursued. But my point here is that generally a truly worthwhile goal will be difficult to attain. In the very nature of the case this means that any prospect of success will involve grappling with serious difficulties. It is critical, then, that one be so readied as to meet and sustain them. One must at least sit down and count the cost, including whether one has the personal fibre to meet it. This applies to career hopes, to the establishment of a marriage and family, to large scale social objectives and to national aims. It is a fact of ordinary experience that to do worthwhile things can involve torrid, consuming, draining, even destroying work. The greatest work ever undertaken in the history of the world was the redemption of the human race from the inexorable, indomitable scourge of sin. It was a work the like of which nothing can compare, and it involved unsurpassable difficulty for mere man. The One sent to undertake it embraced its incalculable difficulty, for this was the path to glory for us all.

Every man and woman has a work in life of exceptional importance. So important is it that its ramifications are eternal. The business of life is, more than anything else, to become united to God. The greatest obstacle to this is sin, and every man and woman is born into the world afflicted with sin. It is an inherited affliction, like something passed on in one’s chromosomes. It has its origin in the first man and woman so long ago — they sinned, deliberately rebelling against the expressed will of the Creator. They fell from their wonderful state of nature and grace, and found themselves under the power of the sin they had welcomed — and we all are born into this predicament. Sin is our pre-eminent difficulty, and it is a difficulty which simply must be overcome if we are to attain our true goal of union with God. The overcoming of it will involve enormous difficulty, but the difficulty must be met and overcome day by day to the very end. It is not to be a sombre business, rather it is to be the great sport of life carried on with chivalrous gallantry. The rain will come, the floods will sweep down, the winds will beat against the house, but it must be made to stand. It must not fall. How, then, to do this? Our Lord gives us the great key: we must hear the word of Jesus Christ and put it into practice. Yea, verily yea! to use the words repeated in The Court Jester movie of years ago. Blessed Edith Stein (1891-1942) wrote years ago that “During our spiritual childhood, when we have just begun to let ourselves be led by God, we feel his strong and firm hand guiding us. We see in an obvious way what we must do and what we must not do. But it will not always be like that. The person who belongs to Christ must live Christ’s whole life. That person must ... one day must start out on the way of the cross. ... That is why, even .. in the midst of the darkest night, ‘thy will be done.’” The essential thing is to be clear about the key to it, and our Lord makes this clear in our Gospel today: “Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock” (Matthew 7: 21, 24-27).

Let us every day set out in the company of the Strong One, Jesus Christ our Redeemer, our Brother and our God. If we are united to him, who can overcome us? As St Paul writes, “neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:39). Whatever we do about difficulties in temporal goals, difficulties must not be allowed to deflect us from our eternal goals. Our daily goal ought be union with God in Jesus Christ, whatever be the cost. So then, now I begin!

Great desires It is absolutely essential to have hopes and dreams of serving and loving Our Lord faithfully and generously if ever we are to make progress in the spiritual life. We have to want it first, if we are to attain holiness Fr. Ted Tyler

at all, and very many people simply do not want it. Many have no interest in the Person of Christ, except in a vague way that amounts to a pointless curiosity. We must cultivate great desires, and we do it by prayer, meditation and real self discipline. But we must not fool ourselves. The desire must lead to action. St Thomas Aquinas is said to have been asked by his sister how one becomes a saint. He is reputed to have replied, ‘Just want it!’ He meant that the saint really wants to be holy, and the proof of his desire is what he does about it. It is deeds, it is actual work, that defines a person’s real intent. Our Lord in today’s Gospel (Matthew 7:21.24-27) tells us that “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord’, will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.”

So, then, each day let us concentrate on getting down to it. Perhaps we see that we have not really begun a life of mortification in imitation of Christ. Well, today – not tomorrow, but today — let us get down to it and actually work on mortification, doing something concrete about it. We see that when it comes to our daily responsibilities and work we are somewhat remiss. Well, begin now, taking on the unpleasant aspects of daily work promptly and perseveringly. What God wants above all is action when it comes to the fulfilling of his will — whatever that may mean in our particular situation. At the end of the day before retiring to bed, let us examine our conscience not only in general, but in the particular area of struggle we recognize is ours. It is not enough to like the thought of holiness of life, to dream about it, or vaguely to hope for it. We must get down to it and actually do the will of God, which is usually a matter of fulfilling a very ordinary range of daily duties for others (and for ourselves). But we must learn to do them really well, and for love of God.

In all of this we have a great example: the Holy Family during all those years at Nazareth. So, now I begin!

(E.J.Tyler)

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Christian optimism is not a sugary optimism; nor is it a mere human confidence that everything will turn out all right. It is an optimism that sinks its roots in an awareness of our freedom, and in the sure knowledge of the power of grace. It is an optimism which leads us to make demands on ourselves, to struggle to respond at every moment to God’s calls.

Entrance Antiphon Behold, the Lord will come descending with splendor to visit his people with peace, and he will bestow on them eternal life.

Collect Stir up your power, we pray, O Lord, and come, that with you to protect us, we may find rescue from the pressing dangers of our sins, and with you to set us free, we may be found worthy of salvation. Who live and reign with God the Father in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

Born near Buk in the Poznan region of Poland, Melchior showed early signs of religious devotion; family members nicknamed him "the little monk." After completing his studies at the Jesuit college in Poznan, Melchior joined the cavalry and was promoted to the rank of officer within three years. Against the urgings of his military comrades, in 1715 Melchior joined the Conventual Franciscans in Kraków, receiving the name Rafal, and was ordained two years later. After pastoral assignments in nine cities, he came to Lagiewniki (central Poland), where he spent the last 13 years of his life, except for 20 months ministering to flood and epidemic victims in Warsaw. In all these places, Rafal was known for his simple and candid sermons, for his generosity as well as his ministry in the confessional. People of all levels of society were drawn to the self-sacrificing way he lived out his religious profession and priestly ministry. Rafal played the harp, lute and mandolin to accompany liturgical hymns. In Lagiewniki he distributed food, supplies and clothing to the poor. After his death, the Conventual church in that city became a place of pilgrimage for people throughout Poland. He was beatified in Warsaw in 1991. The sermons preached by Rafal were powerfully reinforced by the living sermon of his life. The Sacrament of Reconciliation can help us bring our daily choices into harmony with our words about Jesus’ influence in our life.

During the beatification homily, Pope John Paul II said, "May Blessed Rafal remind us that every one of us, even though we are sinners, has been called to love and to holiness" (L'Osservatore Romano, 1991, vol. 25, number 19). (AmericanCatholic.org)

As Jesus went on from there, two blind men followed him, calling out, Have mercy on us, Son of David! When he had gone indoors, the blind men came to him, and he asked them, Do you believe that I am able to do this? Yes, Lord, they replied. Then he touched their eyes and said, According to your faith will it be done to you; and their sight was restored. Jesus warned them sternly, See that no‑one knows about this. But they went out and spread the news about him all over that region. (Matthew 9:27-31)

The Redeemer At the Last Supper our Lord said to his disciples that “he who believes in me will also do the works that I do; and greater works than these will he do, because I go to the Father” (John 14:12). Nevertheless, it is hard to think of any one who has performed greater and more numerous miracles than did our Lord himself. The greatest miracle among them was his own resurrection. This he predicted, stating that his resurrection would occur on the third day — and that he himself would effect it. “For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life, that I may take it up again....I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it up again” (John 10:17-18). This alone was unique in history. For all Moses’ miracles (the Ten Plagues, the Exodus and the Crossing), at the end of it all he lay somewhere near Mt Nebo, dead and buried. In terms of miracles, there was nothing that Jesus Christ could not do short of something unworthy. As a matter of fact, the Gospels suggest that in his brief span of public activity, he was beginning to gain an international reputation. Word of him was spilling over beyond the borders of his nation and people were crossing over into Galilee and Judea to get to him. In Matthew 4:24 we read that “his fame spread throughout all Syria,” and in the next verse we read that “Large crowds from Galilee, the Decapolis, Jerusalem, Judea, and from across the Jordan followed him.” This, then, included Syria, the Decapolis and across the Jordan. In Mark 3: 8 we read that they came also from “Idumea, and the regions across the Jordan and around Tyre and Sidon.” We read in Mark 5: 20 that the cured demoniac “ went away and began to tell in the Decapolis how much Jesus had done for him. And all the people were amazed.” The Decapolis — the region of the Ten Cities — was pagan territory. Geographers generally agree that Scythopolis was the chief of these cities, and was the only one of them west of the Jordan. The others (to the east) were Hippos, Gadara, Dion, Pelea, Gerasa, Philadelphia, and Raphana, and the other two were either Kanatha and Capitolias, or Damascus and Otopos. These cities were inhabited chiefly by foreigners (Greeks).

This was not something Christ wanted. People were getting the wrong idea. A lot of people were coming to him from all quarters wanting physical relief and nothing else. This was the “redemption” they were seeking, together with a political and economic liberation. That they wanted economic prosperity from him is clear from the sixth chapter of St John, when people pursued him because of the food he had given them the day before (John 6:26). This was the “good news” that was getting around everywhere, and our Lord wanted to put a stop to it. The “Good News” of Jesus Christ was far greater than this, and it would indeed be meant for the whole world. After his resurrection Christ would launch an international operation aimed at the conquest of the world. It was meant to be conducted till the end of time, when he would come again. Just before his ascension he told his disciples to go to the whole world and make disciples of all the nations. He intended that all the nations seek him out, come to know him, love him and serve him. He would be the Lord of lords and the King of kings, and his Kingdom would triumph in endless glory. But by then the point would be clear, for the Holy Spirit would abide in the Church to guide it in its teaching and mission. The real point was that Jesus Christ is the Saviour of the world not merely from this or that physical difficulty, but above all from its sin. The numerous miracles our Lord did were to get the true idea across, that even in so massive an undertaking as freeing the world from sin, Jesus Christ could and would do it. There was nothing he could not do, and he had come to do the most stupendous thing of all. So it is that in our Gospel passage today (Matthew 9: 27-31) our Lord seems, if anything, just a little reluctant to heal the two blind men. At least he did not take the initiative: the two blind men called out to him, and had to follow him indoors to present their request. He healed them, but then “warned them sternly, See that no-one knows about this.” Despite this, we read that “they went out and spread the news about him all over that region.” The “news” they spread was not really the “good news” that our Lord intended people to know about him. He is the Saviour from sin.

Let us take our stand by the side of the Saviour, knowing that he is our Friend. He knows all our needs, and he does encourage us to present them all before him in faith and with respectful persistence. But it must all be based on a proper understanding of his true mission. Jesus Christ wants to save us above all from our most profound affliction, the one that is the root of all our afflictions. That affliction is the mighty scourge of sin. Let us, with his love and grace, put our shoulder to the wheel and renounce sin. Let us make his love the fire of our life. It is his love that will sanctify us and take us to be with him forever.

Blindness There have been several notable cases in history of members of the Church who had the light of Catholic faith and who went on to utterly reject it in favour of what the Church then pronounced to be a heresy. Within this new position they felt increasingly self-assured. One thinks of Arius in the early Church, or more recent personages. Some went on to forms of agnosticism or atheism. While the status of these persons is of course controverted, there is no controversy about it for the Catholic — they passed from the light of truth to error. But the point to be noticed here is that they were utterly convinced of the rightness of their step and of their ultimate position. They were sincere — so it seems. So what is to be made of it? In the mind of the Church, this is what is to be made of it: in this or that respect they had passed from spiritual sight to spiritual blindness. The sad thing about this situation is that a person suffering from blindness may not appeal to God for sight. He may not appeal to God for sight because he thinks he sees. He thinks he is in the light. Moreover, generally in the plan of God it is when we ask that we shall receive. In our Gospel “as Jesus went on his way two blind men followed him shouting, ‘Take pity on us, Son of David!’” They pursued Jesus asking him for the gift of sight because they knew all too well that they lacked it. They were blind but of course they knew it and they had faith in the goodness and power of Christ. If they had not been aware of this and so had failed to follow Jesus asking for the gift of sight, Our Lord may have passed them by. If so, they would have been left in their blindness. And such, we have to say, has probably been the case with various persons in the past: they were left in their blindness because they did not recognize their true condition.

The Gospel scene of today has a most important lesson for us. Small infidelities — going deliberately against the light and against our conscience in little ways — can lead to a gradual loss of spiritual sight unless we repent. That is why we ought be careful to recognize daily our deliberate venial sins and repent of them. We ought strive to be faithful to the light we have been given, and more light will then be given. Let us then love the truth of God and live according to it in the little duties of everyday life. Let us be on guard against the onset of spiritual blindness which is brought on by acting against the light in little unrepented ways. Let us continually be like the blind men, asking Our Lord that we may see.

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The Lord’s triumph, on the day of the Resurrection, is final. Where are the soldiers the rulers posted there? Where are the seals that were fixed to the stone of the tomb? Where are those who condemned the Master? Where are those who crucified Jesus? He is victorious, and faced with his victory those poor wretches have all taken flight. Be filled with hope: Jesus Christ is always victorious.

Entrance Antiphon Cf. Ps 80 (79): 4, 2 Come and show us your face, O Lord, who are seated upon the Cherubim, and we will be saved.

Collect O God, who sent your Only Begotten Son into this world to free the human race from its ancient enslavement, bestow on those who devoutly await him the grace of your compassion from on high, that we may attain the prize of true freedom. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

Jesus asked, “What profit would there be for one to gain the whole world and forfeit his life?” (Matthew 16:26a). The words were repeated to a young teacher of philosophy who had a highly promising career in academics, with success and a life of prestige and honour before him. Francis Xavier, 24 at the time, and living and teaching in Paris, did not heed these words at once. They came from a good friend, Ignatius of Loyola, whose tireless persuasion finally won the young man to Christ. Francis then made the spiritual exercises under the direction of Ignatius, and in 1534 joined his little community (the infant Society of Jesus). Together at Montmartre they vowed poverty, chastity and apostolic service according to the directions of the pope. From Venice, where he was ordained priest in 1537, Francis Xavier went on to Lisbon and from there sailed to the East Indies, landing at Goa, on the west coast of India. For the next 10 years he laboured to bring the faith to such widely scattered peoples as the Hindus, the Malayans and the Japanese. He spent much of that time in India, and served as provincial of the newly established Jesuit province of India. Wherever he went, he lived with the poorest people, sharing their food and rough accommodations. He spent countless hours ministering to the sick and the poor, particularly to lepers. Very often he had no time to sleep or even to say his breviary but, as we know from his letters, he was filled always with joy. Francis went through the islands of Malaysia, then up to Japan. He learned enough Japanese to preach to simple folk, to instruct and to baptize, and to establish missions for those who were to follow him. From Japan he had dreams of going to China, but this plan was never realized. Before reaching the mainland he died. His remains are enshrined in the Church of Good Jesus in Goa. (AmericanCatholic.org)

Scripture today: Isaiah 30:19-21, 23-26; Psalm 147:1-6; Matthew 9:35-10:1, 5a, 6-8

Jesus went through all the towns and villages, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the good news of the kingdom and healing every disease and sickness. When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. Then he said to his disciples, The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field. He called his twelve disciples to him and gave them authority to drive out evil spirits and to heal every disease and sickness. These twelve Jesus sent out with the following instructions: Go rather to the lost sheep of Israel. As you go, preach this message: ‘The kingdom of heaven is near.’ Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse those who have leprosy, drive out demons. Freely you have received, freely give. (Matthew 9:35-10:1, 5a, 6-8)

The Kingdom It is very striking how prominently the idea of the “Kingdom” features in the preaching and teaching of Jesus of Nazareth, especially as reported in the three Synoptic Gospels, Matthew, Mark and Luke. In the Gospel of St Matthew, the expression used is generally “kingdom of heaven” or the simple word “kingdom” — each appears some twenty times. Fr. Ted Tyler

Occasionally it is “the kingdom of God” or “the kingdom of their Father.” In the Gospel of St Mark, Christ refers to the Kingdom close to some twenty times. It is usually “the kingdom of God,” though it is at times just “the kingdom” or “my kingdom.” In Luke, there are over twenty references to “the kingdom of God” and about a dozen references to “the kingdom.” In the Gospel of St John, the expression appears far less — some five times, and as “the kingdom” or “my kingdom.” I wonder whether this is because the Gospel of St John was written or appeared later than the others, perhaps reflecting less usage of the expression in the Church’s preaching and discourse at that later stage. In the Acts of the Apostles, the other inspired work which Luke authored, “the kingdom” appears some seven times, and “the kingdom of God” once. The word appears several times in St Paul’s letters, a few times in some other Letters and several times in the book of Revelation. It is the favoured term of our Lord’s preaching on all that God, in him who is his Son, would do for man. While “kingdom” is the word which translates the Greek, perhaps the sense of it is conveyed by “rule” or “dominion.” Pope Benedict XVI in his book Jesus of Nazareth (Vol I, ch.3), says there are "three dimensions" to the Church Fathers' interpretation of term Kingdom of God. The first, which comes from Origen, is that Jesus is himself the Kingdom in Person. The second "sees man's interiority as the essential location of the Kingdom." This second dimension also comes from Origen. "The third dimension of the interpretation of the Kingdom of God we could call the ecclesiastical: the Kingdom of God and the Church are related in different ways and brought into more or less close proximity." That is to say that the Church is the locale, the bearer, the presence of the Kingdom of God in history. It is by means of the Church that one may enter the Kingdom.

Fundamentally, Jesus Christ himself is the fulness of the Kingdom of God. St Paul writes that in Christ “dwells the fullness of the godhead bodily” (Colossians 2:9), and a little earlier in the same Letter, that “God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him” (1:19). This means that by entering into union with Jesus Christ we enter the dominion of God in its fullness, for this is present in his Person. But of course, where is Jesus Christ? We do not see him. He is God-with-us, but where? How can he be approached, and from where can we receive his blessings? He is present in his body the Church, of which he is the Head. He is the great Reality within and constituting the Church, and without him the Church would be nothing of substance — a mere society of individuals united by a similar idea. But the Church is not merely this. The Church is pre-eminently Jesus Christ and he is what makes the Church undyingly holy, despite the profound frailty of her members. He is the supremely holy Element in the Church, and it is he who imparts holiness to the Church’s members when they receive the Sacraments and hear his word. He endows the Church’s members with his grace and sanctifies them. It is for this reason that St Paul addresses those to whom he writes as “the saints.” They are in union with the Holy One, Jesus Christ the Church’s Head. By their union with him they abide in the dominion of God, his Kingdom. It is this which makes them holy, and how tragic it is if they fall away from this state of grace and fail to repent! The hinge of it all is Jesus Christ and union with him. St Paul tells us that God has “blessed us in Christ with every heavenly blessing in the heavenly places” (Ephesians 1: 3). This is why our Lord, risen from the dead and about to ascend to his heavenly Father, commissioned his disciples to go to the whole world and make disciples of all the nations. Being a disciple of Jesus Christ within his Body the Church is the means of entry into the Kingdom, because the Kingdom or Dominion of God resides in his Person. All of this, seminally and still to be explained more copiously, was what our Lord was inaugurating in his preaching and teaching on “the Kingdom.” It is this which is being described in our Gospel today (Matthew 9: 35-10:1.6-8).

One of the most famous manuals of spirituality is The Spiritual Exercises of St Ignatius. It consists of numerous spiritual exercises of contemplating the Person of Jesus Christ, praying before him, and resolving on a plan to follow him as totally as possible. One of the most fundamental of these Meditations is the Reign of Jesus Christ. Doubtlessly St Ignatius was influenced by the exalted position of the kingships of his day, but the centrality of the Kingship of Jesus Christ is profoundly scriptural, as we see in today’s Gospel. Christ preached the Kingdom, of which he was and is the eternal King. Let us take our stand by him and give all our love and energies to the triumph of his Kingdom, both in ourselves and in the world.

The Kingdom In today’s first reading, Isaiah prophesies, in the name of “the Lord God, the Holy one of Israel,” the coming of an absolutely ideal time. The people “will weep no more.” All will be light and there will be no more darkness nor any need (Isaiah 30: 19-21.23-26). In these words the prophet speaks of the coming of God’s Kingdom. Fr. Ted Tyler

It would most certainly come, and this was the inspired and constant expectation of the religion revealed by God. Just as this certain expectation of the Kingdom filled the prophet with the optimism that God intended for his people, so it ought fill us too. In our case we know that the fulfilment of this prophecy has come about in Christ. He has come and he is with us to the end of time. It is in him that everything God intended and revealed will reach its fulfilment. We are in the last days of its fulfilment, however long it may take. The ultimate future is bright indeed. Our Lord intended that it be evident that the Kingdom of God had come in him, and that it was only a matter of time before its triumph would be complete. As our Gospel text today tells us, he went everywhere “preaching the Good News of the kingdom and healing every disease and sickness” (Matthew 9:35-10:1.6-8). His ministry was the beginning of the fulfilment of the prophecy of Isaiah presented in the first reading. The end time, long foretold, was arriving, and in Jesus our Lord, in essence it had arrived. Our Lord directs his disciples to go out and “proclaim that the kingdom of heaven is close at hand.” The signs foretold by the prophets were to be included: “Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse those who have leprosy, drive out demons.”

Our daily lives ought be marked by the realization of the light that is ahead. We can see the great light at the end of the tunnel. It comes from Christ who is with us now and whose light at the end of time will light up all of creation. We are called every day to work with him who is in our midst as our head, striving to bring all into his Kingdom. This Kingdom that in him is with us now, will come in its entirety and fullness then. We have so much to live and work for. So then, now I begin!

(E.J.Tyler)

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If you look for Mary you will necessarily find Jesus; and you will learn, in greater and greater depth, what there is in the Heart of God.

Entrance Antiphon Cf. Is 30: 19, 30 O people of Sion, behold, the Lord will come to save the nations, and the Lord will make the glory of his voice heard in the joy of your heart.

Collect Almighty and merciful God, may no earthly undertaking hinder those who set out in haste to meet your Son, but may our learning of heavenly wisdom gain us admittance to his company. Who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

John spent most of his life in the monastery of St. Sabas, near Jerusalem, and all of his life under Muslim rule, indeed, St John Damascene

protected by it. He was born in Damascus, received a classical and theological education, and followed his father in a government position under the Arabs. After a few years he resigned and went to the monastery of St. Sabas. He is famous in three areas. First, he is known for his writings against the iconoclasts, who opposed the veneration of images. Paradoxically, it was the Eastern Christian emperor Leo who forbade the practice, and it was because John lived in Muslim territory that his enemies could not silence him. Second, he is famous for his treatise, Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, a summary of the Greek Fathers (of which he became the last). It is said that this book is to Eastern schools what the Summa of Aquinas became to the West. Thirdly, he is known as a poet, one of the two greatest of the Eastern Church, the other being Romanus the Melodist. His devotion to the Blessed Mother and his sermons on her feasts are well known. John defended the Church’s understanding of the veneration of images and explained the faith of the Church in several other controversies. For over 30 years he combined a life of prayer with these defences and his other writings. His holiness expressed itself in putting his literary and preaching talents at the service of the Lord.
“The saints must be honoured as friends of Christ and children and heirs of God, as John the theologian and evangelist says: ‘But as many as received him, he gave them the power to be made the sons of God....’ Let us carefully observe the manner of life of all the apostles, martyrs, ascetics and just men who announced the coming of the Lord. And let us emulate their faith, charity, hope, zeal, life, patience under suffering, and perseverance unto death, so that we may also share their crowns of glory” (Exposition of the Orthodox Faith). (AmericanCatholic.org)

Scripture today: Isaiah 40:1-5, 9-11; Psalm 85:9-10-11-12, 13-14; 2 Peter 3:8-14; Mark 1:1-8

The beginning of the gospel about Jesus Christ, the Son of God. It is written in Isaiah the prophet: I will send my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way — a voice of one calling in the desert, ‘Prepare the way for the Lord, make straight paths for him.’ And so John came, baptising in the desert region and preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. The whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem went out to him. Confessing their sins, they were baptised by him in the Jordan River. John wore clothing made of camel’s hair, with a leather belt round his waist, and he ate locusts and wild honey. And this was his message: After me will come one more powerful than I, the thongs of whose sandals I am not worthy to stoop down and untie. I baptise you with water, but he will baptise you with the Holy Spirit. (Mark 1:1-8)

Revealed Religion Revealed Religion is essentially prophetic, which is to say that it involves divinely-chosen individuals revealing a word from God. That divine word thus revealed is the basis of the religion. Abraham was chosen by God, heard his word, obeyed it, and that divine word to him became the foundation of the life and history of the chosen people. It was the same with Isaac and Jacob, Moses, David and the prophets. The significant thing is the word that has come from God through the mouth of his prophets. While this was not primarily a revelation of the future, very often it did reveal the future. In the call of Abraham at Haran (Genesis 11:32-12:3), the future was foretold. God would show him his future land, he would make of him a great nation, and by him all the families of the earth would bless themselves. When God revealed himself to Moses at the Burning Bush (Exodus 3: 4-12), he not only revealed himself as the compassionate God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, but he also revealed his plan for the future. He would deliver his people out of their slavery and bring them to the Promised Land. Moses announced this word to the people, and its fulfilment became a defining element in Old Testament religion. In the life of King David, the prophet Nathan received the word of God and uttered it to the king. God would never take back his steadfast love from him. His house and his kingdom would forever be sure, and his throne would be established forever (2 Samuel 7:15-17). This prophetic word likewise became a defining element in Revealed Religion. The essential thing was the word that had come from God, and it often involved a promise as to the future. In prophet after prophet, the word from God which they proclaimed called on the people to repent of their infidelity and turn back to their God. It also involved predictions: if they did not repent, the future would be devastating. The events proved them true. Revealed Religion was based on the word that came from God through his chosen servants. It also came to have a profoundly expectant character. It looked to what was coming. There was always an Advent, as there is still.

The highest instances of this pattern in the Old Testament were those revelations of the Advent of the Messiah. For instance, Deutero-Isaiah revealed the Servant of the Lord, by whose stripes we are healed. On him the Lord has laid the iniquity of us all (Isaiah 53:5-6). Daniel revealed the heavenly Son of Man to whom would be given dominion and glory, an everlasting kingdom (Daniel 7:14). As a matter of fact, this particular word from God, the word which announced the advent of the Suffering Servant, the Son of Man and other features of the Messiah, proved to be the pivotal word in Revealed Religion. Amid the complex of Inspired Writings it was this which turned out to be the key to it all — and our Lord himself on rising from the dead instructed his disciples on the meaning of the Scriptures. He was their meaning, and it was to him that they especially pointed. So it is that we are brought to our Gospel today. It opens with the prophetic word from John, and the most notable thing about this word, according to St Mark in his passage today, is its reference to the Messiah. The word of God came to John, and it was addressed to all the people: they were to prepare the way for the Lord’s coming, his Advent. The pattern was the same. Revealed religion was founded on the prophetic word, which is to say the word of the Lord received by the prophet and announced to the people. The people must hear that divine word, willingly receive it and put it into effect. It is a word which points to what is coming, an Advent. “And this was his message: After me will come one more powerful than I, the thongs of whose sandals I am not worthy to stoop down and untie. I baptise you with water, but he will baptise you with the Holy Spirit” (Mark 1:1-8). Our privilege is to possess now, what was then coming. As our Lord says in the Gospel of Luke, “Happy the eyes that see what you see, for I tell you that many prophets and kings wanted to see what you see and never saw it; to hear what you hear and never heard it” (10: 23-24). The great Advent, the coming of the Messiah here announced as imminent by John, is now effected. It is for us to accept the Word who has become flesh, and to live accordingly. But there is more to come, for the triumph and the glory, so sure, lies ahead.

Let us place ourselves in the panoramic opening of St Mark’s Gospel. It presents the prophetic figure of John proclaiming the word he had received from God. The key to all of Revealed Religion was about to be made manifest. The key to it all was coming: he is Jesus Christ. John’s words invite us to turn our gaze on the most wondrous fact in the universe, the Person of Jesus Christ, God become Man, our Redeemer and our Brother. As John says so candidly, he is the powerful one, and I am not worthy so much as to stoop down and undo the thongs of his sandals. We are not worthy of this, but he, our Redeemer and our God, has taken us into his personal friendship and shared with us his divine life. Let us resolve to hear his word and to put it into practice. In this way we shall live a life worthy of his most sacred friendship.

Sin There is no getting away from it — holiness and union with God in Christ requires repentance from sin. This means that, hand in hand with the thought of the Person of Christ and striving to know and love him more and more, there must be a great attention to sin. Sin is the enemy to be defeated and it is a long and daily struggle. The sin within one’s own heart has to be discovered, unmasked, and in various ways with God’s help, gradually overcome. One must grow in the consciousness of personal sin and its seriousness. The Venerable Pope Pius XII, taught that the sin of the modern period was the loss of the sense of sin. Without it, it will be impossible to follow Christ closely. For this reason, as we read in today’s Gospel (Mark 1: 1-8), St John the Baptist comes in the wilderness to announce the coming of the Messiah, but he comes proclaiming a baptism or washing of repentance. Now, we can accept all this in theory, but it has to come down to practice. The one who willingly listens to the words of the Baptist (which the Church makes her own), must repent from the deliberate venial sins of everyday life that we tend to think are not sins at all, or that we think don’t matter much. The good person with the grace of God can expect to avoid mortal sin if the normal means are sincerely taken. But it is venial sin which clings so persistently to our hearts and which blocks our advance in Christian love and virtue. We simply must come to terms with deliberate venial sin if we wish to be followers of the Master. The preaching of John the Baptist which the Church wishes us to take to heart at this stage of Advent must be applied to venial sin. The grace of Advent is a renewed readiness to welcome the advent of Christ into our lives, and we must understand that this means repentance, and repentance means taking seriously the presence and recurrence of deliberate venial sin.

Let us get down to business and deal with sin, including and especially deliberate venial sin. We have the means to help us: a daily examination of conscience concluding with a sincere act of contrition, and a fervent and regular reception of the Sacrament of Penance.

(E.J.Tyler)

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When you are preparing for a work of apostolate, make your own these words of a man who was seeking God: “Today I start to preach a retreat for priests. God grant we may draw profit from it — and, first of all, myself!” And later: “I have been on this retreat for several days now. There are a hundred and twenty on it. I hope that Our Lord will do good work in our souls.”

Entrance Antiphon Cf. Jer 31:10; Is 35:4 Hear the word of the Lord, O nations; declare it to the distant lands: Behold, our Savior will come; you need no longer fear.

Collect May our prayer of petition rise before you, we pray, O Lord, that, with purity unblemished, we, your servants, may come, as we desire, to celebrate the great mystery of the Incarnation of your Only Begotten Son. Who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

(December 5) Saint Sabas (b. 439) (Picture: relics of Saint Sabas at Mar Saba monastery, Palestine)

Born in Cappadocia (modern-day Turkey), Sabas is one of the most highly regarded patriarchs among the monks of Palestine and is considered one of the founders of Eastern monasticism. After an unhappy childhood in which he was abused and ran Relics of St Sabas at Mar Saba

away several times, Sabas finally sought refuge in a monastery. While family members tried to persuade him to return home, the young boy felt drawn to monastic life. Although the youngest monk in the house, he excelled in virtue. At age 18 he travelled to Jerusalem, seeking to learn more about living in solitude. Soon he asked to be accepted as a disciple of a well-known local solitary, though initially he was regarded as too young to live completely as a hermit. Initially, Sabas lived in a monastery, where he worked during the day and spent much of the night in prayer. At the age of 30 he was given permission to spend five days each week in a nearby remote cave, engaging in prayer and manual labour in the form of weaving baskets. Following the death of his mentor, St. Euthymius, Sabas moved farther into the desert near Jericho. There he lived for several years in a cave near the brook Cedron. A rope was his means of access. Wild herbs among the rocks were his food. Occasionally men brought him other food and items, while he had to go a distance for his water. Some of these men came to him desiring to join him in his solitude. At first he refused. But not long after relenting, his followers swelled to more than 150, all of them living in individual huts grouped around a church, called a laura. The bishop persuaded a reluctant Sabas, then in his early 50s, to prepare for the priesthood so that he could better serve his monastic community in leadership. While functioning as abbot among a large community of monks, he felt ever called to live the life of a hermit. Throughout each year — consistently in Lent — he left his monks for long periods of time, often to their distress. A group of 60 men left the monastery, settling at a nearby ruined facility. When Sabas learned of the difficulties they were facing, he generously gave them supplies and assisted in the repair of their church. Over the years Sabas travelled throughout Palestine, preaching the true faith and successfully bringing back many to the Church. At the age of 91, in response to a plea from the Patriarch of Jerusalem, Sabas undertook a journey to Constantinople in conjunction with the Samaritan revolt and its violent repression. He fell ill and, soon after his return, died at the monastery at Mar Saba. Today the monastery (Mar Saba in Palestine) is still inhabited by monks of the Eastern Orthodox Church, and St. Sabas is regarded as one of the most noteworthy figures of early monasticism. His relics (picture) are kept at the monastery. (AmericanCatholic.org)

One day as he was teaching, Pharisees and teachers of the law, who had come from every village of Galilee and from Judea and Jerusalem, were sitting there. And the power of the Lord was present for him to heal the sick. Some men came carrying a paralytic on a mat and tried to take him into the house to lay him before Jesus. When they could not find a way to do this because of the crowd, they went up on the roof and lowered him on his mat through the tiles into the middle of the crowd, right in front of Jesus. When Jesus saw their faith, he said, Friend, your sins are forgiven. The Pharisees and the teachers of the law began thinking to themselves, Who is this fellow who speaks blasphemy? Who can forgive sins but God alone? Jesus knew what they were thinking and asked, Why are you thinking these things in your hearts? Which is easier: to say, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Get up and walk’? But that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins. . . . He said to the paralysed man, I tell you, get up, take your mat and go home. Immediately he stood up in front of them, took what he had been lying on and went home praising God. Everyone was amazed and gave praise to God. They were filled with awe and said, We have seen remarkable things today. (Luke 5:17-26)

Sin It would be manifestly absurd to deny the fact of wrongdoing. People do things they should not do, and we all know that. If a person were to say, privately or publicly, that he has never done anything wrong, those listening would scarcely, as we might say, keep a straight face. Similarly, it would be absurd to say that someone has never done anything morally good. Fr. Ted Tyler

The sense of moral obligation and of a moral law is so immediate to every man and woman that it is commonly recognized to be written on the very heart of man. We instinctively know that we must do what is right and avoid what is wrong — this is a universal obligation which, though, does not negate our power to disobey it. We apply our minds to determine what this obligation means in practice — and this is where differences of opinion may occur. But the fundamental obligation to do what is right and avoid what is wrong is beyond dispute. Of course, the nature of this obligation has always been contested among philosophers and religious thinkers. Some reduce it to a sense of what is most useful for happiness. Others reduce it to the product of mere training or environment. The correct understanding of it is that it is an instinctive perception by man of objective moral obligation, whether or not this appears to contribute to his own contentment, and whether or not it appears to harmonize with his upbringing or social environment. Further, society at large insists on the fact of moral obligation, even if it differs from the individual as to what, specifically, is morally obligatory. It imposes severe sanctions on various forms of behaviour it deems to constitute wrongdoing. It will be of no use for the individual to claim that he never thought that killing another citizen was morally unobjectionable. He will incur the severest of society’s sanctions, and the imposition of those sanctions will meet (broadly speaking) with the moral approval of the citizenry. All this is to say that morally good and morally bad behaviour is a universally admitted fact of human life. Some things must not be done by free persons, which is to say by those who have the power to do them. If they are done, and if it is shown that the perpetrator of the bad actions knew what he was doing, he will be punished.

But now, there is another dimension of the morally bad action which has virtually disappeared from public view and discourse. It is its sinful character. The West is admitted to have reached a secular stage, which is to say, a stage that generally lacks a public recognition of God. Instances of this would be, say, Australia, England, New Zealand, probably France, Germany and various other Western countries, to say nothing of various countries of the East. The United States of America may be regarded as a battle-ground of the contest between open religion and open secularity. God is still recognized publicly and it is not unusual for this or that President of the United States to refer publicly to God as the sovereign reference point for all of individual and social life. Such is not the case in, say, Australia. But even in the United States, there is no public recognition of “sin.” It would never cross the lips of a United States President to refer to some action as a “sin” — though he might at various times proudly refer to “God.” Many things are morally wrong, and enormously so, but there is no reference to their being sinful. An act of terrorism resulting in the loss of innocent life is a moral enormity, but it would not be referred to as an enormous “sin.” In other words, there is no doubt about the fact of immorality and wrongdoing, but “sin” is a subjective and private issue, dependent on one’s personal persuasion. Wrongdoing is a fact, sin is but a subjective possibility — an optional aspect of the matter, at most. Now, as God sees the matter, this is a reverse of the true situation. The first and foremost thing is obeying God and avoiding sin. That is to say, the most serious thing about wrongdoing is that it is sinful. It could be argued — and there is no time here for that — that at the heart of what the conscience of man perceives in apprehending moral obligation, is the divine will. The mind of man perceives that what is wrong is wrong in itself, but it also perceives that, being wrong, it violates the will of the One who is present in the voice of conscience. Certainly, historic revelation, which is to say, Revealed Religion, insists on the great fact of sin. The Son of God became man to take away the sin of the world. His project is to banish sin from the life of man.

We must regain a sense of the enormity of sin, and a commitment to avoid it. We must make as our principal project in life the avoidance not merely of “wrongdoing” but of “sin” — understood as any thought, word or deed which offends God and his holy will. In our Gospel today (Luke 5: 17-26), the first thing which our Lord did for the paralytic was to forgive him his sins. This is the power he gave to the Eleven on rising from the dead: Receive the Holy Spirit! Whose sin you forgive, they are forgiven them. Whose sins you retain, they are retained (John 20:22-23). This is what the Church, by the power of Christ her Head, brings to the world, and it is this which ought figure so very prominently in our human and religious life. Let us be alive to sin, then, and avoid it!

The power of God At a seminar conducted on the religions of mankind at the University of Sydney, an academic once observed that the religious impulse arises from man’s sense of need and his conviction that the powers above can answer these needs. There have been many proposals as to the origin of religion. Fr. Ted Tyler

This academic’s view reminds us that time and again our needs prompt us to turn to the power of God as our only ordinary recourse. It is the power of God which we normally think of when we turn to him, and perhaps it is his power which first impresses us when we think of his creative works. The world reminds us of the power of God. It is God’s power which is revealed in the history of salvation, and it is revealed as having a certain character. It is merciful and compassionate. His power reveals his almighty mercy and compassion. There is a further point which is perhaps quite distinctive to revealed religion: God reveals himself as having power without limit. All religions appeal to the power or powers above. But Revealed Religion teaches that the Power above is almighty. There is no limit to his power. We worship and love a God who is a loving Father — and he is a Father who is almighty. But in practice, do we really believe this, that our Father in heaven is almighty? The almighty power of God is manifested in Jesus Our Lord himself. He healed the sick, and “the power of the Lord was present in his healing of the sick,” as today’s Gospel reminds us (Luke 5: 17-26).

Let us think then of Christ’s power, a power we can rely on, especially in the most impossible project ahead of us, which is the task of our own personal sanctification. If anything requires the compassionate power of God it is this, and our Faith teaches us that God’s power is almighty. We ought pray for the grace to believe in the Father almighty. Let us raise our minds and hearts in trust and praise, placing ourselves in his almighty care.

(E.J.Tyler)

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My child, it’s worth your while being humble, obedient, loyal. Drench yourself in the spirit of God, so as to be able to carry it from where you are, from your place of work, to all the peoples that fill the earth!

Entrance Antiphon Cf. Zec 14: 5, 7 Behold, the Lord will come, and all his holy ones with him; and on that day there will be a great light.

Collect O God, who have shown forth your salvation to all the ends of the earth, grant, we pray, that we may look forward in joy to the glorious Nativity of Christ. Who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

The absence of the “hard facts” of history is not necessarily an obstacle to the popularity of saints, as the devotion to St. Nicholas shows. Both the Eastern and Western Churches honour him, and it is claimed that, after the Blessed Virgin, he is the St Nicholas

saint most pictured by Christian artists. And yet, historically, we can pinpoint only the fact that Nicholas was the fourth-century bishop of Myra, a city in Lycia, a province of Asia Minor. As with many of the saints, however, we are able to capture the relationship which Nicholas had with God through the admiration which Christians have had for him—an admiration expressed in the colourful stories which have been told and retold through the centuries. Perhaps the best-known story about Nicholas concerns his charity toward a poor man who was unable to provide dowries for his three daughters of marriageable age. Rather than see them forced into prostitution, Nicholas secretly tossed a bag of gold through the poor man’s window on three separate occasions, thus enabling the daughters to be married. Over the centuries, this particular legend evolved into the custom of gift-giving on the saint’s feast. In the English-speaking countries, St. Nicholas became, by a twist of the tongue, Santa Claus — further expanding the example of generosity portrayed by this holy bishop.
The critical eye of modern history makes us take a deeper look at the legends surrounding St. Nicholas. But perhaps we can utilize the lesson taught by his legendary charity, look deeper at our approach to material goods in the Christmas season and seek ways to extend our sharing to those in real need. “In order to be able to consult more suitably the welfare of the faithful according to the condition of each one, a bishop should strive to become duly acquainted with their needs in the social circumstances in which they live.... He should manifest his concern for all, no matter what their age, condition, or nationality, be they natives, strangers, or foreigners” (Decree on the Bishops' Pastoral Office, 16). (AmericanCatholic.org)

Jesus said to his disciples, What do you think? If a man owns a hundred sheep, and one of them wanders away, will he not leave the ninety-nine on the hills and go to look for the one that wandered off? And if he finds it, I tell you the truth, he is happier about that one sheep than about the ninety-nine that did not wander off. In the same way your Father in heaven is not willing that any of these little ones should be lost. (Matthew 18:12-14)

Revelation I remember one occasion a few decades ago when I was teaching a religion class in a government secondary school. I asked the class how they would define or describe God. One boy — he was about thirteen — said that God was a “good spirit.” For a boy who grew up in a secular society, one whose parents probably did not actively practise their Christian faith, and one who had few opportunities for religious knowledge, the answer he gave wasn’t too bad. He imagined God as a spirit, and as good. How countless and varied have been the ways in which man has pictured the deity over the course of the ages! Almost invariably, the deity has been imagined as limited and as multiple. That is to say, there are many “spirits” or unseen powers that shape the world and its course, and “God” — the main one — is but one of them. He is generally regarded as good, though in limited fashion. Other unseen forces jostle independently on the scene too, and have their effect on the course of the world and on the life of man. “God” is a good spirit — good to a point, and there are others too, but there are bad ones as well — however all these forces and factors are to be imagined in their detail. So it is that the mythologies of man’s religions are vast and varied. Further, man’s image of the deity is drawn from a variety of sources. How did that boy gain his image of the deity? Obviously he would have gained it from some instruction, and possibly from some spontaneous reflection on the world and its course. How does mankind gain its impression of the deity, or the deities? It is gained from instruction in its varied forms, from reflection on the course of the world, and from other sources such as the guilty conscience. Now, if a person has had a bad experience of life, what is he going to think of the One who is reputed to be its Source? I remember in another religion class I was told by a fourteen-year-old girl that “life is a bitch” — to use her words. What would such a young person tend to think of God, the supposed Creator and Lord of all? The point here is that it is not at all surprising that the image and notion of the divine that obtains is very far indeed from what God has revealed of himself.

How precious, then, is divine revelation, and how fundamental is the first of the Ten Commandments, that we are to recognize the God of Revelation as the one and only Lord. I am the Lord your God! You shall not have other gods before me! God, so truly and intensely Father to mankind, insists for man’s own sake that he acknowledge this. This we do especially by receiving with a total and loving obedience all that he has revealed of himself and his saving plan. This sacred revelation comes to us in the Person of Jesus Christ, and is entrusted to Christ’s Church. We receive it in faith, and live it out in daily obedience. Divine Revelation! How precious it is for man, and how it delivers him from the vagaries of his religious imagination and his well-meaning myths! So it is that we are brought to our Gospel today, in which our Lord, God incarnate, the human Face of the living God, speaks of the unseen Lord of heaven and earth. Christ himself is the supreme and perfect image of the invisible God, the one who should fill the religious imagination of all the peoples. He who sees me, he told his disciples, sees the Father. He is the Father’s revealing Word, the Word who was with God from all eternity, the Word who is God. In our Gospel today he speaks of God in imagery which shows forth the Father’s love. “If a man owns a hundred sheep, and one of them wanders away, will he not leave the ninety-nine on the hills and go to look for the one that wandered off? And if he finds it, I tell you the truth, he is happier about that one sheep than about the ninety-nine that did not wander off. In the same way your Father in heaven is not willing that any of these little ones should be lost” (Matthew 18: 12-14). God is revealed to be far, far more loving than anything of which man has any experience. He is far more than a mere “good spirit,” far more than the myths describe, far more than the greatest philosophers have proposed. He is our wondrously Good Shepherd, our Father. Divine Revelation! How precious it is, and how absolutely fundamental it is that we cherish it and build our daily life upon it. This is the greatest of services that the Church renders to mankind, that it preserves and proclaims what God has revealed of himself and his saving plan for mankind.

Let us resolve to base our lives squarely on the word of the living God, which is to say on the Person of Jesus Christ and his revelation. This comes to us in the preaching, the teaching, the life, the sacraments, and the ministry of the Church. Christ is the Church’s Head, the Church is his mystical Body, and we who are baptised and blessed with the gift of faith in Jesus are members of that Body. Let Christ’s divine teaching shape and rule us, for the divine love which is the foundation of all things is expressed in that teaching, and it fills us by means of it.

Conversion There are many famous examples of conversion in the history of the Church. There is the example of St Paul himself, converted on the way to Damascus. There is the example of St Augustine, converted from a life of immorality and heresy to the Catholic Faith and to holiness of life. There is the example of John Henry Newman, converted to the Catholic Faith from being an intellectual leader of Anglicanism. These are among the most famous — and many others could be mentioned. Besides them, there are the countless unknown persons who have undergone a profound conversion from sin and error to holiness and the Truth. During December 2005, the media was full of the last days of an Australian-Vietnamese drug trafficker who was executed in Singapore. It was very evident that his final years in prison were marked by a religious conversion. He died a good and perhaps holy death. Our Gospel today (Matthew 18:12-14) gives us the words of Our Lord telling us of the will of our heavenly Father: “Your Father in heaven is not willing that any of these little ones should be lost.” To illustrate this Our Lord gives us the parable of the shepherd seeking out and finding the stray, and experiencing more joy from this than from the ninety-nine who did not stray at all. God is seeking us out, constantly endeavouring with his grace to reclaim us from sin — from all sin, including from all deliberate venial sin. He wants to draw us to holiness of life and complete union with him. Conversion is the key, and it is a grace to be sought and acted upon. We will not be lost if we convert. We will not be held back in our sins, in our venial sins, if we convert from them.

We will attain holiness of life if we seek constant conversion, constant repentance. This repentance ought be daily, weekly. It ought be constant and life-long. Let us during this period of Advent, when we renew our attitude of readiness for the coming of Christ, ask for the grace to repent from sin, and to repent again and again, constantly.

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During a war, the courage of the soldiers facing the enemy would be of little use if there were not others who seem to take no part in the struggle but who supply the fighting men with armament and food and medicines... Without the prayer and sacrifice of many souls there would be no genuine apostolate of action.

Entrance Antiphon Cf. Hb 2:3; 1 Cor 4:5 The Lord will come and he will not delay. He will illumine what is hidden in darkness and reveal himself to all the nations.

Collect Almighty God, who command us to prepare the way for Christ the Lord, grant in your kindness, we pray, that no infirmity may weary us as we long for the comforting presence of our heavenly physician. Who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

One of Ambrose’s biographers observed that at the Last Judgment people would still be divided between those who admired Ambrose and those who heartily disliked him. He emerges as the man of action who cut a furrow through the lives of his contemporaries. Even royal personages were numbered among those who were to suffer crushing divine punishments for standing in St Ambrose

Ambrose’s way. When the Empress Justina attempted to wrest two basilicas from Ambrose’s Catholics and give them to the Arians, he dared the eunuchs of the court to execute him. His own people rallied behind him in the face of imperial troops. In the midst of riots he both spurred and calmed his people with bewitching new hymns set to exciting Eastern melodies. In his disputes with the Emperor Auxentius, he coined the principle: “The emperor is in the Church, not above the Church.” He publicly admonished Emperor Theodosius for the massacre of 7,000 innocent people. The emperor did public penance for his crime. This was Ambrose, the fighter, sent to Milan as Roman governor and chosen while yet a catechumen to be the people’s bishop. There is yet another side of Ambrose — one which influenced Augustine, whom Ambrose converted. Ambrose was a passionate little man with a high forehead, a long melancholy face and great eyes. We can picture him as a frail figure clasping the codex of sacred Scripture. This was the Ambrose of aristocratic heritage and learning. Augustine found the oratory of Ambrose less soothing and entertaining but far more learned than that of other contemporaries. Ambrose’s sermons were often modelled on Cicero and his ideas betrayed the influence of contemporary thinkers and philosophers. He had no scruples in borrowing at length from pagan authors. He gloried in the pulpit in his ability to parade his spoils — “gold of the Egyptians” — taken over from the pagan philosophers. His sermons, his writings and his personal life reveal him as an otherworldly man involved in the great issues of his day. Humanity, for Ambrose, was, above all, spirit. In order to think rightly of God and the human soul, the closest thing to God, no material reality at all was to be dwelt upon. He was an enthusiastic champion of consecrated virginity. The influence of Ambrose on Augustine will always be open for discussion. The Confessions reveal some manly, brusque encounters between Ambrose and Augustine, but there can be no doubt of Augustine’s profound esteem for the learned bishop. Neither is there any doubt that Monica loved Ambrose as an angel of God who uprooted her son from his former ways and led him to his convictions about Christ. It was Ambrose, after all, who placed his hands on the shoulders of the naked Augustine as he descended into the baptismal fountain to put on Christ.

Ambrose exemplifies for us the truly catholic character of Christianity. He is a man steeped in the learning, law and culture of the ancients and of his contemporaries. Yet, in the midst of active involvement in this world, this thought runs through Ambrose’s life and preaching: The hidden meaning of the Scriptures calls our spirit to rise to another world. “Women and men are not mistaken when they regard themselves as superior to mere bodily creatures and as more than mere particles of nature or nameless units in modern society. For by their power to know themselves in the depths of their being they rise above the entire universe of mere objects.... Endowed with wisdom, women and men are led through visible realities to those which are invisible” (Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, 14–15). (AmericanCatholic.org)

Scripture today: Isaiah 40: 25-31; Psalm 103:1-4, 8 and 10; Matthew 11:28-30

At that time Jesus said, Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light. (Matthew 11:28-30)

Rest for the soul In a message to a global Buddhist conference in New Delhi in November 2011, the Tibetan Dalai Lama said that the world’s problems and conflicts arise because man has left behind the basic tenets of non-violence and the oneness of humanity. These were the teachings of Gautam Buddha (“Buddha” meaning “the enlightened one”), Fr. Ted Tyler

the Dalai Lama said. "Shakyamuni Buddha attained enlightenment in Bodh Gaya about 2600 years ago, yet I believe his teachings remain refreshing and relevant today," he continued. Buddhism claims to offer peace and harmony for man and humanity, and proposes the way of Enlightenment to attain it. Buddha is seen as the perennial exemplar. Buddha, the accounts indicate, was gripped by the thought of suffering and the mystery of how it is to be overcome. He tried the path of asceticism and found it wanting. He then embarked on the path of meditation and attained, he believed, complete Enlightenment at the age of thirty-five. Later accounts provide the details of his attaining this under a bodhi tree in present-day Bodh Gaya, after fighting off the attacks of the jealous god Mara. Then, the story goes, the Indian gods Brahma and Indra implored him to teach his way of Enlightenment. At this, Buddha went to Sarnath and, in the Deer Park there, taught the Four Noble Truths to his five former companions. And so Buddhism was born and became the vast movement it is. Its claim is to give rest to weary and burdened human life. Buddha refrained from speaking about God. At the time, India possessed great numbers of sacred scriptures, yet it was torn with strife. Religion did not seem to unite people nor promote love and compassion. I suspect this made of Guatama a religious agnostic. He came up with a radical answer, looking for a practical and empirical path to happiness. He considered he found it in the mastery of the four Noble Truths, leading to a state of supreme liberation, or Nirvana. This is the peace of a mind that is free from ignorance, greed, hatred and other defilements. Importantly, God does not get a look-in. Rest of soul is attained through a personally-engineered liberation.

Buddha emphasized ethics and correct understanding. His system of insight and meditation is not claimed to have been divinely revealed, but to spring from an understanding of the true nature of the mind. Buddha saw the issue of God as unknowable and unimportant for the main game, which is the attainment of practical peace and happiness. Now, I have described some of the features of Buddhism as an example of salvation being sought without any reference to a transcendent God. Other examples could be given, but it is obvious that in a culture which tends to dismiss the supernatural and to look exclusively to this world — such as ours — any such method will appeal to many. Added to this is the fact that, in the case of Buddhism, the Dalai Lama — its pre-eminent exponent and representative — brings to its propagation a great human charm. As much as the Christian is bound to show respect for any way that is deeply cherished by good people, and is especially bound to respect those people themselves, he must have a clear perception of its limitations. Man was made to rest in God. If God is dismissed, man’s true rest will never be attained. This is where we come to our Gospel passage today, in which our Lord makes the explicit affirmation to all and sundry that he himself is the Rest of Soul for every weary and burdened person. Buddha, and so many others of history, could see how fundamental is the fact of suffering and unhappiness. He and other great men — and Buddha was great in view of his influence — have seen that in some sense happiness is imperative. But how is it to be attained? Historical Revelation, that Revelation granted by God to his chosen people and reaching its zenith in the Person of Jesus Christ, teaches that there is one way to ultimate happiness. It lies in union with the true God, who demands holiness of life. This union with God is attained by and in union with Jesus Christ, and Christ requires that we renounce ourselves and follow in his footsteps. Buddha taught renunciation, and Christ teaches renunciation. But Christian renunciation has for its goal a loving and total union with the Person of Christ. The taking up of this yoke, the yoke of being Christ’s disciple whatever be the cost, will bring rest to our souls. That is Christ’s teaching, and that is the key to human flourishing and rest for the soul.

Let us beware of substitutes for the Truth. Christ said that he is the Way, the Truth and the Life. No-one comes to the Father but through me, he said. He who sees me, sees the Father. He is the only name by which we are saved. It is in this light that we must understand the saving words of our Lord in our Gospel today: “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light” (Matthew 11: 28-30). The enlightenment which God intends for man will come by this path, and it will liberate us from sin, and lead to rest for our souls.

Difficulty Difficulties, pain and suffering are unavoidable in this life. This is the universal experience of mankind and the admission of the wisest men of the ages. It can be said to be a basic driving force in the founding and development of many of the religions of man. One leading modern anthropologist Fr. Ted Tyler

wrote that a key to the understanding of primal religions is to ask how they deal with the experience of evil and suffering. Buddha pursued his quest of trying to discover the answer to suffering. He proposed that it involved the elimination of desire and the attainment of enlightenment. Suffering is a fundamental issue for man. The Christian knows that the ultimate answer to suffering and to the problem of attaining happiness is the Person of Jesus. And Jesus himself tells us this. In today’s Gospel (Matthew 11: 28-30), he invites all those who labour and are overburdened to come to him, and he will give them rest. So we know the answer to our need and desire for happiness. It is to go to Jesus. But there is this twist: happiness will be found in shouldering Christ’s yoke and learning from him. His yoke is easy, he teaches, and his burden is light. That is to say, happiness will be found in being his disciple precisely by taking up our cross after him and following in his footsteps. Ultimate and true happiness will be found in the cross of Jesus. This seems an immense and mysterious paradox — and it is, for we take it on faith in the word of Jesus because of our love for him.

Let us pray for the grace to live our life united with Jesus in good times and in bad, and in learning from him who is meek and humble of heart. Therein lies our true rest.

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The power of working miracles! How many dead — and even rotting — souls you will raise, if you let Christ act in you. In those days, the Gospel tells us, the Lord was passing by; and they, the sick, called to him and sought him out. Now, too, Christ is passing by, in your Christian life. If you help him, many will come to know him, will call to him, will ask him for help: and their eyes will be opened to the marvellous light of grace.

Entrance Antiphon Is 61:10 I rejoice heartily in the Lord, in my God is the joy of my soul; for he has clothed me with a robe of salvation, and wrapped me in a mantle of justice, like a bride adorned with her jewels.

Collect O God, who by the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin prepared a worthy dwelling for your Son, grant, we pray, that, as you preserved her from every stain by virtue of the Death of your Son, which you foresaw, so, through her intercession, we, too, may be cleansed and admitted to your presence. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

A feast called the Conception of Mary arose in the Eastern Church in the seventh century. It came to the West in the eighth century. In the eleventh century it received its present name, the Immaculate Conception. In the eighteenth century it became a Mary

feast of the universal Church. In 1854 Pius IX gave the infallible statement: “The most Blessed Virgin Mary, in the first instant of her conception, by a singular grace and privilege granted by almighty God, in view of the merits of Jesus Christ, the saviour of the human race, was preserved free from all stain of original sin.” It took a long time for this doctrine to develop. While many Fathers and Doctors of the Church considered Mary the greatest and holiest of the saints, they often had difficulty in seeing Mary as sinless—either at her conception or throughout her life. This is one of the Church teachings that arose more from the piety of the faithful than from the insights of brilliant theologians. Even such champions of Mary as Bernard and Thomas Aquinas could not see theological justification for this teaching. Two Franciscans, William of Ware and Blessed John Duns Scotus, helped develop the theology. They point out that Mary’s Immaculate Conception enhances Jesus’ redemptive work. Other members of the human race are cleansed from original sin after birth. In Mary, Jesus’ work was so powerful as to prevent original sin at the outset. In Luke 1:28 the angel Gabriel, speaking on God’s behalf, addresses Mary as “full of grace” (or “highly favoured”). In that context this phrase means that Mary is receiving all the special divine help necessary for the task ahead. However, the Church grows in understanding with the help of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit led the Church, especially non-theologians, to the insight that Mary had to be the most perfect work of God next to the Incarnation. Or rather, Mary’s intimate association with the Incarnation called for the special involvement of God in Mary’s whole life. The logic of piety helped God’s people to believe that Mary was full of grace and free of sin from the first moment of her existence. Moreover, this great privilege of Mary is the highlight of all that God has done in Jesus. Rightly understood, the incomparable holiness of Mary shows forth the incomparable goodness of God.

“[Mary] gave to the world the Life that renews all things, and she was enriched by God with gifts appropriate to such a role. “It is no wonder, then, that the usage prevailed among the holy Fathers whereby they called the mother of God entirely holy and free from all stain of sin, fashioned by the Holy Spirit into a kind of new substance and new creature. Adorned from the first instant of her conception with the splendours of an entirely unique holiness, the Virgin of Nazareth is, on God’s command, greeted by an angel messenger as ‘full of grace’ (cf. Luke 1:28). To the heavenly messenger she replies: ‘Behold the handmaid of the Lord, be it done to me according to thy word’ (Luke 1:38)” (Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, 56). (AmericanCatholic.org)

Scripture today: Gen 3:9-15, 20; Ps 98:1, 2-3ab, 3cd-4; Eph 1:3-6, 11-12; Luke 1:26-38

In the sixth month, the angel Gabriel was sent from God into a city of Galilee, called Nazareth, to a virgin espoused to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David; and the virgin’s name was Mary. The angel entered and said to her: “Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with you. Blessed are you among women.” When she heard this she was troubled at his words, and considered within herself what manner of salutation this was. And the angel said to her: “Fear not, Mary, for you have found grace with God. Behold you will conceive in thy womb and will bring forth a son; and you will call his name Jesus. He will be great, and will be called the Son of the most High; and the Lord God will give to him the throne of David his father. He will reign in the house of Jacob for ever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.” Mary said to the angel, “How will this be, since I do not know man?” And the angel said to her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you and the power of the most High will overshadow you. And so the Holy One who will be born of you will be called the Son of God. Behold your cousin Elizabeth has also conceived a son in her old age and she who has been called barren in now in her sixth month, because nothing is impossible with God.” Mary said, “Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it done to me according to your word.” And the angel departed from her. (Luke 1:26-38)

Mary Immaculate In the Papal decree of 8 December 1854, entitled Ineffabilis Deus of 8 December, Pope Pius IX (now beatified) pronounced and defined that the Blessed Virgin Mary "in the first instance of her conception, by a singular privilege and grace granted by God, in view of the merits of Jesus Christ, the Saviour of the human race, was preserved exempt from all stain of original sin." It is therefore a dogma of the Catholic Faith, to be received by the Faithful as being divinely revealed, that Mary was conceived free of all stain of original sin from the first moment of her animation as a human being, which is to say from the instant of her conception. Sanctifying grace was given to her before original sin could have taken effect in her soul. Original sin was not removed from her soul, as it is removed from others by baptism; it was excluded, it never was in her soul. The state of original sanctity, innocence, and justice, as opposed to original sin, was conferred upon her, by which gift every stain and fault, all depraved emotions, passions, and debilities, essentially pertaining to original sin, were excluded. But she was not made exempt from the temporal penalties of Adam — from sorrow, bodily infirmities, and death. The immunity from original sin was given to Mary by a singular exemption from a universal law through the same merits of Christ, by which other men are cleansed from sin by baptism. Mary needed the redeeming Saviour to obtain this exemption, and to be delivered from the universal necessity and debt of being subject to original sin. The person of Mary, in consequence of her origin from Adam, should have been subject to sin, but, being the new Eve who was to be the mother of the new Adam, she was, by the eternal plan of God and by the merits of Christ, withdrawn from the general law of original sin. Her redemption was the very masterpiece of Christ's redeeming wisdom. John Henry Newman, in his Letter Addressed to the Rev. E. B. Pusey, invokes the Patristic testimony that Mary was the Second Eve. As the First Eve came from God’s hand filled with grace, so did Mary, the Second Eve — and this by virtue of the merits of the one Redeemer, her Son.

No controversy arose over the Immaculate Conception on the European continent before the twelfth century. For various reasons, eminent theologians became divided. For instance, Aquinas at first pronounced in favour of the doctrine in his treatise on the "Sentences" (in I. Sent. c. 44, q. I ad 3), yet in his "Summa Theologica" he seems to conclude against it — and learned books have been written to vindicate him from having actually drawn the negative conclusion. His difficulty appears to have arisen from the doubt as to how she could have been redeemed if she had not sinned. The famous Duns Scotus (d. 1308) at last (in III Sent., dist. iii, in both commentaries) laid the foundations of the true doctrine so solidly and dispelled the objections in a manner so satisfactory, that from that time onward the doctrine prevailed. He showed that Mary’s sanctification after animation — sanctificatio post animationem — followed in the order of nature (naturae) not of time (temporis). Thus, he taught, the Blessed Virgin received from her Divine Son the greatest of redemptions through her preservation from all sin. From the time of Scotus not only did the doctrine become the common opinion at the universities, but the feast spread widely to those countries where it had not been previously adopted. With the exception of the Dominicans (following Aquinas’s doubt), all or nearly all, of the religious orders took it up. Since the time of Pope Alexander VII’s intervention of 8 December 1661, long before the final definition of 1854, there was no doubt on the part of theologians that Mary’s privilege was among the truths revealed by God. Pope Pius IX in 1854 in effect declared that the Church has always known, at least implicitly, that this is a revealed truth. That is to say, the controversy among the mediaeval theologians, decisively resolved by Blessed John Duns Scotus, was ultimately but a theological hick-up. So then, today we celebrate the greatest triumph of the Redemption, the most splendid work of the Holy Spirit in the soul and life of a human person, and the greatest thing about our illustrious heavenly Mother. She is the Mother of the Son of God made Man (Council of Ephesus) and absolutely sinless from the first moment of her conception.

Mary is the work of the mighty Spirit of God. She is our Mother, our heavenly intercessor who is united with our High Priest in praying for each of us her children. She, all-holy, is the Mother and Model of the whole Church. Let us love her, just as her Son loved and loves her. Let us entrust ourselves to her heavenly and constant care. God wants us to do this, and by her prayers and her example she will lead us to love and serve her divine Son. The Feast of her Immaculate Conception is a great sign to us of the holiness to which we are called, and it is a sign of the ultimate holiness we hope that God will effect in us, and which will be our final state in eternity.

Sin and holiness As the study of the religions of man shows, different religions have different emphases. One of the most distinctive features of the Christian religion is the awareness of sin and the divine command to be holy. Sin is revealed as the source of evil. Christ came as the Lamb of God who would take away the sin of the world, and as St Paul states in one of his letters, “This is the will of God, your sanctification.” The Christian religion is a religion of the holiness of God and its bestowal on us his children. Let us celebrate the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary in that light. Her sinless state at the instant of her conception illustrates the result of the Redemption brought about by her divine Son. The Redemption was all about taking away sin and bestowing holiness. Mary is the first and foremost Christian and is the perfect embodiment of all that the Church aspires to and is called to. Mary is the type of all that God calls us to. As the archangel Gabriel acknowledged in her presence (Luke 1: 26-38), she is the all holy creature of God, holy from the first moment of her conception and sinless to the end of her days.

Let us entrust ourselves to the care of Mary our Mother just as the Father entrusted his Son to her care, and just as Christ from the Cross entrusted his beloved disciple to her care. Let us pray that she, by her prayers and example, will help us attain the goal that God has given us: holiness and freedom from sin.

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You insist on doing your own thing, and so your work is barren. Obey: be docile. Each cog in a machine must be put in its place. If not, the machine stops, or the parts get damaged. It will surely not produce anything, or if it does, then very little. In the same way, a man or a woman outside his or her proper field of action will be more of a hindrance than an instrument of apostolate.

Entrance Antiphon Behold, the Lord will come descending with splendour to visit his people with peace, and he will bestow on them eternal life.

Collect Grant that your people, we pray, almighty God, may be ever watchful for the coming of your Only Begotten Son, that, as the author of our salvation himself has taught us, we may hasten, alert and with lighted lamps, to meet him when he comes. Who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

Thousands of people gathered in the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe July 31, 2002, for the canonization of Juan Diego, to whom the Blessed Mother appeared in the 16th century. Pope John Paul II celebrated the ceremony at which the poor Indian Juan Diago

peasant became the Church’s first saint indigenous to the Americas. The Holy Father called the new saint “a simple, humble Indian” who accepted Christianity without giving up his identity as an Indian. “In praising the Indian Juan Diego, I want to express to all of you the closeness of the church and the pope, embracing you with love and encouraging you to overcome with hope the difficult times you are going through,” John Paul said. Among the thousands present for the event were members of Mexico’s 64 indigenous groups. First called Cuauhtlatohuac (“The eagle who speaks”), Juan Diego’s name is forever linked with Our Lady of Guadalupe because it was to him that she first appeared at Tepeyac hill on December 9, 1531. The most famous part of his story is told in connection with the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe (December 12). After the roses gathered in his tilma were transformed into the miraculous image of Our Lady of Guadalupe, however, little more is said about Juan Diego. In time he lived near the shrine constructed at Tepeyac, revered as a holy, unselfish and compassionate catechist who taught by word and especially by example. During his 1990 pastoral visit to Mexico, Pope John Paul II confirmed the long-standing liturgical cult in honour of Juan Diego, beatifying him. Twelve years later he was proclaimed a saint. God counted on Juan Diego to play a humble yet huge role in bringing the Good News to the peoples of Mexico. Overcoming his own fear and the doubts of Bishop Juan de Zumarraga, Juan Diego cooperated with God’s grace in showing his people that the Good News of Jesus is for everyone. Pope John Paul II used the occasion of this beatification to urge Mexican lay men and women to assume their responsibilities for passing on the Good News and witnessing to it.

“Similar to ancient biblical personages who were collective representations of all the people, we could say that Juan Diego represents all the indigenous peoples who accepted the Gospel of Jesus, thanks to the maternal aid of Mary, who is always inseparable from the manifestation of her Son and the spread of the Church, as was her presence among the Apostles on the day of Pentecost” (Pope John Paul II, beatification homily). (AmericanCatholic.org)

Jesus said to the crowds: “To what shall I compare this generation? It is like children who sit in marketplaces and call to one another, ‘We played the flute for you, but you did not dance, we sang a dirge but you did not mourn.’ For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they said, ‘He is possessed by a demon.’ The Son of Man came eating and drinking and they said, ‘Look, he is a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners.’ But wisdom is vindicated by her works.” (Matthew 11:16-19)

The Divine Wisdom In our brief passage today, our Lord describes “this generation.” Our Lord has watched some children sitting in the market place — they appear to have been in two groups, refusing to co-operate in a game with one another. Some wanted to play a game using a flute (perhaps a wedding melody). But the other group would not come good, and dance. Fr. Ted Tyler

The others, or perhaps the same ones again, wished to start a game by singing a funeral dirge, but the others would not join in, and mourn. Everything fell flat, nothing would satisfy. Whatever was tried evoked no response. It was a parable our Lord used to illustrate God in his wisdom attempting to evoke the necessary response from his chosen people in our Lord’s own day. The entire history of God’s chosen people had not seen such a remarkable intervention of the Divine Wisdom as had occurred in the time of “this generation.” John was the greatest of the prophets — there had been no greater born of woman, our Lord once said. The Wisdom of God was at work in him to a remarkable degree — and he called on the people to repent and get ready. He had his approach and his particular form of self-surrender to God and ministry to his people — he “came neither eating and drinking.” But that would not do. He was a paragon of self-denial, living in the desert and having little to do with ordinary life, as we might say. But “they say, ‘he has a demon.’” The Wisdom of God was revealed again in Jesus of Nazareth. This time, the approach was different. Our Lord did not impose a regime of strict fasting on his disciples (causing wonderment among some). He mixed with publicans and sinners, and dined with them. That would not do either: our Lord was “a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners.” We get the impression from the Gospels that our Lord was a dynamo of apostolic action, crisscrossing Galilee and Judea, the lands of God’s chosen people. He is portrayed as going everywhere, and sending his disciples ahead of him to towns, villages, farms. He gave everything for the “lost sheep of the House of Israel.” But it would not do. The people were like those children in the market-place. Nothing which God did in his infinite Wisdom succeeded with the men of “this generation.”

But, our Lord continues, “wisdom is proved right by her actions” (Matthew 11: 16-19). That is to say, what God does in his wisdom will be proved right in the fulness of time. Our Lord is giving a prediction and a warning. All else, all that is done which is not in accord with the Wisdom of God, as manifest in his chosen servants who proclaim his word, will fail. The Wisdom of God was revealed to Abraham. He received that word in faith, acted on it, and by him the nations of the earth were blessed. God spoke to Moses, and Moses received his word and acted on it. It led to the deliverance of the people from slavery and their final entry into the Promised Land. Wisdom was proved right by her actions. The prophets inveighed against the sin of the people, and warned them that if they did not turn back to their God and obey his word, punishment and disaster awaited them. This was the Wisdom of God making known the path to life, and it was proved right in the event. Terrible afflictions descended on the people. God in his Wisdom made known the way to life in the ministry of John the Baptist. The people were to repent and prepare a way for the coming of the Lord in his appointed Messiah. He came, and he was present in the Person of Jesus of Nazareth, but the response was disappointing. Most striking was the fact that the Wisdom of God ordained a terrible end for the Messiah. He would be rejected by the leaders of the nation, treated terribly, put to death and would rise again. This path seemed to Simon Peter an absurdity, and he attempted to put the idea out of our Lord’s mind — and drew upon himself a powerful rebuke. The way he was thinking was not the way of God but the way of man. It was not according to the divine Wisdom. Mysteriously, the path of the Divine Wisdom involved suffering and rejection. It was the path of the Cross, and Wisdom “is proved right by her actions.” It is critically important that the one who wishes to follow Jesus Christ closely be prepared to accept and embrace the Wisdom of God as revealed in the Person and way of Jesus. It is a way that can scarcely be understood by man, but it is the way to life, and will be proved right. Let us pray for an undying faith in the Wisdom of God. It will always be proved right.

It is so easy to get things wrong. It is so easy to be profoundly and insidiously influenced by the so-called wisdom of the world. We must resolve to be filled with the Wisdom of God and to make that the unambiguous basis of our daily life. What God in his wisdom wishes for man must be for the best. It will inevitably be proved right by her actions. This Wisdom is present in the Person and teaching of Jesus Christ, the Saviour of the world. Let us resolve always to hear his word and put it faithfully into practice. This and this alone is the path to life. All else must fail.

Now I begin The execution of the Australian-Vietnamese young man, Van Nguyen, in Singapore in December 2005 captured the imagination of many Australians, though he is forgotten now. Van Nguyen grew up a child of an obscure Vietnamese family in Melbourne, and went to the Catholic school in the parish of Richmond. There was nothing special to distinguish him, except that gradually he became involved in drug trafficking — to help his brother with his debts, so it seems. Fr. Ted Tyler

He spent the last three years of his life in a Singaporean gaol, on death row following his conviction. His life had every appearance of being a complete failure and a great sorrow to his mother. But what happened? His entire attitude changed due to a wonderful religious conversion. He embraced the Catholic Faith in a new way and faced death with a singular trust in God, repenting of all his wrongdoing. It turned out to be a beautiful death — by hanging. At the time and due to media publicity, he taught very many people that whatever past mistakes and sins there be, one can begin again and turn it all around. This is the season of Advent. Well, let us resolve to put the past behind and begin again as we prepare to celebrate the coming of the Saviour. One of the things that can most discourage a person is the thought of past failures and mistakes. He (or she) looks around and sees others who seemingly have made a better job of things and feels a sense of failure at the life he has been living. This sense of failure leaves him discouraged. But consider Van Nguyen. He ended grandly and with a bright prospect ahead beyond the grave. His coffin was carried out of Melbourne’s packed St Patrick’s Cathedral to the applause of all present. A great clapping of hands accompanied the departing coffin. All realized that Van Nguyen had ended his life well and beautifully. This was because during the final period of his life in prison, in the words of Isaiah in the first reading today (Isaiah 48: 17-19), he looked to God to teach him what was good for him, and to lead him in the way that he must go.

Let us learn from how this obscure young man ended his life years ago. At every point we can start again, placing our trust in God and his mercy, being content to do the will of God as it presents itself to us here and now.

(E.J.Tyler)

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Entrance Antiphon Cf. Ps 80 (79):4, 2 Come and show us your face, O Lord, who are seated upon the Cherubim, and we will be saved.

Collect May the splendour of your glory dawn in our hearts, we pray, almighty God, that all shadows of the night may be scattered and we may be shown to be children of light by the advent of your Only Begotten Son. Who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

The rise of the factory system in 19th-century Germany brought many single men into cities where they faced new challenges to their faith. Father Adolph Kolping began a ministry to them, hoping that they would not be lost to the Catholic faith as was Blessed Adolph Kolping

happening to workers elsewhere in industrialized Europe. Born in the village of Kerpen, Adolph became a shoemaker at an early age because of his family’s economic situation. Ordained in 1845, he ministered to young workers in Cologne, establishing a choir, which by 1849 had grown into the Young Workmen’s Society. A branch of this began in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1856. Nine years later there were over 400 Gesellenvereine (workman’s societies) around the world. Today this group has over 400,000 members in 54 countries across the globe. More commonly called the Kolping Society, it emphasizes the sanctification of family life and the dignity of labour. Father Kolping worked to improve conditions for workers and greatly assisted those in need. He and St. John Bosco in Turin had similar interests in working with young men in big cities. He told his followers, “The needs of the times will teach you what to do.” Father Kolping once said, “The first thing that a person finds in life and the last to which he holds out his hand, and the most precious that he possess, even if he does not realize it, is family life.” He and Blessed John Duns Scotus are buried in Cologne’s Minoritenkirche, served by the Conventual Franciscans. The Kolping Society’s international headquarters is at this church. Kolping members journeyed to Rome from Europe, America, Africa, Asia and Oceania for Father Kolping’s beatification in 1991, the 100th anniversary of Pope Leo XIII’s revolutionary encyclical Rerum Novarum (On the Social Order). Father Kolping’s personal witness and apostolate helped prepare for that encyclical. Some people thought that Father Kolping was wasting his time and talents on young working men in industrialized cities. In some countries, the Catholic Church was seen by many workers as the ally of owners and the enemy of workers. Men like Adolph Kolping showed that was not true.

“Adolph Kolping gathered skilled workers and factory labourers together. Thus he overcame their isolation and defeatism. A faith society gave them the strength to go out into their everyday lives as Christ’s witnesses before God and the world. To come together, to become strengthened in the assembly, and thus to scatter again is and still remains our duty today. We are not Christians for ourselves alone, but always for others too” (Pope John Paul II, beatification homily). (AmericanCatholic.org)

Scripture today: Sirach 48:1-4, 9-11; Psalm 80:2ac and 3b, 15-16, 18-19; Matthew 17:9a, 10-13

As they were coming down the mountain, the disciples asked him, Why then do the teachers of the law say that Elijah must come first? Jesus replied, To be sure, Elijah comes and will restore all things. But I tell you, Elijah has already come, and they did not recognise him, but have done to him everything they wished. In the same way the Son of Man is going to suffer at their hands. Then the disciples understood that he was talking to them about John the Baptist. (Matthew 17:9a, 10-13)

Holiness It can probably be said that the first and foremost attribute of the divine which impresses itself upon man, and which inspires him to turn to God, is his power. Man is weak and vulnerable, subject to a host of vicissitudes which at any point can overcome him. He relies on whatever aid is at hand, and, in particular, on heavenly aid. He turns to the powers above — though he believes that, like the terrestrial powers that jostle for place on the earthly scene, the powers that people heaven are limited and they contend among themselves. It was an extraordinary feature of Revealed Religion — the religion revealed to Abraham, the patriarchs, Moses, David and the prophets, that there was and is but one God, the Holy One, and that he is almighty. There were many manifestations of his power. He led Abraham out of his land and took him to a land which he promised he would give to his descendants. By his posterity all the nations of the earth would be blessed. He revealed himself to Moses, and took the children of Israel out of their slavery to the Promised Land — the land promised to them through their father Abraham. There were many displays of the almighty power of God, and the chosen people gradually learnt that there was nothing that Yahweh their God could not do — short of something unworthy of his sanctity. He was the Holy One of Israel, and required holiness of his people. Now, this power of Yahweh their God revealed his mercy. He was a God rich in mercy and compassion, and his deeds of power revealed this. The iconic instance of this was his deliverance of his people from their slavery in Egypt. But his power also manifested his holiness. It was a holy mercy, a compassion that upheld and vindicated moral goodness, which his power revealed. The mercy and compassion of God would not brook sin, and it required of sinners and of the entire people that they repent. The power of the gods of the various peoples was not particularly compassionate or merciful, and it certainly was not notably holy. Sin and moral holiness was not a keynote concern of the religions of the peoples, but it was a fundamental concern of the Revealed Religion of Israel.

This revelation of moral power was repeatedly evident in the servants of Yahweh who were raised up by him to do this or that work. Abraham was holy. He obeyed in faith a holy God. So were Isaac and Jacob. Moses was holy. So were David and the prophets. Of course, they were sinners too, but they were outstanding in the ancient world precisely for their recognition of, submission to, and union with, the Holy One who had revealed himself and his will. They strove to keep his commandments, especially the Ten Commandments which expressed and required both Religion and the Moral Life. For instance, what a man was Elijah — centuries before the Messiah! As the book of Ecclesiasticus exclaims, “How awesome are you, Elijah! You were taken aloft in a whirlwind ... You are destined ... in time to come to put an end to wrath before the day of the Lord” (Ecclesiasticus 48: 1-4.9-11). Consider his confrontation with the four hundred prophets of Baal, and the extraordinary faith with which he vindicated the God of the Patriarchs and the Covenant (1 Kings 18.) There are few things like it in the ancient world. It manifested with power the moral character of Yahweh and his insistence on true religion and the moral life. Consider Elijah’s profession in the presence of God at the entrance of the Cave: “With zeal have I been zealous for the Lord God of hosts, because the children of Israel have forsaken thy covenant ... I alone am left” (1 Kings 19:14). So great was Elijah in standing for the holiness of God and the necessity of the moral and holy life that it was predicted that he would come back again, in some sense, to prepare the people for the day of the Lord. The prophet Malachi prophesied his coming: “Behold I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord. And he shall turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come, and strike the earth with anathema” (Malachi 4: 5). Christ made it clear to his disciples that Elijah did indeed return in the person and prophetic ministry of John the Baptist — as we see our Lord explaining in our Gospel today ((Matthew 17: 10-13). The point I am making here is God’s insistence on the moral and holy life.

In our Gospel passage today our Lord shows that this divine requirement of a holy life, manifesting the almighty power of God, goes repeatedly unaccepted. John was rejected by many, and so was his all-surpassing Successor, the Messiah himself. “Elijah has already come, and they did not recognise him, but have done to him everything they wished. In the same way the Son of Man is going to suffer at their hands.” Let us not act in any way like this. Let us hear the word of Jesus Christ and put it into effect. The one thing necessary is holiness of life, that holiness exemplified by the prophets, and above all by the one and only Redeemer, Jesus Christ our Lord.

Hope We naturally look forward to a better future, and this expectation and hope sustains us in our daily efforts. Hope is a feature of human life, and without it there would be nothing to live for. One of the fundamental features of the Old Testament religion was its expectation of what was coming. A great hope and expectation distinguished the religion. All who accepted the revealed religion of the Old Testament knew that a Messiah was coming, and with him the Kingdom of God. But of course, just what this Kingdom would entail in the concrete was where so many went wrong. It is clear from the prophecies that suffering would be banished in an ultimate sense, but very many could not imagine that suffering would actually be an essential part of the establishment of the Kingdom of God and of entry into it. But that is just what our Lord revealed. He had come to suffer, and those who chose to be one with him in his Kingdom would have to suffer with him. In our Gospel today (Matthew 17: 10-13) Our Lord’s disciples refer to the prophecies: “Why do the teachers of the law say that Elijah must come first?” Our Lord tells them that St John the Baptist was the Elijah who was to come, and he suffered at their hands. So too “the Son of Man is going to suffer at their hands.” Great suffering was to be an essential component of his mission. So as we prepare to celebrate the birth of the Messiah at Christmas, we ought strive to gain a renewed appreciation of the centrality of the cross in Our Lord’s life and work, and of how it must be central in the life of any of his disciples.

Let us pray for the grace to know how to follow Our Lord closely in the concrete circumstances of the life that God has given us. Let us not fritter away the years he has given us by following useless paths that lead nowhere. Let us rather learn, with the help of the Holy Spirit, how to live in the way God intends for us, whatever be the suffering entailed.

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The first Twelve, too, were strangers in the lands where they taught the Gospel. They came up against the people whose world was built on foundations completely opposed to Christ’s doctrine. Look: despite these adverse circumstances, they knew that they had been entrusted with the divine message of the Redemption. And so the apostle cries, “Woe to me if I do not preach the Gospel!”

Entrance Antiphon Phil 4:4-5 Rejoice in the Lord always; again I say, rejoice. Indeed, the Lord is near.

Collect O God, who see how your people faithfully await the feast of the Lord’s Nativity, enable us, we pray, to attain the joys of so great a salvation and to celebrate them always with solemn worship and glad rejoicing. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

To his secretary St. Jerome, Damasus was “an incomparable person, learned in the Scriptures, a virgin doctor of the virgin Church, who loved chastity and heard its St Damasus

praises with pleasure.” Damasus seldom heard such unrestrained praise. Internal political struggles, doctrinal heresies, uneasy relations with his fellow bishops and those of the Eastern Church marred the peace of his pontificate. Possibly of Spanish extraction, Damasus started as a deacon in his father’s church, and served as a priest in what later became the basilica of San Lorenzo in Rome. He served Pope Liberius (352-366) and followed him into exile. When Liberius died, Damasus was elected bishop of Rome; but a minority elected and consecrated another deacon, Ursinus, as pope. The controversy between Damasus and the antipope resulted in violent battles in two basilicas, scandalizing the bishops of Italy. At the synod Damasus called on the occasion of his birthday, he asked them to approve his actions. The bishops’ reply was curt: “We assembled for a birthday, not to condemn a man unheard.” Supporters of the antipope even managed to get Damasus accused of a grave crime as late as A.D. 378. He had to clear himself before both a civil court and a Church synod. As pope his lifestyle was simple in contrast to other ecclesiastics of Rome, and he was fierce in his denunciation of Arianism and other heresies. A misunderstanding of the Trinitarian terminology used by Rome threatened amicable relations with the Eastern Church, and Damasus was only moderately successful in dealing with the situation. During his pontificate Christianity was declared the official religion of the Roman state (380), and Latin became the principal liturgical language as part of the pope’s reforms. His encouragement of St. Jerome’s biblical studies led to the Vulgate, the Latin translation of Scripture which the Council of Trent (12 centuries later) declared to be “authentic in public readings, disputations, preachings.” The history of the papacy and the Church is inextricably mixed with the personal biography of Damasus. In a troubled and pivotal period of Church history, he stands forth as a zealous defender of the faith who knew when to be progressive and when to entrench. Damasus makes us aware of two qualities of good leadership: alertness to the promptings of the Spirit and service. His struggles are a reminder that Jesus never promised his Rock protection from hurricane winds nor his followers immunity from difficulties. His only guarantee is final victory.

"He who walking on the sea could calm the bitter waves, who gives life to the dying seeds of the earth; he who was able to loose the mortal chains of death, and after three days' darkness could bring again to the upper world the brother for his sister Martha: he, I believe, will make Damasus rise again from the dust" (epitaph Damasus wrote for himself). (AmericanCatholic.org)

Scripture Today: Isaiah 61:1-2a, 10-11; Luke 1:46-48, 49-50, 53-54; 1 Thessalonians 5:16-24; John 1:6-8, 19-28.

There came a man who was sent from God; his name was John. He came as a witness to testify concerning that light, so that through him all men might believe. He himself was not the light; he came only as a witness to the light. Now this was John’s testimony when the Jews of Jerusalem sent priests and Levites to ask him who he was. He did not fail to confess, but confessed freely, I am not the Christ. They asked him, Then who are you? Are you Elijah? He said, I am not. Are you the Prophet? He answered, No. Finally they said, Who are you? Give us an answer to take back to those who sent us. What do you say about yourself? John replied in the words of Isaiah the prophet, I am the voice of one calling in the desert, ‘Make straight the way for the Lord.’ Now some Pharisees who had been sent questioned him, Why then do you baptise if you are not the Christ, nor Elijah, nor the Prophet? I baptise with water, John replied, but among you stands one you do not know. He is the one who comes after me, the thongs of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie. This all happened at Bethany on the other side of the Jordan, where John was baptising. (John 1:6-8, 19-28)

Reverence There are numerous threats to religion in the life of a society and in the life of an individual. One of those threats is that expressed in the caption, “Familiarity breeds contempt.” Precisely because of our familiarity with something we can fail to appreciate it sufficiently — which is to say, to the degree that it warrants. Fr. Ted Tyler

It could be that I grow up in a home in which, hanging on the wall, there is a print of one of Raphael’s masterpieces. I am perfectly familiar with it, and I fail to appreciate its grandeur. Or again, during the final years of my secondary schooling and as part of my major in English Literature at University, I study various of Shakespeare’s masterpieces. I emerge with my degree quite familiar with Shakespeare as a dramatist and poet, but taking him very much for granted. In fact, I find I cannot be said to really appreciate his genius, so much so that never again do I read him just for pleasure. He does not interest me — I prefer to read one of John le Carre’s novels, say, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1963). I enjoy literature, drama and some poetry — but not the greatest of them all, Shakespeare. Familiarity has bred disinterest. Again, a couple marry and their life together begins with a glorious honeymoon. But then gradually it fails. They take one another for granted and over the years elements even of contempt creep into their mutual relationship. We must be on guard against this failing. Being creatures of sense, we depend to a point on sense stimulation for the beginning and maintenance of interest in something. This is so only to a point, because if we are to maintain and grow in interest in something valuable, let alone in a love for it, we must take the matter in hand as a personal decision and of careful thought. A man’s love for his wife and vice versa must not depend on mere passive stimulation. It has to be a matter of personal decision. I must decide to love as a point of duty — no matter how I may feel, no matter what the cost, and how little I may be passively stimulated to do this. If I am to grow in a deep love for Shakespeare, or for outstanding classical art, I must take myself in hand and cultivate this interest as a point of enduring policy, no matter how I feel. I must beware of the tendency of “familiarity” to “breed contempt.”

Now, this same danger can exist in religion. We can grow up and be in constant contact with the greatest of spiritual realities, and take it all for granted. We can so easily take God our almighty Creator for granted, he in whose presence we constantly live. We can simply forget God and can live our lives as if he did not exist. This is an immense affront. Very importantly, we are familiar with the Person of Jesus Christ — but we can take him for granted, forget him, ignore him, and live as if he is but one of the things “that are around.” We can so easily fail to be lovingly reverent towards the Person of Christ the Redeemer. He is intimately present to us because, fundamentally, of our baptism — but we can live as if this is not the case at all. The greatest thing in the life of the Church is the most holy Eucharist. The Eucharist is the full and entire reality of Jesus Christ, God made man, the Saviour of the world. He is constantly present in our Tabernacles — and if a parish has more than one parish church, then the Eucharistic Jesus in his full human and divine reality abides in the Tabernacles of each of those parish churches. But we can just take this stupendous fact for granted, and act in complete disregard for it. Indeed, it can approach the case of familiarity breeding contempt. I have been in various mosques in various parts of the world and have noted the reverence that pervades the mosque. Moslems at prayer in those mosques have impressed me for their reverence. How much more ought the Catholic Christian be distinguished for his reverence in the Catholic parish church, and in any church or cathedral where there is the Real Presence of Jesus Christ in the Tabernacle. This Presence is marked by the red lamp near the Tabernacle. Most especially ought we be marked for our reverence during the holy sacrifice of the Mass when Calvary is made sacramentally present. Our attitude to all of the Sacraments, and to the preaching and proclamation of the word of God, and to the Church herself, ought be noted for its reverence because it is Christ who is the great Presence in each of these actions. Let us be on guard against the danger of familiarity. It can corrode our spiritual life, our love for Christ and our capacity for growth in holiness.

In our Gospel today we have a magnificent example of profound reverence for the Person of Jesus Christ. St John the Baptist says, “I baptise with water, but among you stands one you do not know. He is the one who comes after me, the thongs of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie” (John 1:6-8, 19-28). He was not worthy to undo Christ’s sandals. Let us set in place in our lives firm practices which will preserve in us a profound reverence whenever we are in the church before the holy Tabernacle, whenever we approach Christ in any of the Sacraments, whenever we hear the word of God read or preached by the Church’s pastors, whenever and wherever the things of God and Christ are present in our lives. Let not familiarity breed disinterest and a failure of love.

Happiness It scarcely needs to be observed that there is so much suffering in the world. It is said that one of the major health problems in Australia is depression and general mental ill-health. There is still a considerable suicide rate among young people, and suicide is present among people of other ages as well. The point that can be made about this, Fr. Ted Tyler

I suppose, is that it is not hard to be unhappy. The challenge is to find happiness — and that is what we desire anyway. But it is a challenge and the challenge derives fundamentally from the fact that we are born into a fallen sinful condition and by our sins we tend to sink further in this condition. And so happiness easily eludes us. We could say that it is a great achievement to attain a profound happiness in life. In our second reading today from the first letter of St Paul to the Thessalonians, St Paul tells the Christians he was addressing that he wanted them to be “joyful always”. The implication is that this happiness ought be the normal condition of the Christian. Somehow it must be able to be present in the midst of suffering because while Our Lord endured unimaginable sufferings, it is inconceivable that he at any point was “unhappy” and had lost his peace. Moreover, St Paul tells us in the same sentence that his readers were to “pray continually; give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus” (1 Thessalonians 5:16-24). We will be able to do this, to be happy and to give thanks to God for everything, if we remain and grow “in Christ Jesus.”

Let us learn to live “in Christ Jesus” and resolve to put on the virtues of the heart of Christ. We must come to know him, and by our closeness to him we will be transformed more and more into his image. As St Paul says in the same second reading: “God has called you and he will not fail you.”

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Our lives can effectively co-redeem, in an eternal way, only if we act with humility, passing unnoticed, so that others can discover him.

Entrance Antiphon Cf. Jer 31:10; Is 35:4 Hear the word of the Lord, O nations; declare it to the distant lands: Behold, our Saviour will come; you need no longer fear.

Collect Incline a merciful ear to our cry, we pray, O Lord, and, casting light on the darkness of our hearts, visit us with the grace of your Son. Who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

The feast in honour of Our Lady of Guadalupe goes back to the sixteenth century. Chronicles of that period tell us the story. A poor Indian named Cuauhtlatohuac was baptized and given the name Juan Diego. He was a 57-year-old widower and lived in a small village near Mexico City. On Saturday morning, December 9, 1531, he was on his way to a nearby barrio to attend Mass in honour of Our Lady. Our Lady O fGuadalupe

He was walking by a hill called Tepeyac when he heard beautiful music like the warbling of birds. A radiant cloud appeared and within it a young Native American maiden dressed like an Aztec princess. The lady spoke to him in his own language and sent him to the bishop of Mexico, a Franciscan named Juan de Zumarraga. The bishop was to build a chapel in the place where the lady appeared. Eventually the bishop told Juan Diego to have the lady give him a sign. About this same time Juan Diego’s uncle became seriously ill. This led poor Diego to try to avoid the lady. The lady found Diego, nevertheless, assured him that his uncle would recover and provided roses for Juan to carry to the bishop in his cape or tilma. When Juan Diego opened his tilma in the bishop’s presence, the roses fell to the ground and the bishop sank to his knees. On Juan Diego’s tilma appeared an image of Mary as she had appeared at the hill of Tepeyac. It was December 12, 1531. (click here for information about scientific studies on the eyes in the image)

Mary's appearance to Juan Diego as one of his people is a powerful reminder that Mary and the God who sent her accept all peoples. In the context of the sometimes rude and cruel treatment of the Indians by the Spaniards, the apparition was a rebuke to the Spaniards and an event of vast significance for Native Americans. While a number of them had converted before this incident, they now came in droves. According to a contemporary chronicler, nine million Indians became Catholic in a very short time. In these days when we hear so much about God's preferential option for the poor, Our Lady of Guadalupe cries out to us that God's love for and identification with the poor is an age-old truth that stems from the Gospel itself.

Mary to Juan Diego: “My dearest son, I am the eternal Virgin Mary, Mother of the true God, Author of Life, Creator of all and Lord of the Heavens and of the Earth...and it is my desire that a church be built here in this place for me, where, as your most merciful Mother and that of all your people, I may show my loving clemency and the compassion that I bear to the Indians, and to those who love and seek me...” (from an ancient chronicle). (American.Catholic.org)

Jesus entered the temple courts, and, while he was teaching, the chief priests and the elders of the people came to him. By what authority are you doing these things? they asked. And who gave you this authority? Jesus replied, I will also ask you one question. If you answer me, I will tell you by what authority I am doing these things. John’s baptism— where did it come from? Was it from heaven, or from men? They discussed it among themselves and said, If we say, ‘From heaven’, he will ask, ‘Then why didn’t you believe him?’ But if we say, ‘From men’— we are afraid of the people, for they all hold that John was a prophet. So they answered Jesus, We don’t know. Then he said, Neither will I tell you by what authority I am doing these things. (Matthew 21:23-27)

The New Temple One of the many noteworthy things about Jesus Christ was how filled he was with the thought and teaching of the Scriptures. Christ quotes the Scriptures to show the authority of his ministry, to make his teaching clear and to illustrate their fulfilment in him. Scripture is a basic part of his ministry. Presumably his rising from the dead very early on “the third day” (perhaps within the first hour or so of it) — and not earlier — was precisely because the Scriptures had to be fulfilled. In every phase of His life and ministry he showed a reliance on Scripture. He never overruled it, but only corrected notions of it and clarified its proper interpretation. His very high views of its inspiration and authority are striking. He describes himself in terms of Scripture. He is the Bridegroom, evoking the theme of Yahweh the Husband of his people. He is a King, as he admitted to Pilate — and his ministry was filled with allusions to the Kingdom of Heaven and of God. He referred to himself repeatedly as the Son of Man. All this referred to famous passages of the Scriptures, such as the visions of Daniel in which “the son of man” came “with the clouds of heaven” to “the Ancient of Days,” and “to him was given dominion and glory and kingdom, that all ... should serve him; his dominion is an everlasting dominion ...” (Daniel 7: 13-14). The Christian should set the Person, the teaching and the human intellect and imagination of Jesus Christ within the context of the Old Testament. The holy Scriptures were the work of his own divine Spirit, the Spirit of God their Author. But there is one aspect of the teaching of the Scriptures which Christ appropriated to himself, and which we can easily miss. We are reminded of it in a detail of our Gospel today: we are told that “Jesus entered the temple courts and it was while he was teaching” there that he was accosted by the chief priests and elders and asked for proof of his authority. Christ had entered the City, gone into the Temple and cleansed it of its traffic. He then ministered there and taught at length therein. Christ’s profound link with the Temple and the allusions to this in the Scriptures ought be pondered. He is the new Temple.

In the Gospel of St John, during the Feast of Tabernacles, Jesus declares to the crowd, “If any one thirst, let him come to me and drink. He who believes in me, as the scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart shall flow rivers of living water’” (Jn 7:37-38). There is no passage in the Old Testament, “Out of his heart shall flow rivers of living water.” Our Lord would seem to be drawing on the prophet Ezekiel, Chapter 47. In the prophet’s great vision, immense waters flow from each side of the Temple, and they produce life on all sides. If this is our Lord’s source, ultimately Ezekiel’s vision foretells not a stone building, but the true Temple, which is the Body of Christ, including Christ’s Mystical Body, the Church (Romans 12:5; 1 Corinthians 12:12, 27). There is also the prophecy of Malachi. The Lord intended to fill His House with glory: by entering the Temple Himself: “Then suddenly the Lord you are seeking will come to His Temple; the messenger of the covenant, whom you desire, will come” (Malachi 3:1). In narrating the cleansing of the Temple, Matthew tells us that Christ “said to them, “It is written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer’; but you make it a den of robbers” (Matthew 21:13). “My house” may suggest that our Lord is referring to the Temple as his house. The same words appear in Mark’s account (11:17) as in Luke (19:45). (However, John, in his account of what may not be the same incident for he places it early in our Lord’s ministry (2:16), has our Lord referring to the Temple as “my Father’s house”). Earlier in Matthew’s Gospel, Christ makes the extraordinary claim, “I tell you that something greater than the Temple is here” (12:6), before declaring Himself to be “Lord of the Sabbath” (12:8). He is greater than the Temple, and he is Lord of the Sabbath. In John 2:18-22, Christ claims to be the Temple that is to come: “Jesus answered them, ‘Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days.’ They replied, ‘It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and you are going to raise it in three days?’ But the temple he had spoken of was his body.” When Jesus died on the Cross, the veil of the Temple was torn in two (Matthew 27:51). By his death Christ became a new access to the Holy of Holies.

In the second volume of his book, Jesus of Nazareth, Pope Benedict XVI develops the point. “The rejection and crucifixion of Jesus means at the same time the end of this Temple. The era of the Temple is over. A new worship is being introduced, in a Temple not built by human hands. This Temple is his body, the Risen One .... He himself is the new Temple of humanity” (p.21-22). Let us be reminded of this dimension of the Person, the teaching and the mystery of Jesus Christ as we think of him today entering the temple courts and teaching there (Matt 21:23-27).

The prophecies One of the distinctive things about the religion of Israel when compared with other ancient religions was its expectation of a great king who was to come: the Messiah. Cardinal Newman in his book, A Grammar of Assent, reminds us that this expectation which distinguished Israel’s religion spread somewhat to other ancient peoples. We may have a manifestation of this spread in the coming of the Magi from the East. They had divined that a great king was to be born. An essential feature of the Person of Jesus is that he was long awaited, long promised, and that his coming was an essential element in the religion revealed by God. It will enhance our appreciation and knowledge of Jesus our Lord if we take into account the wonderful prophecies about him. Today’s first reading from the book of Numbers (Numbers 24:17) gives us one such prophecy which can increase our wonder at the gift from God that was Jesus. Balaam utters his oracle of what was to come. A leader will spring from Jacob, a sceptre will spring from Israel. At Christmas we celebrate his arrival. There were all sorts of expectations as to the precise form the Messiah’s work would take. In our Gospel today (Matthew 21:23-27), the chief priests and elders of the people demand to know from Our Lord the authority by which he did what he was doing. Our Lord in reply referred to the testimony of John about him, and John had testified that Jesus was the One who was to come. John himself seems to have been uncertain as to the exact contours of the Messiah’s mission and work, for after having testified to Our Lord, he sent disciples to him from prison to ask him if he was in fact the One who was to come. Now, we who have the benefit of the full Scriptures, of the Church’s teaching and so much else to guide us, should strive to appreciate Our Lord for all he actually did for us and for what he expects of us. The greatest surprise of all was the centrality of the Cross in the work and mission of the Messiah. It means that following the Master into glory means following in his footsteps along the way of the Cross. Of course, this too was predicted in the Suffering Servant figure of Isaiah, and Our Lord instructed his disciples before and after his resurrection in how the Scriptures showed that the Messiah had to suffer.

Let us use the prophecies of the Old Testament to appreciate more deeply the person and mission of Christ, and let us be clear in our own minds as to the place of the Cross in his and our life.

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When the children of God act in their apostolate, they have to be like those great lighting systems which fill the world with light, but the lamp is not seen.

Entrance Antiphon Cf. Zec 14:5, 7 Behold, the Lord will come, and all his holy ones with him; and on that day there will be a great light.

Collect O God, who through your Only Begotten Son have made us a new creation, look kindly, we pray, on the handiwork of your mercy, and at your Son’s coming cleanse us from every stain of the old way of life. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

(December 13) Saint Lucy, virgin and martyr (d. 304)
Every little girl named Lucy must bite her tongue in disappointment when she first tries to find out what there is to know about

her patron saint. The older books will have a lengthy paragraph detailing a small number of traditions. Newer books will have a lengthy paragraph showing that there is little basis in history for these traditions. The single fact survives that a disappointed suitor accused Lucy of being a Christian and she was executed in Syracuse (Sicily) in the year 304. But it is also true that her name is mentioned in the First Eucharistic Prayer, geographical places are named after her, a popular song has her name as its title and down through the centuries many thousands of little girls have been proud of the name Lucy. One can easily imagine what a young Christian woman had to contend with in pagan Sicily in the year 300. If you have trouble imagining, just glance at today’s pleasure-at-all-costs world and the barriers it presents against leading a good Christian life. Her friends must have wondered aloud about this hero of Lucy’s, an obscure itinerant preacher in a far-off captive nation that had been destroyed more than 200 years before. Once a carpenter, he had been crucified by the Roman soldiers after his own people turned him over to the Roman authorities. Lucy believed with her whole soul that this man had risen from the dead. Heaven had put a stamp on all he said and did. To give witness to her faith she had made a vow of virginity. What a hubbub this caused among her pagan friends! The kindlier ones just thought her a little strange. To be pure before marriage was an ancient Roman ideal, rarely found but not to be condemned. To exclude marriage altogether, however, was too much. She must have something sinister to hide, the tongues wagged. Lucy knew of the heroism of earlier virgin martyrs. She remained faithful to their example and to the example of the carpenter, whom she knew to be the Son of God. She is the patroness of eyesight.
“The Gospel tells us of all that Jesus suffered, of the insults that fell upon him. But, from Bethlehem to Calvary, the brilliance that radiates from his divine purity spread more and more and won over the crowds. So great was the austerity and the enchantment of his conduct.... “So may it be with you, beloved daughters. Blessed be the discretion, the mortifications and the renouncements with which you seek to render this virtue more brilliant.... May your conduct prove to all that chastity is not only a possible virtue but a social virtue, which must be strongly defended through prayer, vigilance and the mortification of the senses” (Pope John XXIII, Letter to Women Religious). (AmericanCatholic.org)

Scripture today: Zephaniah 3:1-2, 9-13; Psalm 34: 2-3, 6-7, 17-19. 23; Matthew 21: 28-32

What do you think? There was a man who had two sons. He went to the first and said, ‘Son, go and work today in the vineyard.’ ‘I will not,’ he answered, but later he changed his mind and went. Then the father went to the other son and said the same thing. He answered, ‘I will, sir,’ but he did not go. Which of the two did what his father wanted? The first, they answered. Jesus said to them, I tell you the truth, the tax collectors and the prostitutes are entering the kingdom of God ahead of you. For John came to you to show you the way of righteousness, and you did not believe him, but the tax collectors and the prostitutes did. And even after you saw this, you did not repent and believe him. (Matthew 21:28-32)

Repentance In our Gospel passage today, our Lord holds up the example of the first son who repented of his refusal to do what his father wanted. He is an example of repentance. Anyone who is familiar with the Sacred Scriptures is aware of the prominence in the Bible of the theme of the acknowledgement of sin and repentance. Fr. Ted Tyler

Responsibility for sin is accepted by the sinner, and pardon from God is sought. Now the regular reader of Scripture may be unaware of how unusual this was in the ancient world. It is a moot point whether the admission of responsibility for offenses and true forgiveness was present in classical Greek and Roman thought. David Konstan, in his book Before Forgiveness: The Origin of a Moral Idea (Cambridge University Press, 2010), investigates carefully the theme of forgiveness in classical Greek thought. For instance, he considers Aristotle's treatment of the matter in his Rhetoric, and concludes that he does not treat of repentance and forgiveness but of appeasing anger. The case is similar in Aristotle's treatment in the Nicomachean Ethics. The true notion of forgiveness is absent, it seems, from the other philosophers as well — Plato and the Stoics in particular. The very idea of forgiveness was not a salient moral concept in the classical world. Konstan also analyses other literature, such as tragedy, comedy, or history. The wrongdoer regularly rejects responsibility and points to extenuating factors such as ignorance, passions, external compulsion, and the like. True repentance and forgiveness is missing. When Agamemnon wants Achilles to be reconciled with him (The Illiad), he does not admit his responsibility, but excuses his behaviour by adducing a moment of god-sent madness. Again, Adrastus' suicide for having killed Croesus' son does not come from any remorse, since he acted involuntarily, as Croesus himself acknowledges (Herodotus.) Generally in the ancient world there is not repentance, remorse, or the promise of a change of heart before the gods. The idea of repentance is minimal. All of this indicates the profound tendency of natural, fallen man to avoid repentance. He evades responsibility before the gods and before man for his moral failures.

This is exemplified in the Biblical account of the behaviour of the Man and the Woman in the Garden after they had sinned (Genesis 3: 8-13). They are now in the presence of God who is walking in the Garden in the cool of the day. They hide themselves from his presence for fear, because they are aware they have sinned, having already experienced a form of undoing as a result. Then the Man refuses to acknowledge responsibility before God: “The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me the fruit of the tree and I ate.” The Woman blamed the Serpent who had been in the Garden. Implicitly, God is to blame for the way he arranged things, and the Couple do not acknowledge that they personally sinned. Consequently, there is no formal pardon of them from God in this great chapter, only his sentencing and his promise that the Serpent’s head would be bruised or crushed by the seed of the Woman (3:15). This avoidance of responsibility for sin before God is consequent on the Fall, and as we have seen it pervades secular history and thought. True repentance is lacking. By contrast, in the Old Testament there are plenty of passages recognizing sins against God, expressing repentance, a return to God, and forgiveness on God's part. David openly acknowledges his terrible sin when accused of it by Nathan the prophet (2 Samuel 12: 13): “Then David said to Nathan, I have sinned against the Lord.” Many other examples could be cited. This, then, is one of the notable differences between Revealed Religion and the general thought and culture of man in history. In the New Testament, and in particular in the Gospels, repentance and the acknowledgment of sin is prominent. John the Baptist begins his ministry with the call to repent — repentance from sin is the necessary path of preparation for the coming of the Kingdom of heaven (Matthew 3: 2). The people came from Jerusalem, all of Judea, and all the region about the Jordan and they were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins. John accused the Pharisees and Sadducees of sin, and demanded of them that they “bear fruit that befits repentance” (Matthew 3: 8). Once Christ began his public ministry of preaching, he called for repentance: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” (Matthew 4:17).

In our Gospel today, our Lord drives home the decisive importance of repentance. It is this which really matters. The first son is the example for his hearers, for he repented. “Which of the two did what his father wanted? The first, they answered. Jesus said to them, I tell you the truth, the tax collectors and the prostitutes are entering the kingdom of God ahead of you. For John came to you to show you the way of righteousness, and you did not believe him, but the tax collectors and the prostitutes did. And even after you saw this, you did not repent and believe him” (Matthew 21: 28-32). At every step of our journey to God we must acknowledge our sins and repent, turning to him with the heartfelt resolve to hear God’s word and put it into practice. Let us do that, then!

Conversion There have been some in history whose religious conversion has profoundly affected the memory and imagination of the Church. We think of St Paul, St Augustine, Newman, and others. Their story helps us to appreciate the importance Our Lord himself gave to the need to repent. Fr. Ted Tyler

Our Lord began his public ministry calling on all to repent, for the Kingdom of God was near at hand, and John his great precursor preached repentance too. So important is repentance and conversion in Christianity, that some important currents of non-Catholic thought have based their distinctive teaching on a view of the nature of conversion. For instance, some currents of classic evangelicalism regarded a certain kind of conversion (involving, for instance, an experience of “assurance”) as necessary for salvation. Whatever about that particular error, there is no questioning the importance of conversion in the Christian life, even though the experience of conversion can take any number of forms. In our Gospel today, our Lord speaks to the chief priests and the elders of the people, who stubbornly refused assent. Many of the ordinary people — many of those regarded as sinners — recognised John the Baptist as a pattern of true righteousness. So they believed him. The leaders “did not believe him, and yet the tax collectors and harlots did.” They had the example of faith before them, and yet “even after you saw this,” they “did not repent and believe him” (Matthew 21:28-32).

A most important area of our life in which we are called upon by Christ our Lord to change is faith, belief. We can stubbornly refuse to believe certain things. Our response to Christ has to be belief, belief in him and in what he reveals. We must repent, we must change, we must convert from anything that might lead us to refuse this belief. Let us make our prayer the prayer of that person in the Gospel who said: “Lord I do believe. Help my unbelief.”

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Jesus says: “He who hears you hears me.” Do you still think it is your words that convince people? Don’t forget either that the Holy Spirit can carry out his plans with the most useless instrument.

Entrance Antiphon Cf. Hb 2:3; 1 Cor 4:5 The Lord will come and he will not delay. He will illumine what is hidden in darkness and reveal himself to all the nations.

Collect Grant, we pray, almighty God, that the coming solemnity of your Son may bestow healing upon us in this present life and bring us the rewards of life eternal. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

John is a saint because his life was a heroic effort to live up to his name: “of the Cross.” The folly of the cross came to full realization in time. “Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me” (Mark 8:34b) is St John Of The Cross

the story of John’s life. The Paschal Mystery — through death to life — strongly marks John as reformer, mystic-poet and theologian-priest. Ordained a Carmelite priest at 25 (1567), John met Teresa of Jesus (Avila) and like her vowed himself to the primitive Rule of the Carmelites. As partner with Teresa and in his own right, John engaged in the work of reform, and came to experience the price of reform: increasing opposition, misunderstanding, persecution, imprisonment. He came to know the cross acutely—to experience the dying of Jesus—as he sat month after month in his dark, damp, narrow cell with only his God! Yet, the paradox! In this dying of imprisonment John came to life, uttering poetry. In the darkness of the dungeon, John’s spirit came into the Light. There are many mystics, many poets; John is unique as mystic-poet, expressing in his prison-cross the ecstasy of mystical union with God in the Spiritual Canticle. But as agony leads to ecstasy, so John had his Ascent to Mt. Carmel, as he named it in his prose masterpiece. As man-Christian-Carmelite, he experienced in himself this purifying ascent; as spiritual director, he sensed it in others; as psychologist-theologian, he described and analysed it in his prose writings. His prose works are outstanding in underscoring the cost of discipleship, the path of union with God: rigorous discipline, abandonment, purification. Uniquely and strongly John underlines the gospel paradox: The cross leads to resurrection, agony to ecstasy, darkness to light, abandonment to possession, denial to self to union with God. If you want to save your life, you must lose it. John is truly “of the Cross.” He died at 49 — a life short, but full. John in his life and writings has a crucial word for us today. We tend to be rich, soft, comfortable. We shrink even from words like self-denial, mortification, purification, asceticism, discipline. We run from the cross. John’s message — like the gospel — is loud and clear: Don’t — if you really want to live!

Thomas Merton said of John: "Just as we can never separate asceticism from mysticism, so in St. John of the Cross we find darkness and light, suffering and joy, sacrifice and love united together so closely that they seem at times to be identified."
In John's words: "Never was fount so clear, undimmed and bright; From it alone, I know proceeds all light although 'tis night." (AmericanCatholic.org)

John’s disciples told him about all these things. Calling two of them, he sent them to the Lord to ask, “Are you the one who was to come, or should we expect someone else?” When the men came to Jesus, they said, “John the Baptist sent us to you to ask, ‘Are you the one who was to come, or should we expect someone else?’” At that very time Jesus cured many who had diseases, sicknesses and evil spirits, and gave sight to many who were blind. So he replied to the messengers, “Go back and report to John what you have seen and heard: The blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cured, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is preached to the poor. Blessed is the man who does not fall away on account of me.” (Luke 7:18-23)

God’s ways The Gospel of St Luke portrays a few communications between Jesus Christ and John the Baptist. His Infancy Narrative (chapters 1 and 2) is deeply marked by his juxtaposition of the two and their profound relationship. At the meeting of Elizabeth with Mary, John leaps in the womb of Elizabeth for, as the Angel had foretold to Zechariah, “he will be filled with the Holy Spirit even from his mother’s womb” (1:15). This is the Messiah’s first gift to John, a signal of his future mission to baptize with the Holy Spirit. Himself yet unborn, he anoints the unborn John with the Holy Spirit. That is their first communication. The scene shifts to decades later, and the great prophet John is preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins (Luke 3: 3). Jesus himself came forward for this baptism of John, and at that the Holy Spirit came upon him and the Father spoke to him from the heavens — we may liken it to Elijah being succeeded by Elisha who was given a double portion of his spirit (2 Kings 2:9-12). This was the second communication, and with that John begins his passing from the scene and Jesus assumes the ascendancy (Luke 3:19-20; 4:14). The scene then passes to the third communication. From his prison John sends two of his disciples to our Lord to ask, “Are you the one who was to come, or should we expect someone else?” (7:19-20). Some commentators have explained this scene as the opportunity John took to encourage further his disciples to follow Jesus. He sends them to Jesus to hear his testimony explicitly and formally, and so to believe. But Christ sends them back to John with his answer — it does seem that it is John himself who needs the clarification. John had announced the coming of “the salvation of God” which “all flesh shall see” (3:8). He tells the multitudes that “even now the axe is laid to the root of the trees” and every unfruitful tree will be “thrown into the fire” (3:9). So “he who is mightier than I” will be bearing an axe, and he “is coming” (3:16). John imagines him as filled with might and as overwhelming evildoers. He himself is “not worthy to untie” his sandals. “He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire.” He will gather the wheat in his barn, while burning the chaff in endless fire (3:17).

It does look as though John imagined the “one who is coming” in terms of decisive power, in which the good would be vindicated and the bad overcome in some clear and spectacular fashion. Perhaps he saw the baptizing with the Holy Spirit in these terms too. But Jesus appeared to be going about his business somewhat quietly. There was not the noise, the sound of victory, the divine day of judgment that John may have somehow imagined, possibly drawing from the imagery of various of the prophets of the past. He may not have focussed on, say, the great passages about the Suffering Servant in (Deutero) Isaiah. He could not understand what was going on. His faith was not collapsing, but it may have been undergoing a true test with a view to its being highly purified and developed. There were things which a far greater person than he had not been able to understand either, one whose faith was without question. We read in the same Gospel of St Luke that when Mary (and Joseph) found the boy Jesus in the Temple, they did not understand “the saying which he spoke to them” (Luke 2:50). Mary’s faith was developed by her not being able to understand. Similarly, John does not seem to have understood what was going on with his all-holy Kinsman. It was not at all as he had expected. Our Lord understood this, and told John’s disciples to return to their master and tell him what they were seeing him do. “The blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cured, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is preached to the poor.” Interestingly, this is a direct pointer to the Book of Isaiah: “In that day the deaf shall hear the words of a book, and out of their gloom and darkness the eyes of the blind shall see. The meek shall obtain fresh joy in the Lord, and the poor among men shall exult in the Holy One of Israel” (Isaiah 29:18-19). A little later the same prophet writes, “Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped; then shall the lame man leap like a hart, and the tongue of the dumb sing for joy” (35:5-6). Again, “the Spirit of the Lord is upon me .. to bring good tidings to the afflicted; he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted” (Isaiah 61:1). Christ was directing John’s gaze to the prophecies.

The point here is that all, even the holiest, must learn to let God be God. That is to say, God knows best. Job had to learn this in the midst of his difficulty in understanding the ways of God — allowing such suffering for the innocent. Our faith in God will be purified as we come to accept in obedience whatever God disposes. As our Lord says in a different context, but in the same Gospel: Wisdom is proved right, is justified by her children (Luke 7: 35). God’s ways will show forth his unsurpassable and perfect wisdom. Let us then accept Jesus Christ as the Lord, and bow before his ways, entrusting ourselves to his divine wisdom and making his Way our own.

Faith At times one hears very religious people say (often in jest) that this or that saint to whom he has been addressing his requests is not of much use, and that therefore he is ‘giving up on him’. He has ‘lost faith’ in a particular saint. Of course, each person is quite free to follow his own devotion when it comes to particular saints, but more serious is a deeper and allied problem. It is the problem of giving up on our Lord himself and ceasing to have much faith in him. It is not as uncommon as we may think. Many people do not believe very much in the power of prayer. Our Lord’s seeming inaction disappoints them and they give up and depend simply and instead on material and human helps to life, rather than on God. In our Gospel today St John the Baptist is puzzled because he had expected something very different of our Lord from what he was hearing. He sends his disciples to ask if he is the One who was to come, and our Lord pointed to what he was doing, with the appeal: “the Good News is proclaimed to the poor and blessed is the man who does not fall away on account of me” (Luke 7:18-23). No matter what happens to us, and no matter what might be Our Lord’s action or seeming inaction in the face of our needs, we must never lose faith in him. Blessed will we be if we do not lose faith in him. All too often people turn away from God in anger, or in indifference, or in any one of several different forms and degrees of unbelief, because they have not obtained the satisfaction of their wishes. They begin to lose faith in Our Lord.

As we think of Our Lord’s words to John the Baptist in today’s Gospel, let us resolve to maintain our faith in Our Lord no matter what might happen, and whatever be the appearances. We must live not by mere appearances, but by faith — faith in Our Lord whatever be the seeming outcome or course of events. This is the path to blessedness because it is the path of faith. We remember what Our Lord said to Thomas after his resurrection: “You believe because you have seen me. Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe.”

(E.J.Tyler)

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St Ambrose has some words that fit the children of God marvellously well. He is speaking of the ass’ colt, tethered to its dam, which Jesus needed for his triumph: “Only an order of the Lord could untie it,” he says. “It was set loose by the hands of the apostles. To do such a deed, one needs a special way of living and a special grace. You too must he an apostle, to set free those who are captive.” Let me comment on this text for you once more. How often, upon a word from Jesus, will we have to loosen souls from their bonds, because he needs them for his triumph! May our hands be apostles’ hands, and our actions, and our lives also. Then God will give us an apostle’s grace, too, to break the fetters of those who are enchained.

Entrance Antiphon Cf. Ps 119 (118):151-152 You, O Lord, are close, and all your ways are truth. From of old I have known of your decrees, for you are eternal.

Collect Unworthy servants that we are, O Lord, grieved by the guilt of our deeds, we pray that you may gladden us by the saving advent of your Only Begotten Son. Who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

This woman who once wanted to become a Trappistine nun was instead led by God to establish a community of sisters who care for the sick and aged in the United States and throughout the world. Born into a distinguished family in Aachen (then ruled Blessed Mary Frances Schervie

by Prussia but formerly Aix-la-Chapelle, France), Frances ran the household after her mother’s death and established a reputation for generosity to the poor. In 1844 she became a Secular Franciscan. The next year she and four companions established a religious community devoted to caring for the poor. In 1851 the Sisters of the Poor of St. Francis (a variant of the original name) were approved by the local bishop; the community soon spread. The first U.S. foundation was made in 1858. Mother Frances visited the United States in 1863 and helped her sisters nurse soldiers wounded in the Civil War. She visited the United States again in 1868. When Philip Hoever was establishing the Brothers of the Poor of St. Francis, she encouraged him. When Mother Frances died, there were 2,500 members of her community worldwide. The number has kept growing. They are still engaged in operating hospitals and homes for the aged. Mother Mary Frances was beatified in 1974. The sick, the poor and the aged are constantly in danger of being considered "useless" members of society and therefore ignored — or worse. Women and men motivated by the ideals of Mother Frances are needed if the God-given dignity and destiny of all people are to be respected.

In 1868, Mother Frances wrote to all her sisters, reminding them of Jesus’ words: “You are my friends if you do what I command you.... I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another” (John 15:14,17). She continued: “If we do this faithfully and zealously, we will experience the truth of the words of our father St. Francis who says that love lightens all difficulties and sweetens all bitterness. We will likewise partake of the blessing which St. Francis promised to all his children, both present and future, after having admonished them to love one another even as he had loved them and continues to love them.” (AmericanCatholic.org)

Scripture today: Isaiah 54: 1-10; Psalm 30: 2 & 4, 5-6, 11-12a, & 13b; Luke 7: 24-30.

And when the messengers of John had departed, Jesus began to speak to the people about John. What did you go out into the wilderness to see? A reed shaken by the wind? No? Then what did you go out to see? A man dressed in fine clothes? No, those who go in for fine clothes and live luxuriously are to be found at court! Then what did you go out to see? A prophet? Yes, I tell you, and more than a prophet. This is the one about whom it is written: ‘I will send my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way before you.’ I tell you, among those born of women there is no‑one greater than John; yet the one who is least in the kingdom of God is greater than he. All the people, even the tax collectors, who heard him, acknowledged God’s plan as right by accepting John’s baptism. But the Pharisees and experts in the law rejected God’s purpose for themselves, because they had not been baptized by John. (Luke 7: 24-30)

God is right I suppose we could say that there are, broadly, at least two approaches to life. One person sees life as an arena for a personal adventure or enterprise. He sets out to do things that attract him and so he builds his life by using all the talent and opportunity he can summon. He may succeed, he may fail, but the entire thing is perceived as his personal project. Fr. Ted Tyler

The other person has understood that life has come from the hand of God. God has a plan, an intention. The aim of life is, this person sees, not so much to build up one’s own enterprise as to implement the intention and the enterprise of God, the Lord of all. These are radically different approaches. The first person may not think much of God. When he does think of God, he perhaps scarcely regards him as real anyway. What is his attitude to the talk of God’s will, his plan, his intentions for man and the world? If he gets around to thinking of this in any way seriously, he is suspicious and implicitly thinks that God’s plan would not be right. His own plans, rather, are what are right. The next person is not at all suspicious of God’s plans — he implicitly, even instinctively, thinks that they would be right. If anything, he would be very suspicious of the rightness of his own plans if they were conceived independently of God’s. This matter of the creature making a judgment on the Creator’s judgment, of his deciding on the rightness or otherwise of God’s plan and will, is a very fundamental matter. The judgment on the rightness of God may be implicit or explicit, but its ominousness has to be recognized. It is a major issue in the great Biblical account of the Fall of man. Genesis places before us the creation by God of the Man and the Woman in the Garden — and all is well and beautiful. But suddenly the Serpent is found there, and he “was more crafty” than any other wild animal that God had made. He enters into communication with the Woman, and immediately sows a suspicion in her mind about the rightness of what God required of her. “Did God say, ‘You shall not eat from any tree in the garden?’” — of course, God did not require this, but the Serpent is implanting a suspicion that God is not good, that he is unreasonable, that he is wrong to do what he did.

Let us contemplate the scene from the third chapter of Genesis, because it is very important. The Woman replies to the Serpent’s insinuating question that she and the Man may eat of any tree except the tree in the middle of the garden, for if that is eaten they will die. They have been divinely warned, and the warning, of course, could be viewed as an act of love or an act of hostility. The Serpent lunges with his disagreement. God has told an untruth and this is because he is not good to you: “You will not die; for God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened and you will be god-like, knowing good and evil” (3:1-5). You will be able to decide for yourself what is good and evil, just as a god might. You will be God’s equal and independent of his moral law, for you will have the power and the wisdom to decide on that law yourselves. The Woman entertained the thought, accepted it as a pleasing prospect, decided that she would thenceforth be her own master, and rebelled against the Creator. She decided that God was not right and that she would now decide what was right. She proposed this to the Man her husband, and he ate of the fruit too. God was not right. They were right. All of this brings us to our Gospel today in which our Lord contrasts the reaction of “all the people, even the tax collectors,” to John’s ministry and baptism with that of “the Pharisees and experts in the law.” It turned on their judgment of the rightness of God’s plan as manifested in the baptism of John. Let us contemplate our Lord’s words: “I tell you, among those born of women there is no-one greater than John; yet the one who is least in the kingdom of God is greater than he. All the people, even the tax collectors, who heard him, acknowledged God’s plan as right (edikaiōsan ton theon) by accepting John’s baptism. But the Pharisees and experts in the law rejected God’s purpose for themselves, because they had not been baptized by John” (Luke 7: 24-30). The heart of the difference between the two groups was the acknowledgment of God’s plan as being right, by accepting John’s baptism. Let us ponder our Lord’s words, and appreciate their implications.

One of the tendencies of the modern secular age is to discount the importance not of wrongdoing but of sin. Sin does not matter much — but of course wrongdoing does. Let the Christian be distinguished for his sense of the seriousness of sin. It must be avoided. Let each of us appreciate the offence in anything which suggests that God is not right in what he wants. As our Lord says in another context, wisdom is proved right by her actions (Matthew 11: 19). God’s wisdom, his will, his plan is right, and our whole life ought bear witness to that eternal fact.

God is love It has been pointed out that the character and shape of a religion unfolds from the image of God which is at its root. Not only will a religion be thus affected by its image or conception of God, Fr. Ted Tyler

but a civilization will similarly be shaped by it. As we consider primal religions and the world religions of mankind, we can point to a fundamental feature of what Judaism and Christianity term “Revealed Religion.” It is that God, in the words of one of the letters of St John, is love. And so it is that in the first reading of today that is from the book of Isaiah (Isaiah 54:1-10), God speaks to his people as Creator. The marvel is that as Creator he states that he will be Israel’s Husband. What god of any people addresses his people in this fashion? Repeatedly in the prophets God reveals that he regards himself as the Husband of his people. We ought immerse ourselves in these inspired texts so as gradually to realize their import. For the Christian it is a matter of realizing that God is his Father, and that he is God’s child, his adopted child. Christ came to make us children of God by the gift of the Holy Spirit. We ought pray for a deep sense of this, and for the virtues that enable us to live as children of God. In every possible circumstance, in every upsetting situation, in every reversal, in good times and in bad, we ought interpret the situation in light of the fact that God is our heavenly Father.

We ought pray for the grace to imitate Jesus in this. By the power of his Holy Spirit he has brought it about that we are children of the Father. A central feature of any conversion is the embrace of this fundamental truth. God is love. He is mercy. He is my Father, I am his child. He is our Father, and we are his children.

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We can never attribute to ourselves the power of Jesus who is passing by amongst us. Our Lord is passing by: and he transforms souls when we come close to him with one heart, one feeling, one desire: to be good Christians. But it is he who does it: not you nor I. It is Christ who is passing by! And then he stays in our hearts — in yours and in mine — and in our tabernacles. Jesus is passing by, and Jesus comes to stay. He stays in you, in each one of you, and in me.

Liturgical Season	Sun	Mon	Tues	Wed	Thurs	Fri	Sat
First Week of Advent B-2					1	2	3
Second Week of Advent B-2	4	5	6	7	8 The Immaculate Conception	9	10
Third Week of Advent B-2	11	12	13	14	15