-Last Sunday's homily is available by email
-This Sunday's Scriptures can be found at USCCB.org
-I will be celebrating mass this weekend at 8:00 and 11:00am
God is doing nothing new!
While God is always new and ever new, the Christmas mystery and the revelation of God in the human person of Jesus at Bethlehem is nothing new, it is not a new message. In fact, it is so purely and simply the same message that we have heard from God from the beginning.
In the beginning, God made them male and female in his own image and likeness and he charged them to love, to become one flesh, and to be fruitful, multiply - as in be co-creators with God. To be human: mother, father, child.
The Christmas mystery revealed today especially in the Holy Family - husband, wife, child-is the same message: our God enters our human existence and reality not as a powerful angel from on high nor as an otherworldly creature but as a helpless child of innocent and committed parents. The message is the same as that first creation: that I am love, I have created you as humans in love, I have placed my mode of loving into your very bones/humanity, and I am calling you to simply love as human beings do.
As Fr. Chuck said on Christmas eve, "God has chosen to not only create us in his image of love, call us to his work of loving, but shown us how to live in love in Jesus."
It's simple, but it ain't easy! We certainly have complicated our basic task. Mother father and child. Husband, wife, family. How far have we gotten from our Nature and our mission? How might we reconnect through the gospel with both? In simply being and loving as we were called, created, and redeemed, to do... We could find peace.
Simple! Hardly easy!
5 comments:
To be human; to simply love as human beings do. That really caught my eye. I'm wondering because of seeing so many variations of being human, whether we think we can be and act to minimum or lesser standards.
In word etymology, the word human did not appear as a noun until the 1530s. Little wonder that we don't live & act as humans!
Loved this ... late 14c., "kindness, graciousness," from O.Fr. humanité, umanité "human nature; humankind, life on earth; pity," from L. humanitatem (nom. humanitas) "human nature; philanthropy, kindness; good breeding, refinement; the human race, mankind.
Hmm! LOVE that! But I think we are so used to our own ways that we treat most people as strangers. And like Moms teach their little ones, you don't speak (much less look!) at strangers. But that is not the message of Christ who made us family, brothers & sisters all.
Jesus calls us to love as He has loved us... within the conditions of His unconditional Love.
Simple but not easy. I am reading a book that's been on the best seller list for awhile, "The 5 Love Languages", and its main premise is that there are 5 broad categories of ways in which people love others and need to be loved - but individuals vary in which of the 5 is their greatest inclination and need. (So, that's not overly complicated - kinda simple.) But he makes the point right off the bat that once the powerful infatuation phase of a romantic love relationship is over and reality sets in, there is an opportunity for the couple to pursue "real love" - and that ain't easy. That requires commitment, discipline, sacrifice (patience, bearing with one another, forgiving one another) - not pretty words in today's culture, but they are beautiful words of Scripture.
Pope Benedict's first Encyclical titled "God Is Love - Deus Caritas Est.", is also a good read and it is a quick, easy read; 108 pgs.
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