December 2008

Welcome my brothers and sisters in Christ to today’s celebration of the Holy Mass on the last Sunday of the year. This last Sunday of the year 2008, we celebrate the Solemnity of Humble Shepherds.

During today’s reading from the Gospel of Luke, we heard the words of the shepherds who said to one another, “Let us go now to Bethlehem and see this thing that has taken place, which the Lord has made known to us.”

How many times have we Catholics repeated similar words? How many times have we said, “Let us go to the Church to hear the Word of God which has been made known to us.”

As the shepherds went to Bethlehem to adore Jesus in His physical body, you faithful believers come to Church to adore Jesus Who is physically present in the Sacred Tabernacle.

Your acts of adoration are a continuation of the footsteps of the shepherds. Your children shall continue in these footsteps. And so will their children and their grand-children, etc… all for the glory of God.

When the shepherds returned, they glorified and praised God for all they had heard and seen, as it has been told them. They glorified and praised God for the fulfillment of the promises of the Old Testament, believing that through Jesus, the promised Messiah had finally arrived.

We so have much to glorify and praise God for. We praise and glorify God because we now know beyond any doubt that Jesus was the Messiah. He fulfilled the hundreds of Old Testament prophecies that were made regarding His coming. He died for us. On the third day, He resurrected. He sent His Spirit to teach and guide us. He instituted the Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church for our spiritual well-being. He gave us the Sacraments to feed our spiritual lives and to maintain our righteousness.

What the shepherds faithfully hoped for, looking back in time, we now know that their hopes have been fulfilled.

As we continue with the celebration of the Holy Mass, let us be thankful to God for having revealed His many mysteries to us, the example of the Mother of God, His incarnation through Jesus, the wealth of spiritual blessings that are found in the Holy Church and the endless blessings that we received throughout our lives, some that we have seen, others that passed us without notice.

Let us always be thankful to the Lord God who holds our lives in His hand.

In today’s Gospel we heard how Mary was troubled when she heard the angel. What was going through her mind? Perhaps she thought: If I accept it than people will think that I am out of my mind, they will laugh at me, and they will put me on the bottom of the society. But despite that fear Mary accepted God’s will.

What would you do if today an angel would appear to you and ask of you few things? Would we say yes or no to God?

My dear Sisters and Brothers

How many times in our life we want to escape from God, from Christians responsibilities? And we escape from God because we do not have time in our life for religion, because God is not priority in our life anymore. Sometimes we are angry at God because we asked God for something, and we never received it, and we would say that God does not like us anymore!!

Once upon a time a farmer placed a weather vane on top his barn. It bore the inscription “God is love”. “Does that mean, a neighbor asked that God is fickle as the wind?” “Not in the least – replied the farmer, – it means that God is love no matter which way the wind is blowing.”

Indeed God is love; He gave us his Son whose birthday we will celebrate in the few days. But we have to remember that even though God truly loves us, we must acts as well, to accept God’s will as Mary did. And whenever we are scared to accept God’s will, let’s try to remember about Mary and Joseph. They were scared too. And we do not know if they struggled to accept God’s will, but we do know that they accepted it.

So, the message for the next few days of the Forth week of Advent is that we have to be open to God’s will, that we have to open our hearts for Jesus’ birth. Christ has to be born again in our hearts even if it is tough to live with His rules. And as Christians we have to give the good example to others, and through our deeds we will be able to open other people’s hearts for Jesus Christ. Amen.

One day, an old monk was walking along the seashore, deep in meditation. Suddenly his eyes fell upon a huge pearl. An old woman saw him pick it up. She ran up to him and demanded that he give her the pearl. He gave it to her cheerfully and with a smile. A week later, the woman found the old monk, and gave him the pearl back, saying: “Give me that which is more valuable than the pearl. Give me that which enabled you to give me the pearl cheerfully and with a smile.”

The old monk then told her about Jesus. He explained how Jesus came into the world to do for us what we could not do for ourselves. He came into the world to forgive our sins and to bring us happiness.

This story fits well with the message of today’s Gospel, which reads: God sent … a man named John … to tell people about the light, so that all should hear … and believe.

The monk is a perfect image of John the Baptist. He did for the old woman what John the Baptist did for the people of his day. He testified to the light in the way Jesus wanted. Jesus told us in his Sermon on the Mount, “You are like light for the whole world. A city built on a hill cannot be hid…. “In the same way your light must shine before people, so that they will see the good things you do and praise your Father in heaven”

My Dear Sisters and Brothers,

That brings us to each of us in this church. By our baptism and by our confirmation we have been called by God. Saint Peter explains our calling this way in his first letter to the Christians of his time, saying: “You are … God’s own people, chosen to proclaim the wonderful acts of God, who called you out of darkness into his own marvelous light.”

In other words, we have been called to testify to the light, just as John the Baptist was called to testify to it, and just as the old monk was called to testify to it. We have been called to testify to it, first of all, by our example, by our life. Today’s Gospel challenges you to become for our world what John the Baptist was for his world. Saint John was challenging them to testify to the light.

“Prepare your way… Make ready the way of the Lord” – That was the message before Christ the Messiah was born. Now the message is for us a little bit different. We have to prepare ourselves not only for Christmas when we commemorate Christ birth but we have to prepare ourselves for Jesus’ second coming. There is many ways to prepare ourselves for those events.

One way to prepare our lives, our hearts, our souls for the Second coming of Jesus is to celebrate with Him His presence on this Altar. The altar is the fulfillment of different offerings and sacrifices of the patriarchs of the Old Testament. We can see that people from our Judeo-Christian heritage always gathered around an altar to worship, to celebrate, and to prepare. In the same way the first Christians gathered around an altar to worship, to prepare for the second coming of Jesus.

At first they gathered in small groups. And the altar was very small square table where you could put only a chalice and bread. And that small altar was in their midst. Later when the persecution started they started to celebrate the Eucharist in Catacombs. There wasn’t too much space, so the altar was attached to a grave. When the persecutions were over, Mass was celebrated in churches, and the Christians brought the tradition of heaving relics in the Altar.

My brothers and sisters

You can see the priest at the very beginning of our celebration kissing the Altar. It is reverencing the altar. The altar is for us the most important symbol of Christ in the Church. It is more important than the crucifix.

Why? Because God himself, Jesus himself comes upon this Altar, and because of that we must treat the altar with the greatest reverence. It is not ordinary table, it is extraordinary table. It is not a table to put some objects like flowers, or even candles, not to mention any other things. Only bred, wine and the the Missal, the book of prayers for the Holy Mass belong on the Altar.

When we finish the liturgy of the Word we will start to celebrate the Liturgy of the Eucharist. We will prepare the altar, which is already covered with white cloth, symbolizing purity of our hearts. Since the altar of the New Covenant is sacred, symbolizing Jesus Christ, than how sacred should be our souls, how pure to receive Jesus.

Let us go forward to celebrate the Eucharist with our clean and pure hearts and souls, so this way we can prepare ourselves for the second coming of Jesus.