Luke 2: 15-21 (links validated 11/29/23)

In 1929, just 17 days short of his 9th birthday, the young Karol Wojtyla — the future Pope John Paul II — came home from the school in the evening. He was accustomed to see his father — a strong soldier in the Polish army — praying on his knees on their parlor’s hardwood floor. That day, when the young Karol, saw his father praying, he saw his dad’s knees bathing in a pool of tears. “What’s wrong, Papa?” the young future Pope asked his dad. “Karol, your mother has died!” was his father’s reply. Not knowing quite what to do, the eight-year-old ran out of his home to the local parish Church in Wadowice, less than half a block from the Wojtyla apartment. He entered the Church and almost instinctively ran up the aisle of the Church to a kneeler in front of a statue of our Lady and, with his own tears, said to her: “Blessed Mother of Jesus, I don’t know why God took my mother to His Home at the time He did. But I do know one thing: YOU are my mother now!” The Holy Father, who entrusted himself to our Lady before his ninth birthday, continued to consecrate himself to her ever after. His very motto, “Totus Tuus,” comes from a prayer of consecration to our Lady written by St. Louis Marie Grignion de Montfort, which he prayed every day: “I am all yours, O Mary, and all I have is yours. I take you completely into my home. Give me your heart, O Mary,” so that I may love God with it...

As the story begins, our protagonist is living in obscurity. A series of events will bring this unique individual into their proper place of leading the charge as good overcomes evil and right casts down might. The main character is more than people first realize; he or she has greater depth, insight, and strength of character than others realize. The Hero’s Journey is embedded into ancient literature and in more contemporary fiction, including The Lord of the Rings and The Hunger Games. This discovery of a secret identity is also the basic story in the ancient tale of Oedipus, which plays itself out with tragic consequences. You will find variations on the theme in fairytales like Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella, particularly in their written forms. The King Arthur legend also has this central element of the boy Arthur not knowing he is the heir to the throne of England until he is the only one who can miraculously pull the sword from the stone...

Names are not incidental, they are integral features of biblical narratives. Luke uses this tradition in his unique fashion. Only Luke tells us that after the birth and awkward visit from the shepherds, Mary and Joseph dutifully set off to have the infant Jesus circumcised according to the law and given his name. Although the selected name was given by “the angel before he was conceived in the womb,” the privilege of announcing the name and teaching it to this child as he grows is given to Mary and Joseph. John Caputo observes: “At circumcision the newborn of God is spoken to even before he can speak, addressed by words he cannot understand, commissioned in advance before uttering a word of his own….”

always good insights!

In Act II of William Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet, the lovestruck Juliet ponders a difficult circumstance: she, a Capulet, has fallen in love with a man who bears the name of her family’s sworn enemies—the name of Montague. Passionately and hopefully, with youthful optimism, she challenges the conventional wisdom that uniting her name with Romeo’s is an impossibility: “What’s Montague? It is nor hand, nor foot, Nor arm, nor face, nor any other part Belonging to a man. O, be some other name! What’s in a name? That which we call a rose By any other name would smell as sweet.” Anyone who has seen or read Romeo & Juliet knows, however, that Juliet’s optimism is tragically unfounded; the names of Capulet and Montague and their attendant ill-will engulf the two lovers in their families’ violent legacy. A rose, in this case, remains a rose, and it is a thorny, painful one...

Michelangelo’s Pietà is one of the world’s most well known and beloved masterpieces. Part of its magic is the depth of its mystery. Renaissance sculptors were masters of making marble look so soft as to fold like fabric. Michelangelo was among the best. The piece is a solid and massive unit. Yet movement courses over all its surfaces. The masterpiece comes with a major flaw, which Michelangelo, perhaps wryly, insisted was a manifestation of grace. Jesus looks his age. He appears to be a dead man in his mid-30s. But you needn’t look all that closely at the Madonna to see a teenage mother. When his critics drew attention to this age discrepancy, Michelangelo quipped, “Chasity enjoys eternal youth.” There is another significant flaw. If the dead figure of Jesus were to stand erect, he would be about six feet tall. If his Mother Mary, who holds him in her lap, stood up, she would be more than twice that height...

There was once a baker who lived in Bethlehem. It was a good place to be a baker, because Bethlehem was surrounded by terraced fields stretching down the high hill on which it stood, which grew good wheat and barley. The grain made fine flour for baking into bread. The town’s name even reflected that. People said that Bethlehem, in Hebrew Beit Lehem, meant “The House of Bread”. The baker had done well for himself in this House of Bread. He was married and had two young daughters, Ruth and Naomi, and he’d been able to build a good house for them all to live in...

One of the things that children seem to like about the Harry Potter stories is the names of the characters. They have fun sounds, and their meanings are none too subtle. Severus is a Latin word for “severe” or “strict,” and Professor Severus Snape is a strict teacher if ever there was one. “Malfoy” sounds like the French for “bad faith,” mal foi; and draco means “snake” or “dragon” in Latin. Put them together and you get Draco Malfoy, a real bad apple. And the headmaster Dumbledore’s first name is Albus, which means “white,” so we may suppose he is the leader of those on the side of light...

Before we can use a language, we’re trapped inside a darkness and chaos that leave us unable to think or speak as human beings. We see this illustrated in the case of Helen Keller, who was born blind and deaf and was taught to speak only by the extraordinary efforts of a gifted teacher, Annie Sullivan. In a real sense, Annie Sullivan, Helen’s teacher, broke open the world for her. By teaching her language, Annie Sullivan precisely brought Helen Keller out of darkness and chaos and opened up for her the possibility of freedom, thought, deeper feeling, self-expression, and the awareness of love...

You are probably familiar with the story of the Wright Brothers, Orville and Wilbur. They were bicycle builders from Dayton Ohio who tinkered with various projects and ideas. They were working on a flying machine. They had gone to Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, an ideal place to test out their flyer because of regular breezes and a soft landing surface on the beach. In December 1903, after many attempts, the Wright brothers were successful in getting their “flying machine” off the ground. Thrilled, they telegraphed this message to their sister Katherine, back in Dayton: “We have actually flown 120 feet. Will be home for Christmas.” Katherine hurried to the editor of the local newspaper and showed him the message. He glanced at it and said, “How nice. The boys will be home for Christmas.” He totally missed the point. He completely missed the real news. We can miss the real news about Christmas...

The shepherds “went with haste.” I never thought much about that line, as many times as I’ve heard it read in worship services, and even read it myself. It’s always seemed a mere transitional line, a segue. If the Christmas story were a play, it could be a stage direction — a humble instruction that gets the characters from one scene to another. “Shepherds exit hastily, stage left.”That reminds me of a play I saw many years ago, back when I was a college student. I was on my Junior Year Abroad, at Oxford University. It was an open-air production of Shakespeare’s A Winter’s Tale, presented in one of the historic college quadrangles.Lots of us in the audience, sitting there on our folding chairs, were curious to see how the director would handle Shakespeare’s most famous stage direction, which is part of A Winter’s Tale. The stage direction is: “Exit, pursued by a bear.”It’s a hard enough thing to stage in a conventional theater — but, an open-air production, with no curtain, no scenery? Where were they going to hide the bear, until it was time for his big entrance?Sure enough, as the time for the famous exit drew near, a guy in a bear suit emerged from one of the nearby buildings, his bear head tucked under one arm. He strolled casually over to the edge of the lawn. There he stood for several minutes, like he was waiting for a bus. Then, at just the right moment, he donned his bear-head, entered full carnivorous mode, and chased the proper character off the quad...

As Shakespeare wrote, “What’s in a name? that which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.”[1] The irony in Juliet’s speech, of course, serves to justify why the play Romeo and Juliet is a tragedy and not a romantic comedy. Were the lovers not named Capulet and Montague, the end result might have been quite different. Their names mattered. And so, too, with Jesus. The name Jesus, of course, is the Latin form of the Greek Iesous (“yeh-soos”), which in turn is the transliteration of the Hebrew Joshua, meaning roughly “God is salvation.”...

So, let me tell you a story about a little boy who wanted to meet God. The little boy knew it was a very long trip to where God Gives, so he packed his suitcase with some tubes of Smarties and some cans of Coke and he set off on his quest to meet God. When the little boy had gone half a mile or so, he met an old woman. She was sitting in the park just staring at some pigeons. The boy sat down next to the old woman and he opened up his suitcase. The little boy was about to take a drink from one of his cans of Coke when he noticed that the old lady looked hungry. So, he offered her some of his smarties. The old woman gratefully accepted the smarties and smiled at the little boy. Her smile lit up her whole face...

Though the naming ceremony is the reason for the feast, I’m most intrigued by the verse that says Mary “kept all these things, reflecting on them in her heart.” Even as the verse grabbed me, it took me several reads to remember why—this verse is quoted in one of my favorite sci-fi novels, Ender’s Shadow, as a nun takes in an undernourished, undersized, but profoundly intelligent orphan and begins to raise him as her own, knowing that he won’t stay hers for very long. Her knowledge of their limited time together means that she treasures all his strange quirks and unexpected habits all the more...

Brad was born with a disabled arm and foot, which has kept him from working. He lives with his brother Kirk. Two bachelors, very different in temperament, yet they’re still together after all these years. Delores did that. I wanted to know more. And, do you know how a man does that? He asks a woman, because one difference between most men and most women is that men notice what other people do, while women pay attention to their relationships. Two years ago, I would have asked my mother. Now, I tend to take such a question to the first woman I see. I mean, of course, to the first woman whom I see and whom I know. I’m not trying to frighten folk. What she can tell me about so and so? Often, that’s Jamie, the parish secretary.

This New Year’s feast does more than prolong the celebration of Christmas. It mines more depth from the mystery. If Christ came only to justify us before God, then Christ could have appeared among us as a grown man, ready to die. But the Word is made flesh, the word grows in wisdom and grace among us, because Christ comes to sanctify us, to raise fallen humanity into the heights of his own divinity. The western church calls this our sanctification. The eastern, our divinization. Both far outpace mere justification...

What I want for Christmas is much different than what any one family member can give to me. You see, I want to be one of the shepherds! What do I want for Christmas? In the midst of what is usually a very predictable Christmas for me, I want to be surprised by angelic announcements. I want just a glimpse of the glory of the Lord on this silent, familiar-story sort of a night. I want to be calmed by “fear not’s”. I want to find myself holding my breath for a moment at the sounds of a heavenly-host chorus. I want to be one of the shepherds!...

One of the things that children seem to like about the Harry Potter stories is the names of the characters. They have fun sounds, and their meanings are none too subtle. Severus is a Latin word for “severe” or “strict,” and Professor Severus Snape is a strict teacher if ever there was one. “Malfoy” sounds like the French for “bad faith,” mal foi; and draco means “snake” or “dragon” in Latin. Put them together and you get Draco Malfoy, a real bad apple. And the headmaster Dumbledore’s first name is Albus, which means “white,” so we may suppose he is the leader of those on the side of light...

...language structures consciousness and creates the very possibility of thought and feeling. Before we can use a language, we’re trapped inside a darkness and chaos that leave us unable to think or speak as human beings. We see this illustrated in the case of Helen Keller, who was born blind and deaf and was taught to speak only by the extraordinary efforts of a gifted teacher, Annie Sullivan. In a real sense, Annie Sullivan, Helen’s teacher, broke open the world for her. By teaching her language, Annie Sullivan precisely brought Helen Keller out of darkness and chaos and opened up for her the possibility of freedom, thought, deeper feeling, self-expression, and the awareness of love.

In the Harry Potter novels, there’s a magical object that serves as a vessel for memories. It’s called a pensieve (p-e-n-s-i-e-v-e). J.K. Rowling invented the word by combining two others: “pensive,” which means the act of thinking deeply; and “sieve,” a vessel with many holes in it, that lets the water run through but filters out everything worth keeping. In the books, Albus Dumbledore, headmaster of Hogwart’s, uses his pensieve to offload his own thoughts. It’s a shallow stone bowl, incribed with magical, runic symbols. Inside the bowl is a luminescent soup, composed of multicolored, spaghetti-like strands. “I use the pensieve,” Dumbledore explains to Harry. “One simply siphons the excess thoughts from one’s mind, pours them into the basin, and examines them at one’s leisure. It becomes easier to spot patterns and links, you understand, when they are in this form.”

Ever heard the name Howard Thurman? He was an extraordinary academic, teacher and preacher of the Christian faith. A Floridian. Some folks say that he is among America's greatest mystics. I heard an audio of him speaking at a college graduation once. He said, "There's something in every one of you that waits and listens for the sound of the genuine in yourself." He said the sound of the genuine "...is the only true guide you will ever have. And if you cannot hear it, you will all of your life spend your days on the ends of strings that someone else pulls." Thurman went deep. Down into the heart of things. Down into what can make our New Year a happy and even a holy year.

Not every Christmas card I received had greetings like those cited earlier, of course. One had on its front 'Because Jesus Came We Can . . . have peace with God, be filled with all joy...

When a person prays - thinks about God - it helps to have a simple method. I use the TARP method: First, thank God. God has given us an amazing world filled with people created in his image. Then ask. Ask for needs of family and friends, for your own needs - and our world. After you ask, repent. You and I have areas where we lack mercy. Repent. And finally, praise.

The ancient Romans had among their pantheon a god of doorways. His name was Janus. With two faces, one looking forward and the other looking back, he was the god of beginnings as well as endings. He gives his name, of course, to this month, January, and to janitors, the keepers of doorways. And so, on the threshold of another year, as the vast majority of our fellow citizens are waking up from last night's revelry and switching on holiday parades and football games, we are holy janitors, gathered here this morning to sanctify this transition. Janus was also the god of transition and change, by the way, and to greet this beginning with prayer and song and fellowship. Just as the ancient Romans felt the need for a god of beginnings, and gathered to pay him homage when the wheat was sown, or when the harvest began, or when a baby was born, there is, within our human nature, a deep yearning for new beginnings, and a natural hope that this year will be better than the last...

Once upon a time, not so very long ago, a young mother-to-be had an ultrasound that was inconclusive. The baby's position made it difficult for the doctor to read the results. It was recommended that they have a follow up in a few weeks when it would still be possible to terminate the pregnancy. The husband and wife pondered this and decided to forego the follow up. This was their baby and no matter what would happen they would love it. Needless to say there were many anxious moments for them for the remainder of the pregnancy as some people urged them to follow the doctor’s advice. The baby was born almost a month early but save for a smaller than full-term birth weight, it was a healthy baby boy.

The name "January" comes from the Roman god Janus, the god with two faces, one looking to the past and the other looking to the future. This is indeed a time to look back at the year that has just ended and to look forward to the new year ahead of us. How did I spend this one year of my life that has just passed? Did I use it to advance my goals and objectives in life? Did I use it to enhance the purpose of my existence? Could I have done better last year in the way I invested my time between the demands of work, family, friends and society, and the demands of my spiritual life? What things did I achieve last year and what did I fail to achieve? How can I consolidate the achievements of last year while reversing the failures and losses in this new year? Through soul searching questions like these we find that a review of the past year naturally leads to setting goals and resolutions for the new year...

Once upon a time, or so the story goes, Father Junipero Serra was traveling across the Arizona Desert on his way to California. It snows in Arizona, sometimes there are even snow blizzards. Father Serra was tired and sick and the desert seemed endless. He had lost all track of time and given up all hope of ever making it to the missions, or even of living. On one particular night, this terrible snow storm rolled down over the desert, wiped out the trail, and left Father Serra and his mule wandering aimlessly in the cruel and cold darkness. Then, quite by accident, they stumbled on a little hut. They pushed their way through the door, and found straw for the mule and cold soup for the the priest. There was even a small fire place with some smoldering coals and some wood. Father Serra built a little fire and he and the mule warmed themselves. Then there came a knock on the door. They tried to ignore it. They were warm and sleepy and they were afraid that it was only the wind. But the knocking continued and Father Serra thought he heard a cry that was more than just the wind, the mules ears picked up. He thought there was someone there. So he pushed open the door, the wind and the snow swept into their little hut, but standing outside were two peons, a man and a woman, and herself pregnant. The man begged that they might come in for just a little while. Father Serra said surely they could, though he wasn’t sure that they would absorb so much of the warmth that everyone would freeze to death. Pretty soon they all fell asleep. The priest and the mule slept soundly. When they awakened the storm had stopped, the peons had vanished, and the warm Arizona sunshine had returned. "I was only dreaming that" he said to the mule, then he looked more closely and saw that there was a necklace of roses around the Mule's neck.

Once upon a time on a Christmas Eve not so very long ago, four members of one family were not looking forward to the next day’s celebration. The Mom was upset with the Dad because he was late getting home from his company’s Christmas party the night before forcing them to miss most of the neighborhood Christmas celebration. The Dad was hurt that his wife didn’t even try to understand why he couldn’t leave the party before his boss did. The oldest daughter had been in a funk all week because she didn’t have a date for the New Year’s Eve party. Her brother was mad because he had to go to his Grandparents’ pre-Midnight Mass gathering and couldn’t play hockey with his buddies. Only the fifth member of the family, a pre-teenage girl, seemed to have any Christmas spirit. Indeed she had so much Christmas spirit that she never even noticed how crabby everyone else was. When she began to play Christmas carols and invited the others to sing a-long, the older girl snapped, "Why are you bright and cheerful?" The brother joined in saying, "Save you piano playing for Grandma’s. It’s going to need some livening up!" The parents simply scowled and said nothing. The younger girl, still oblivious to the tension around her, said, "Well, why don’t we practice some Christmas Carols now and then when we get to Grandma and Grandpa's we can bring some Christmas joy to them? They never seem to have much fun except when we are there." Over the next few minutes, the others slowly moved around the piano and soon all were singing their favorite carols. Maybe it was the night. Maybe it was the young girl’s enthusiasm. Maybe she was the angels’ song for them.

("John Paton, a pioneer missionary in the south Pacific, told of how 'hostile natives surrounded his mission headquarters one night, intent on burning them out and killing them. He and his wife prayed thoughout the night that God would deliver. When daylight came, they were amazed to find that the attackers had left, unexplainably. A year later, the chief of the tribe became a Christian, and Paton asked him what had kept him and his men from burning down the house and killing them. The chief answered in surprise, "Who were all those men you had with you up there?"'...")

The year is 1432. The place is Lisbon, Portugal. A terrible plague has broken out. All who are able to do so, flee from the city, and thus they carry the plague to every corner of the country. Thousands of men, women and children are swept away by the cruel disease. People die from it everywhere – at table, in the streets, in their houses, in shops, in marketplaces, in the churches. From one person to the next it spreads, or from a coat, hat or any garment used by the plague-stricken. So many people die from the disease that bodies lie unburied in the streets of the city. Among those left helping the sick is a bishop named Andre Dias. He sees that the plague grows worse each day, so he urges the people, both those dying and those not yet afflicted, to repeat the Holy Name of Jesus. “Write it on cards,” he said, “and keep these cards on your persons; place them at night under your pillows; put them on your doors; but above all, constantly invoke with your lips and in your hearts this most powerful Name.” Bishop Dias goes about as an angel of peace, filling the sick and dying with courage and confidence. The poor sufferers feel within them a new life. Calling on Jesus, they wear the cards on their persons and carry them in their pockets. Before long, the sick begin to improve, those near death rise from their beds, the plague ceases, and the city is delivered from the worst suffering ever to inflict it. The news spreads across the entire country. Soon everyone is praying the Holy Name of Jesus. In a very short time, all Portugal is free from the dread disease...

One of the seasonal stories which is my favourite is the Mexican legend of the Christmas flower, the poinsettia, with its beautiful, red star-shape. The story tells of Maria and her little brother Pablo. They were very poor but they always looked forward to the Christmas festival. Each year a large manger scene was set up in the village church, and the days before Christmas were filled with parades and parties. The two children loved Christmas but always felt a bit left out because they had no money to buy presents. They especially wished they could give something to the church for Baby Jesus. But they had nothing to give.

There's a song by Natasha Bedingfield that captures that kind of spirit. The song is called Unwritten. In part, it says: 'Drench yourself in words unspoken. Live your life with arms wide open. Today is where your book begins The rest is still unwritten.' I think it's a wonderful way to think about your life – and for us, today, to think about the beginning of a new year.

Larry LaPrise was a not-well-known composer. But one of his compositions is still very well known today, long after his death. Through it he conveyed, probably unintentionally, in musical form what the “hoc est corpus meum”, “hocus pocus” requires of us. It set off a dance craze in the 1940’s that is still going through periodic revivals. Most of you have danced and sung it too, I suspect. This musician was a better theologian than he knew. Unfortunately, he died before anyone really had the chance to celebrate his theological acumen and savvy. The song he wrote that conveys what the Holy hocus-pocus of the Spirit is all about, is this: “You put your right hand in, you put your right hand out, you put your right hand in and you shake it all about. You do the hokey pokey and you turn yourself around. That’s what it’s all about.” The most important verse is the final one. “You put your whole self in, you put your whole self out, you put your whole self in, and you shake it all about. You do the hokey pokey and you turn yourself around. That’s what it’s all about.” We are God’s people, touched by the Spirit...

("One of the things that children seem to like about the Harry Potter stories is the names of the characters. They have fun sounds, and their meanings are none too subtle. Severus is a Latin word for 'severe' or 'strict', and Professor Severus Snape is a strict teacher if every there was one...")

I remember a song I sort of grew up with. It was a tune by Jim Croce called I Got A Name. Lousy grammar, good song. Here are some of the lyrics. Like the pine tree lining the winding road, I got a name, I got a name. Like the singing bird and the croaking toad, I got a name, I got a name. And I carry it with me like my daddy did, but I'm living the dream that he kept hid. The song spoke to me about being an individual among the faceless crowd, of being important simply because I am me...

("In his book The Art of Pilgrimage, Phil Cosineau writes that in every pilgrimage, there is a secret room, a place along the path that gives us a different perspective on the deep mystery of our journey. In describing this hidden room, Cosineau draws on a story that poet Donald Hall tells of friends who purchased an old farmhouse...")

("Annie Dillard once suggested that we always find God in our lives as Jesus was found in Bethlehem on Christmas, a helpless infant in the straw who must be picked up and nurtured into adulthood: 'God's works are as good as we make them. That God is helpless, our baby to bear, self-abandoned on the doorstep of time, wondered at by cattle and oxen...")

["In his moving musical composition Like Winter Waiting, John Foley, SJ, has Joseph sing about Mary, 'Who is this woman?' For many people (and, of course, maybe for Joseph too) the question is really, 'Who is this woman to me?' These two questions are very different in character..."]

["In today's gospel, we hear that after the wonders of Jesus' birth, 'Mary treasured all these words (rhemata = acts of utterance) and pondered them in her heart' (Luke 2:19). The location is key. Luke could have said in her mind (rendered in Greek by that slippery term nous), her soul (psyche), or spirit (pneuma), but he insists she pondered everything in her heart (kardia), echoing the wording in Luke 2:51 in case we weren't paying attention..."]

At a recent consecration of a Bishop in North Carolina, the prelates present engaged in a mild bit of Holy Play which drew sharp comment from certain quarters. I believe that some ideas of a North Carolina theologian, Dr. Michael J. Battle, reflecting on the work of the Jesuit, Anthony de Mello, will help in sorting out this matter of Holy Play, and move us closer to worship that works. Referring to Jesus in the work of de Mello, Father Battle writes: The Master surprised everyone. He was not solemn and austere as everyone expected. He did not step on the children or wear a frown. He made people laugh. This made those disciples, wanting to be powerful people who expected more of a Master, angry because they wanted to be proud of their solemnity. But the Master was doing a strange and marvelous thing: he was teaching them not to laugh at him but to laugh at themselves. When we have learned that lesson, we will be closer to worship that works...

Mary perhaps had her own assumptions about the kind of conquering hero this new Joshua would be. In a Christmas anthem Bethlehem Down by Bruce Blunt, she muses: 'When He is King we will give him the King's gifts, Myrrh for its sweetness, and gold for a crown, beautiful robes...

In a recent film directed by Robert Redford, in which he also has the leading role, An Unfinished Life, we are confronted by a person, like many of us, who is focused on the wrong things and, as a result, lacks a future orientation. Redford lives out his life on a ranch, overwhelmed by the death of his only child, a son. Buried on a spot at the ranch, Redford goes to “visit” with his son every day...

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includes several quotes

(Puppet Script by Louise Ferry)