2nd Sunday of Lent - 2023

Mt 17:1-9 
Gen 12:1-4a  2
Tim 1:8b-10

focus: Our life is a process of transformation.
function: Holy Scripture and the memories of “our Tabor experiences” can help us.

The wood carvings made by the Makonde people in Tanzania, East Africa, continue to be an attraction for our visitors and guests at St. Benedict Centerand, across the road, at the monastery. Some draw more attention nowin our new displays. Creating art out of wood is an essential element of the Makonde people’s traditional culture. Most often they work with the black ebony.  It’s amazing how these artists are able to handle this very hard kind of wood with their primitive tools, with knives, and perhaps a ripping chisel. Usually the carver looks at a block of wood; and in his imagination he sees in the wood the motif he wants to carve. Then he starts to shape the material;  it can take months or even years to complete the work of art.

This process of transformation, which happens with ebony under the skilled hands of the Makonde carvers, is an image of the transformation process that takes place in our own lives.

Today’s gospel is the story of Jesus’ transfiguration. Jesus takes three of the apostles with him. He leads them up a high mountain and they have an unforgettable experience. In Holy Scripture, mountains are places of encounter with God  and of God’s revelation. The disciples view Jesus transfigured into Divine light. They see him together with the greatest personages of God’s people in the Old Testament: with Moses who was the lawgiver; he was supremely the one who brought God’s law to the people.  And Elijah appears who was considered Israel’s eminent prophet. In him the voice of God spoke to the people with unique directness.

It’s interesting to pay attention to the details in the Evangelist Matthew’s version of the story.  In Matthew, the heavenly voice from the cloud says: “This is my beloved son, with whom I am well pleased, listen to him.” This is a combination of three quotes from the Old Testament. Jesus is God’s Son.  He is the one who speaks in Psalm 2: “The LORD said to me: You are my son!”

Jesus is the successor of Moses.  He brings the Law of Mount Sinai to fulfillment: “A prophet like me,” Moses says in the book of Deuteronomy, “will the Lord, your God, raise up for you … to him you shall listen” (Dtn 18:15).

And in Jesus the prophecy about the Suffering Servant of God comes true about whom we read in the book of Isaiah, “Here is my servant whom I uphold, my chosen one with whom I am well pleased” (Is 42:1). Thus, into this one sentence, the evangelist wove three quotes, which represent the whole Old Testament: the Law (Deuteronomy), the prophets (Isaiah), and the Writings (the Psalms). Jesus is the fulfillment the Old Covenant in its totality!

In all three gospels, which report the event of the transfiguration,  this story marks a turning point: Jesus starts to announce his upcoming suffering.   The “vision” that Peter, James and John see on Mt. Tabor prepares and strengthens the disciples for the hard reality of Jesus’ suffering and death.

We, too, are Jesus’ followers.  “Bear your share of hardship for the gospel with the strength that comes from God,” St. Paul writes to Timothy;  his word is spoken also to us.

Dear sisters and brothers, our life is a process of transformation. In the midst of the processes in which God works on us and forms us a bit similar to the way a Makonde artist carves a wooden block into a beautiful piece of art, as we experience this being formed and transformed, which sometimes is painful, today’s gospel tells us that there are two things that can help us:

One help is the word of Holy Scripture, which is fulfilled in Jesus’ teaching and in his person and which is available to us at all times, in good times and in difficult ones.  When the carving and the forming is happening with us, it’s especially important to listen to God’s Word, which first and foremost wants to tell us not what we ought to do, but rather that God is Love and that we, like Jesus, are God’s beloved sons and daughters.

Another help for us are our own smaller and greater “Tabor experiences,”our “God moments!” When and where did we see God’s grace at work in our lives? It’s good to look back time and again and to recall people through whom God guided us and moments when we understood important things more deeply, when we got glimpses of God’s glory, of the eternal behind the transitory.

Perhaps we can agree with a man named Fra Giovanni who wrote in 1513, “The gloom of the world is but a shadow.  Behind it, yet within reach, there is joy. There is radiance and glory in the darkness, could we but see. And to see, we only have to look.  I beseech you to look.”      Amen.

6th Sunday in Ordinary Time - 2023

Sirach 15:15–20
1 Corinthians 2:6–10
Matthew 5:17–37

A well-known theologian and homilist once shared that as he was writing his reflection for this Sunday, his phone rang. He picked it up and a friend of his asked him what he was doing. He responded that he was meditating on the Sermon on the Mount. “Oh,” his friend said, “that is just a list of things you can’t do.”

Unfortunately, that is probably what a lot of folks think about this section of the Sermon on the Mount. It is all about the negative and that in clear black and white: Do not… One can continue to think that way, but then you would be missing the wisdom that is embedded in what Jesus is trying to tell and teach us. Probably without realizing it, you would also be reducing your understanding of who Jesus is and what he is asking of us.

Jesus makes it clear that he is not getting rid of the Law, the Torah, and the prophets. In fact, he down right refuses to do away with them. He talks about fulfilling them. What does this mean? It means going below the surface of not killing, not committing adultery, not swearing (that means invoking God to stand behind the truth of what you are saying). It means going from a simple letter of the Law and the Prophets to the heart of the matter. It is not just a matter of external actions that the Law is concerned about. That might be easy to carry out. But it is a matter of the inner self and what our inner self is thinking, feeling and desiring. Jesus our teacher is calling us to be quiet and listen to the depths of our feelings and thoughts. That is what a biblical heart is about.

He is saying: Don’t think that because you did not fire a gun at someone or put a knife in their back that you have not killed. As an example of what he means by killing, he asks us to be aware of our anger. Are you aware of how anger arises in you, is expressed and then subsides? Are you aware of its subtleties? Jesus is talking to us about attitudes, about motivations, about feelings. All this comes before some external action results. It would seem that Jesus is focusing on what is happening internally rather than on a clear-cut external act.

It is easy for us to focus on an act, on the external. Jesus would have us go further, go deeper and enter our hearts. In terms of the Law, he wants to move us from the external letter, originally carved on stone, to the heart, to the spirit. He wants us to become aware of the whole person with all that means. That he would say is getting close to what is meant by observing the commandment “Do not kill.”

Jesus draws that out further to include our need for reconciliation and forgiveness. It is what happens between us that matters. It takes work, much inner work, to become a peacemaker, a restorer of relationships. It takes effort to say and mean “I am sorry” or to be responsible for my actions in times of conflict.

It is clear that Jesus is about moving us to our heart when he says adultery begins in the heart with lust, with desire. Knowing our longings, knowing what lies behind our coveting, our reaching out to grasp at this or that person or thing. Bringing that to surface, that is where Jesus would have us look and begin to see what we are “keeping.” If we need to broaden the meaning of lust, then we might do well to consider our obsessions, look at our addictions, look again at our consumer society and how that effects others on the planet.

Jesus invites us to consider our language as well. Taking oaths and swearing are about invoking God to stand behind the truth of what we are saying. The language we humans are to speak is about the truth. One can blithely invoke God with a hand on the Bible, and then do the opposite of what one says. Integral speech is what Jesus is calling us to. There has to be a connection between our hearts and thoughts and what we say. This is about honest communication. Honest communication will sustain our common life whether the community be that of faith or of civil society.

Jesus is our teacher today. He is opening up for us what the heart of the Torah and the Prophets is all about. He is also our interpreter of tradition. He is taking what we have already received and is giving it back to us at a deeper level—what scripture would call, the level of the heart. He is only doing what the Prophets said God wants for us. Not a law out there, but one written on our hearts in such way that it comes naturally. What we are hearing today is what Jeremiah records as the new covenant, or as Jesus says, the old fulfilled. And Ezekiel sees it as going from a heart of stone to a heart of flesh, a heart breathing, full of life and Spirit. What Jesus is doing is not abolishing but filling with life, Spirit and meaning what has been there all along. And what is that? A relationship with our God who is full of wisdom, is mysterious and waiting for our response in love–a response that will be met with a love we cannot imagine.

We are not about keeping a commandment or a tradition. We are about fulfilling it, living out its meaning in today’s world in our fragile society. Today Jesus teaches where to look to begin fulfillment-to a heart where the Spirit lives.

  ~Fr. Joel Macul, OSB

4th Sunday in Ordinary Time - 2023

Mt 5:1-12a   
Zeph 2:3; 3:12-13  
1 Cor 1:26-31

focus: We experience joy as we encounter Jesus in the Gospel and become co-workers in his ministry.

Years ago I repeatedly attended the Retreats International Summer Institute at Notre Dame University. On its beautiful campus, there is a large memorial plate for one of this school’s most well-known alumni, the physician Dr. Tom Dooley.  This was for me more often a place to stop, to read and to marvel. After graduating from medical school, Tom Dooley enlisted in the Navy as a doctor.  The big day of his life came one hot July afternoon off the coast of Vietnam at the beginning of the US’ involvement in the Vietnam War. His ship rescued 1,000 refugees who were drifting in an boat. Many of the refugees were diseased and sick. Since Dooley was the only doctor on the ship, he was very busy giving medical aid to these people.

He discovered what a little medicine could do for sick folks like this.  He said:  “Hours later, I stopped a moment to straighten my back    and made another discovery—the biggest of my life.  I was happy [treating these folks] …happier than I had ever been before.” This experience changed Dooley’s life forever.  When he got out of the Navy, he returned to the jungles of Asia, to Laos, and set up hospitals there to serve the poor and the sick.

One of Dr. Tom Dooley’s favorite Bible passages was the one we just heard:  the Beatitudes from the Sermon on the Mount.  He applied to himself the words, Happy are those who mourn: “To mourn is to be more aware of the sorrow in the world than of the pleasure” he said.  “If you are … sensitive to sorrow, and you do something, no matter how small, to make it lighter—you can’t help but be happy.  That’s just the way it is.”  Dr. Dooley had understood something of the gospel.  In living what he had understood he found happiness.

The Beatitudes, which we heard today, have been called the Magna Charta, the basic principles, of the God’s kingdom; they summarize the message of Jesus.  There are two main aspects to this teaching.  
 
On the one hand, the Beatitudes are words of encouragement, they are congratulations, in places where we would not expect them.  People have to endure poverty, mourning, and persecution.  Jesus though tells them: God is with you in all this!  In his public ministry, Jesus felt drawn to such situations because had compassion for the poor, the sick and the outcast.  He conveyed his message that God is with them in his parables, of Dives and Lazarus, for instance, or of the Lost Sheep:  God truly cares for the poor and for those who feel lost, he says.  And he made this point in his deeds: in feeding the five thousand on the hillside, in raising the son of the poor widow, in healing the sick, in making clean the lepers, in sharing meals with people of all walks of life, and finally also in his passion and death, which are a consequence of his solidarity with the suffering and with those on the margins.

This aspect of the Beatitudes comes out even more strongly in their simpler version, which we find in the Gospel of Luke.  There Jesus says: Blessed are you who are poor, blessed are you who are now hungry, blessed are you who are now weeping.  Jesus finds that people in need are often more open to God.  As they experience the peace that the world cannot give in their encounter with Jesus, as he becomes the face of God’s mercy and love for them, God’s kingdom has begun among them and within them.  So, that’s one aspect: God’s gift of grace, present in Jesus, is given where there is hunger and a desire for it.

On the other hand though, the Beatitudes are also a journey of practice, of learning.  This comes out more strongly in the version from the Gospel of Matthew that we heard today. Blessed are the merciful.  In empathizing with others, in showing mercy to people, in truly caring for them, we extend the ministry of Jesus.     

Blessed are the peacemakers.  As we pray for those who have wronged us and bless them, for instance, as we set out on the way to forgiveness and reconciliation, we build up the kingdom of God that has begun with Jesus, irreversibly, but which isn’t here yet in its fullness.  It still awaits its consummation and we can and must make our small contribution but essential to bringing it about more fully.  Both of these aspects belong together: God’s gift and our cooperation.

Dear sisters and brothers, We, too, are invited to experience joy as we encounter Jesus in the Gospel   and become co-workers in his ministry.

We can ask ourselves: When were there moments when we found the characteristics with which St. Paul in today’s second reading describes the Christians in Corinth in our lives: When were we weak, lowly, foolish, despised?  How did we experience in these situations the strength, the wisdom, and the nobility that come from God?

When were there times when we, like Dr. Dooley, found happiness in alleviating the sorrow and the suffering of others?

When did we stand up for Jesus and his gospel and were faced with resistance and rejection because of this?

We may consider ourselves blessed through these experiences.

    ~Fr. Thomas Leitner, OSB


3rd Sunday in Ordinary Time - 2023

Prior, Fr. Anastasius Reiser, OSB - Celebrant

Dear Brothers and Sisters!

Jesus heard that his cousin, John the Baptist, was thrown into prison by Herod. He must have known Johannes well. The same family, probably they grew up together too. But then 2 different ways of education. It is not known which one. But Jesus probably graduated from the Jewish rabbinical school. It is not known which way John went. But we know his teaching and preaching, which dealt harshly with the people and the authorities:

Mt, 3 7 When he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to his baptism, he said to them, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath?
8 Produce good fruit as evidence of your repentance.
9 And do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’ For I tell you, God can raise up children to Abraham from these stones.
10 Even now the ax lies at the root of the trees. Therefore, every tree that does not bear good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.

John still appeared like one of the prophets, entirely in the style of the Old Testament. He had many followers including the apostles Andrew and John. However, when Jesus comes into contact with them, something must have changed among the followers:

Andrew was an enthusiastic follower of John the Baptist. John the Baptist preached repentance from sin. The kingdom of heaven is near. John the Baptist knew he was not the Messiah. He was expecting the Messiah. He would come soon. I.e. not yet! One day when Jesus came to John the Baptist at the Jordan, it happened. John said: “behold, the Lamb of God “. Andrew sensed that something must have changed in John's language. Salvation now seemed to be within reach in this Jesus of Nazareth, whom everyone only knew as the carpenter from Nazareth. Jesus was baptized by John in the Jordan. And as he went away, Andrew and the other disciple ran after him. Jesus asked what do you want. The question Jesus asked: “Rabbi, where do you live?” And Jesus simply answered: come! And see!

What were the differences between the teaching of John the Baptist and the message of Jesus?

John 
- preaches judgment and also knows about salvation    
- proclaims the judgment is near that cannot be postponed - the ax is already lying at the root of the trees (Lk 3.9 Mt 3.10)    
- underlines his message of judgment through a strict practice of fasting and is therefore accused by his opponents of demonic possession (Lk 7.33 Mt 11.18)  
- announces “the coming one” for the near future    - sees in its effectiveness the beginning of the reign of God already happening

Jesus
- preaches salvation and also knows about judgment
- proclaims a time of repentance before judgment - the fig tree is given another period to bear fruit (Lk 13:6-9) 
- emphasizes his good news by celebrating festivals and is therefore defamed by his opponents as "Eater and wine drinker" (Lk 7.34 Mt 11.19)
- sees in its effectiveness the beginning of the reign of God already happening

John the Baptist calls for a change of heart and conduct, a turning of one’s life from rebellion to obedience towards God. But his message is still in the tradition of the Old Testament. It is no change in the content of the Old Testament. Like the other prophets his message will be heard, some of the people will return to God. But then it will be like with the former prophets before John the Baptist: the people fall back in their old life and the prophet will be killed!

Perhaps the fact that John was in prison initiated in Jesus to take over John's role as a preacher, but to speak to the people in a whole new way: Healing the sick, love, God is present, salvation has already begun. It is the changing point in the life of Jesus and his new disciples. And Jesus must have said that with such conviction that the people who followed him had no doubt about his words.

This gospel today is the turning point from the Old to the New Testament! John the Baptist, the last prophet of the Old Testament, hands over the staff to the "Lamb of God" to make God's presence visible among us in a new way.

Dear sisters and brothers, when we talk about today about the transition from the Old to the New Testament, we too can ask ourselves the question: Have we made the step in our lives from the Old to the New Testament? When I talk about the Old and New Testament in our lives, I mean the part in us which falls back into sin or behavior which is not according to the gospel or teaching of the New Testament. Paul speaks from a new creation, a new self in the letter to the Ephesians: 4, 22 that you should put away the old self of your former way of life, corrupted through deceitful desires,
23 and be renewed in the spirit of your minds,
24 and put on the new self, created in God’s way in righteousness and holiness of truth.

Does the Old Testament still apply in our lives with "an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth", or do we follow the New Testament and "love our neighbor as ourselves"?
In our minds, are we still holding the ax to chop down the trees around us? Or do we have a shovel in hand to dig around the fig tree again and give the tree another chance?

We can continue this game with passages from the Old and New Testaments.
What is important is that some of the apostles were with John the Baptist at the Jordan and initially followed his preaching. So, all were connected to the Old Testament…
…Until Jesus came and preached the new way.
The Change of the disciples did not happen immediately. Although they have followed Jesus immediately. That is clear. But we see in the biographies of Jesus' disciples that it probably took them a long time to become the convinced followers of Jesus as we know them today. It wasn't until Easter, or even Pentecost, when they received the Holy Spirit.

It is important that we too are ready to repent, that means that we are ready to let ourselves be changed. Not only to come back to an old way of life, furthermore to “change our thinking” at all.

“Metanoia” is the word in the New Testament for the Change of the “whole self”.

To leave our own, every one’s personal “Old Testament” behind himself and look forward to the “New Testament” of love, health and life in the Kingdom of Heaven, which started already here on Earth with Jesus Christ. And then we can say with Jesus: “The people who sit in darkness have seen a great light”

Amen!

~Prior, Fr. Anastasius Reiser, OSB

2nd Sunday in Ordinary Time - 2023

Fr. Joel Macul, OSB - celebrant

Isaiah 49:3, 5-6
I Corinthians 1:1-3
John 1:29-34

The color of the season may be green. It may be Ordinary Time, but the Word we have heard won’t let us let go of the Advent-Christmas-Epiphany season we have just celebrated. That season still lingers. There is still a taste of it in our mouths and hearts. The John the Baptist we met in Advent is still with us. He is not so much a voice calling us to prepare and repent for someone is coming. Today we see and hear another dimension of John the Baptist. Today he is a witness. Today he testifies to what he has seen. When he gives evidence, he is making it clear who Jesus is. John understands the purpose of his life: he is the first witness who sees who Jesus is and what Jesus will do.

Christmas and Epiphany are the season in which we celebrate God’s love in becoming one of us, a member of our human family. It is a season in which we are reminded again of the way in which God has made his plan known. His plan was to embrace our humanity as a member of his people Israel. But we are reminded that his plan also includes the world. The Son he sends is a light for all peoples. The sin the Lamb takes away is the brokenness of the whole world. God’s plan is broad and inclusive. It embraces as many faces as there are people on the earth. There is nothing minimalist here. God tells his servant in Isaiah, “It is not enough for you to restore Israel, you are a light for all.” My salvation must go to the ends of the earth. As much as Christmas begins with a Child, a son born for us, it expands quickly to a universal vision, clearly hinted at and celebrated last Sunday in Epiphany with its wise men from afar.

John the Baptist’s witness is important. It shows us someone who accepts and identifies this Jesus from Galilee. John has seen him and heard him. He now comes to the realization that his life must be centered on this Jesus— God’s son and God’s Lamb. In this way John the Baptist gives us a hint at what we are all about as followers of Jesus. On a personal level, we are not the light, and we are not God’s gift to the world. Instead, we are to bear witness that it is Jesus who is the Light and he is God’s gift to the world. John says he came baptizing with water so that one day we might recognize the one who will baptize with the Spirit. In a real sense, John is saying that our lives in Christ are a hint to others of the great things that are yet to come. Our lives are to be attractive to those around us. …Crowds are drawn to John at the river. Perhaps we become so attractive that others like to be with us, that they see something of God’s working in our lives. But in the end, we are a sign of Jesus who comes first. Our lives are to be led in such a way that others will see that the Spirit is poured out upon the earth.

There is a wonderful sense in which John the Baptist is able to live for another; he is able to step aside so that God’s presence may be seen by others; John’s life becomes transparent; it doesn’t stop with him. Those who are attracted to him are invited to follow his hand and finger as he points out the person who is truly from God. John is a witness. He risks taking Jesus’ side as it were; he risks identifying him and speak about him. The same challenge is placed on us too: we are asked to renew our commitment to Jesus: God’s Son and God’s Lamb. We are asked to acknowledge that it is he who saves from the restrictions and violence of this world. From the very first moment we encounter Jesus, we encounter him as one who enters into our sin, our brokenness. The weak Lamb will make our sin weak and powerless.

This Sunday we are called to witness. What are we called to witness to? That Jesus and his word are the fulfillment of humanity’s hope to see God face to face and to hear his word, not in dream but in reality, in flesh and blood. We are called to witness that in Jesus God gives us the Lamb of sacrifice that will bring the restoration of communion and love between God and the world, and between all who live on the world; we give witness that God has empowered Jesus with the Spirit, with the fullness of life. And we give witness that Jesus in his turn will baptize with this Spirit; he will pour out God’s love, refreshment and peace upon those who come to him. We give witness that the Spirit of holiness is not confined to God but is truly God’s great gift to the world. In this Jesus, he removes all barriers through the blood of the Lamb. And he opens up for all a call to be holy as he is holy. And God’s son is holy because his son has been faithful to the end. To be a witness to Jesus is to be specific: Through this man from Nazareth God deals with the world in a definite way. It is also to be universal: Jesus will walk a path that will open the way for the Spirit to make its home in every person, to the ends of the earth.

As people who have been baptized in water and the Spirit, we must be careful to be witnesses to the whole truth. We must take care that we truly bear witness to what God has done in Christ, his anointed. And what we see him continuing to do through his Spirit who is at work in the richness of God’s gifts found throughout his world. You are my servants who bear witness to my working of rescuing, healing, binding up to the ends of the world. Yes, we are called and baptized into a life of witnessing..witnessing before the world to what the Father said of the world on the first day:. Behold, it is good, very good indeed.

~Fr. Joel Macul, OSB

Christmas Vigil - 2022

Prior, Fr. Joel Macul, OSB - celebrant

Isaiah 9:1–6
Titus 2:11–14
Luke 2:1–14

It all comes down to this, to littleness, to a tiny child, a son, to be exact, but small nevertheless. Yes, it all comes down to vulnerability, to poverty, to utter simplicity. Yes, tonight is all about fragility, about being on the edge of society, of being reduced to essentials. That is the drama that our God is all about this night: becoming small, becoming weak, becoming truly human—no grandeur, nothing great, just a child, and an infant at that.

Isaiah seems to have intuited this child. He saw the child in grand terms. He pictured him as great. To be honest, he seems to have military language at hand to describe the expected one. Yes, someone who could smash oppression, cut through slavery and human trafficking, take away the yoke that made domination, discrimination and force the face of authority and power. It would have to be someone great, someone who came from a family of greatness. A hero Isaiah calls him, a father to the community, a peacemaker. Isaiah envisioned a leader whose domain was in fact not just a small kingdom, but an empire seen as vast. This child, this son of David would set the world right; justice would be his name.

Isaiah was and is right. The vision is true. There is a victory, and the old order can be changed, can be conquered and a new order can and will be possible. There will be a way of living that means a vast kingdom of justice and peace. Tonight tells us that it has arrived but not on our terms. We liked to fill in the definitions of God-hero, Father-Forever, Wonder-Counselor, Prince of Peace—usually as some one great and powerful. And we take up these names in our songs and hymns. But tonight we hear that our God will give us this person—in his way.

We wait in Advent for someone to come, for God to break into our lives. Tonight God comes, he answers in a surprising way: what he gives us is a child, an infant. Could any human being be more powerless, more vulnerable, more fragile than a newborn child? And yet for all the great expectations and names and hopes and dreams, we are given a child. The answer to our prayers, our deepest longing to see the face of God, is someone wrapped in swaddling clothes, a newborn child. Or put in other words, we are given the gift of God become weak.

We need to understand that the child Isaiah saw was not of our making. It is a gift, “a child, a son is given to us.” We humans are helpless, weak and broken. It seems we cannot overcome that strain of acting as if we can do it ourselves. We can make things better on our own. But God knows our hearts. The only way out of the impasse of repeated self-centeredness of making ourselves great, is to offer us a gift, a gift from himself, the gift of his Son. The prophet saw this gift of a child as light in darkness. He saw in this child as the gift of wisdom and peace.

The gospel story makes it very clear that when God sends his gift it will come in what looks like insignificance; his gift will look like something powerless in the face of the task that lies ahead. And yet, this is our God’s way. To smash our yoke of pride and self-sufficiency, he offers us the gift of becoming vulnerable, of becoming weak, even of dying, of loosing everything human.

And yet we know that powerlessness and vulnerability, these qualities that are readily identified with a child, are what will mark this Son of God’s life. We believe that in the end the vast domain of peace will only come about through the cross and death of this Son. We believe that what will break oppression will be the willingness of God’s infant to walk into our messy, often chaotic and broken lives and touch them with a strength that is pure love and selflessness. We are not afraid to gather in the darkness this night to receive this gift of a child because we believe that hidden in powerlessness, in smallness is true greatness, faithful love and a God who is not afraid to come into this world to those who for a moment are homeless, on the move and without a bed.

Paul reminds us that the grace of God, the gift of God, has appeared; God’s ultimate gift to humanity has come among us. God’s gift was to walk our human path in such way that we would be drawn to accepting this gift, this favor of God so that our lives would again become human. And Jesus, he gave himself for us so that we would be free, our bonds and yokes would be broken, and we could, as the angel says to the shepherds, live without fear.

Tonight we are offered God’s greatest gift, we have found favor with God and he extends his peace to us. Will we accept this Christmas gift—finding strength through becoming weak, by accepting who we are so that we can grow into who we can become? For in the end, the good news of great joy is that tonight God gifts us with his child, so that in opening our arms to accept this gift, we in turn may become his daughters and sons.

Christ is born! Glorify him!

Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception

Prior, Fr. Joel Macul, OSB - Celebrant

Genesis 3:9–15, 20
Ephesians 1:3–6, 11–12
Luke 1:26–38

You have to be steeped in mystery, in something beyond the everyday, beyond the flatness and dullness of everyday life, to grasp what we are celebrating today. You need to be a poet, a myth maker to envision the big picture that is placed before us on this feast. If you limit the story and Mary to the simply physical conception, you will be missing something. Or if you think that sin alone is the guiding theme, you will not be going far enough.

Mary finds herself in the center of mystery, the mystery of God who chooses who he wills and acts and speaks when he wills. How he does that, where he does that and with whom God interacts is and must be just beyond our human logic. But then our God is not bound by our logic or our will. From our point of view, his will is full or surprises.

Simply put Mary finds herself at the beginning. That is what we are remembering to day-beginning, conception. And our stories sweep us back to just beyond time to the garden to where it all began. And they bring that beginning forward to touch a young girl in Nazareth. Mary is bringing the beginning into the present ….There is something of a paradox here for us. We are in a season where we imagine our end, the end of the world, the cosmos. Where we speak of Christ coming to fulfill it all. And yet today we are almost thrown back to the beginning. Yet just this past Sunday, we also found ourselves at the beginning. We were back in the garden or the peaceable Kingdom where all was harmony, when there was no hurt, no enmity, no fear. And this vision, we are told, is what is coming. The beginning is echoed in what is to come. The end, what is coming, is profoundly linked to what was in the beginning.

If we look at the world around us or listen to the news, we slowly come to think that news can only be bad. The world is broken, human lives are shaped forever by suffering and death. Soon we are tempted to believe that is the way it is supposed to be. Today God comes along to remind us just what is the beginning of human life, of the human story. We hear the garden story about the serpent and the loss of obedience, the fracture of a relationship with God. True as that is, it is not the beginning of the story. The story begins not with sin but with grace. Today we hear that original sin is not so original; it is grace that is original.

When the angel breaks into Mary’s life, and artists and poets have done a good work in showing us what she might have been doing at that momentous arrival of a messenger from God, when the angel comes, he does not address the young woman by her name, Mary. The storyteller informs us of that. He addresses her with a new name, her original name. Hail, full of grace. That is Mary’s name. She has found favor with God, she is the chosen one, the one loved from the beginning. That is Mary’s identity—Grace, favor, loved one. She hears her real name. And hearing that name she can respond out of grace.

God identifies the endearing quality of humanity and his messenger dares to utter it: Grace, chosen, Favored, overshadowed. That is humanity at its origins. And that is where humanity is going. Surely a long journey ahead of us to believe and stand in that grace, that unconditional love of God. But that is who we are in our depths.

Mary stands at the beginning of letting humanity find itself again and walk to what is coming. The mystery that is before us is that God will restore us to bask in being touched by his love. In the core of her being Mary, full of grace, has found that point at which she is free of illusion and deception and has become poor enough in spirit that her spirit and God’s can converge. She has come to the immaculate, the pure within her and knows it as all from God. From there she speaks her yes.

In Mary’s yes, Paul tells us, it is possible for us to realize that we too are chosen, favored before the foundation of the world. Her yes becomes Christ. In him we, too, recover our beginnings, we too can know that it is grace that moves us, surrounds us and opens our eyes to see beyond sin, brokenness, and ever-present fear and look at love.

Once we realize that Mary has woken us up to the story of grace again, we can do nothing but be grateful and praise our God who surrounds us with graciousness and forgiveness. The beginning is not lost to us. Our roots are still there, given now in Christ. And with him we can complete the story and speak the poem that echoes in our hearts from before the foundation of the world. God’s story, God’s song that will never end: his grace, his love is without end. For that we were created.

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