ST JOSEPH'S ABBEY, SPENCER MA

It was the custom in the ancient world, long before engraved announcements or phones or texting or email, that when a baby was born to a respectable family, messengers would be sent out to announce the birth to the “right sort of people,” friends of the family’s social class in the best neighborhoods of the city. And so heavenly messengers announce Jesus’ birth to shepherds. Notice who gets invited to visit the baby. The very poor, these “lowest-esteemed laborers,” receive the birth announcement of God’s own Son. They are the “right sort of people” for our God, people of God’s own social standing. One scholar remarks that this open “traffic” between heaven and earth is the great sign of the awesomeness of the event of the Nativity.* The heavens are opened, angels are everywhere. There is now an easy interchange, for God’s dream of intimacy with his creation has come true in Mary’s womb. Through Mary Heaven has been irrevocably wedded to Earth in Christ Jesus. And the right sort of ...

On this feast of the Holy Innocents,  martyred as infants so long ago we recall that even now the wailing and crying  continue in too many places - for unborn and lowborn, and all those who cannot keep up or speak up or plead their own cause. And so day after day, even hour by hour, we pray, hoping against hope and daring to believe that our prayers matter, that God hears. Panel painting by Fra Angelico.

According to the Gospel of Luke, Jesus, Mary and Joseph got settled into a regular family life only after they returned to the little village of Nazareth following the Presentation of Jesus in the Temple of Jerusalem.  There, in Nazareth, Luke says, “The child grew and became strong, filled with wisdom; and the favor of God was upon him.”  Of Jesus as an older boy, Luke says that he was obedient to his parents and that, “Jesus advanced in wisdom and age and favor before God and man.”  If the instrument of our redemption is the humanity of Jesus Christ, it was in the humdrum, concrete reality of family life and the social and religious life of first-century Palestine that the human nature of Jesus—united as it is to the divine Person of the Word—that the human nature of Jesus took on our full humanity. We believe with the Church that Jesus…blossomed in his perfect expression of a human personality through the agency of the nurturing, the love, example, and i...

As Saint Stephen is martyred, he sees the heavens open and Jesus at the right hand of the Father.  We too know that the heavens have indeed been torn apart - the newborn Christ lying in the manger has come down to us like the spring rain upon the tender grass. With Stephen let us hand over our entire selves to God Most High, who has become for us God most low. The Stoning of St. Stephen , Rembrandt (Rembrandt van Rijn) (Dutch, Leiden 1606–1669 Amsterdam), 1635, etching. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Used with permission.

In his Apostolic Letter, Patris Corde , Our Holy Father Pope Francis has encouraged us to deepen our devotion to St. Joseph – a beloved father, a tender and loving father, an accepting father. As I thought about today’s celebration, I couldn’t help but think that the liturgy reveals the heart of another father – our heavenly Father, the God and Father of Our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory and the God of all consolation. It is with the heart of a tender and loving father that our heavenly Father has prepared this feast for us, his dear children. From the Introit to the closing hymn, the Father opens his heart to show us his overflowing love for his Only-begotten. The whole world must know it: “You are my Son; it is I who have begotten you this day.” In the dark of the night watch, the Father summons all creation to witness the glory of his beloved Son. Indeed, “the heavens proclaim the glory of God, and the firmament shows forth the work of his hands.” Tonight “deep is calling...

Later in his ministry, Jesus will remind a follower that he, “the Son of Man has nowhere to rest his head.” But for now, the Infant Jesus rests in the arms of Mary and Joseph, hidden with them in an ordinary life of pleasures, dull routine, sorrows, aches and pains like ours. And even now, he  asks each of us if he can rest his head against our heart. How shall we respond?

This evening in the final  O Antiphon  we chant to Christ Jesus: O Emmanuel , king and lawgiver,  desire of the nations,  Savior of all people: Come and set us free, Lord our God.   Emmanuel is God with us, in all that we go through, in our joys and sorrows.  As monks, it is our duty and privilege to become attuned to the Lord's  continual  advent. For if it is true, as we believe, that one day the Lord will return once and for all to gather us all together and bring us home to the Father in the end time, we also know that his coming toward us is a relentless, already-happening reality. And we are meant to be  experts -- experts at waiting, attentiveness; experts at emptiness, the emptiness that is  constantly  clearing a space for him. In Christ Jesus, our Emmanuel, God has made a giant leap towards us. Jesus our Lord is  always  drawing near.   And attentiveness to his presence is the secret we were made for. At the...