And I remember one semester, one of the priests who works at the seminary, one day passed by my room when the door was left wide open, and upon looking into my living quarters, commented, “You know, Tom, the state of your room is a reflection of the state of your soul.”  I shrugged off the zinger as a catchy way of requesting me to clean my room, but later I found this very request printed in Sacred Scripture, “Put your house in order, for you are about to die…”¹  You see, our heart is like a house that we are asked to put in order. 

            And the Law, the Ten Commandments, is intended to help us achieve this cleanliness of heart.  We shouldn’t view the Ten Commandments as merely a minimum limit that we should not go beyond.  Rather, they are guideposts, guiding us along a moral and spiritual journey towards purity of heart.  For example, the Sixth Commandment, Thou shall not commit adultery, is not just a prohibition against the physical act itself.  Otherwise, why would Jesus clarify, “Whoever looks at a person lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.”²  No, the Sixth Commandment is an invitation to begin to look at others in a pure way, leading us to purity of the heart.

            At the end of the year, before us seminarians left for our Christmas break, we had to have our rooms inspected, to ensure the upkeep of the seminary.  And the same priest who made the witty retort about the condition of my room was notorious for using the “white glove inspection” technique.  He would run his finger along the some obscure location, like along the top of the door frame, to see if we had dusted the most remote crevices.  Pretty harsh, I know!  But it taught us the difference between having a cosmetically clean room and an immaculate habitation. 

            That’s what the Pharisees, who judged the apostles of Jesus for technically breaking the rules of the Sabbath, that’s what they did.³  The Pharisees only had a superficial understanding of the law and how to apply it.  So Jesus revealed to them that He came to fulfill the Law, and the fulfillment of the law is Love.⁴  We know whether or not we are applying the law correctly if it brings us to love our neighbor more as opposed to finding judgment or condemnation of them.  Being able to interpret the Law correctly is the difference between being able to answer objective multiple-choice questions and being able to write an intelligible and meaningful essay on your final exam. 

            The Ten Commandments is intended to purify even the most secret chambers of our hearts in order to prepare a fitting abode for Christ to reside.  It is the difference between having a cosmetically clean room and an immaculate habitation into which we invite our Lord to dwell.

 ¹ Isaiah 38:1-6.

² Matthew 5:28.

³ Matthew 12:1–8.

⁴ Romans 13:10.

            The truth is, in order to experience this easy yoke that Jesus promises, we have to first do something.  The best example I have is a common experience that I suspect many of you have undertaken—the team-building exercise of dividing into small groups of, say, ten individuals, and each person taking a turn falling backwards and letting the rest of the team catch you and lower you to safety.

            I myself have done this—just once.  It was when I was in college; I was a resident assistant or “RA,” one of those who were in charge of disciplining and counseling the residents on a floor of one of the many dorms at the University of Texas.  Every new academic year, all of the resident assistants had to arrive about a week earlier than the rest of the student body for our training and to meet the other RAs with whom we would be working in our dorms.  And to help build trust among team members, we did this very exercise of falling backwards and letting the rest of the team catch us.  I have to admit, it wasn’t too bad…except for the one and a half seconds of experiencing the fall, even though I knew the rest of the team was right there, ready to catch me no matter what.  And I was surprised at how easily they carried me—I thought my weight would be much heavier for them than it turned out to be the case.

            If you think about it, we experience pain in our soul as well as our body.  When we experience fear, sure, our body trembles, but our soul experiences the fear and the doubt.  And when we are sick or burdened, yes, our body feels the painful symptoms, but it is our soul that experiences the deeper suffering of anguish and despair.  And it is this burden on our soul that Our Lord desires to make light for us.  But, as I mentioned before, we have to first do something.  And that “something” is the soul’s equivalent of the falling backward, or purging ourselves, or whatever you want to call the process of letting go of any self-reliance and putting all of our trust in God.  It is then that Christ can be our all. 

            A soul cannot experience the strength and power of God’s will until it has placed itself in His providential hands by casting its burden, its whole weight upon Him, Who alone can bear our burden.  That’s when we experience it—the easy joke and the light burden promised to those who trust in Him.

 ¹ Matthew 11:28–30.

            Well, it has to do with the First Reading on the first day of Lent, on Ash Wednesday, in which God invites us to “return to Me with all of your heart.”¹  You see, our hearts can be divided sometimes.  One day we can want what is good for us and another day we desire what is pleasurable, thinking that it is good.  Sometimes we think we are capable of making great sacrifices like the virtuous saints we read about, then we miss the opportunity to show the smallest sign of patience by getting angry or impatient with someone we love.  Our hearts are divided because there are many things we love; many things occupy places in our heart.

            And so the God who is Love Itself had to show us how to give our heart completely.  He became Man to have a beating heart to show us.  He could’ve insisted that we share in the penalty but He chose to pay our entire debt alone so that we never doubt He understands…the fear and isolation that would prompt a lonely heart to cry out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”  Although, on the Cross, His body cried, “I thirst,” when they offered Jesus a drink, He did not take it, to show us this difference: the body may hunger, but the soul thirsts…with a deeper longing.  That although our body hungers for physical pleasure, our body can sacrifice what it desires for a greater good, that for which the soul thirsts.  During his crucifixion, Our Blessed Lord, in his body did hunger for relief from his physical anguish, but instead he said, “I thirst” because he desired something more than bodily comfort—He thirsts for the souls and the hearts of man; He thirsts to satisfy the deepest longing, our heart’s desire. 

             And that is why He chose this way to die…the only way a heart divided and split can truly understand…is to see a pierced heart, itself split by the lance of a soldier to reveal its contents, His Most Precious Blood.  He allowed the chalice of His Body to be drained of His Precious Blood to show us his Love.  No greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for another.²  Blood separated from the body is a sign of death, but it is also a sign of love.  That is why at the Mass, the priest consecrates the bread and wine not together but separately.  The consecration of the bread and wine separately coincides with the separation of the body and blood at Our Lord’s Passion and Death on Calvary, renewed at the altar.  Jesus could have given us his Body and Blood as a sacrifice at any time during his holy life, but he chose to give it at the holiest moment of his life, which was his death (on the Cross), when his Blood was separated from his Body, because that was a sure sign of His Love.

            We are in the last days of Lent, before the Great Triduum, the holiest three days of the year.  But let not your hearts be troubled if you’ve broken a Lenten sacrifice here or there.  It’s still not too late; our sacrifices have not been for naught.  Love is a perpetual dialogue, and during Lent, this takes the form of a dialogue between a penitent and his merciful God in response to the invitation to return to Me with all of your heart.  For we can respond by praying:

 But what if I have a prideful heart, would you in time make it more humble?

Or what Scripture calls a “stony heart,” hardened by sin and the times I’ve stumbled.

An unforgiving, embittered heart, expecting justice from a world sometimes hostile

Will you judge me with a compassionate heart, so I would be to them as merciful?

Impurity I allowed enter the thoughts of my heart, create then in me a clean heart, O Lord.

Not unlike your Mother’s at the foot of the Cross, what if I showed you a wounded heart of sorrow?

Will you reveal your pierced, crucified heart, from which the grace of healing overflow.

So that I would never doubt you understand, You became Man, a beating heart for me to see

And to pull mankind from the heart of darkness, all the more reason to adore

Your Most Sacred Heart, Lord Jesus.

 ¹ Joel 2:12.

² John 15:13.

            So as we embark on this new Lenten season, I thought it would be worthwhile to remind ourselves of the true reason why we make sacrifices.  After all, it is in our human nature to make sacrifices.  Man has been making sacrifices to God as early as the time of Cain and Able, the first children of Adam and Eve.  And even then, Scripture teaches us that there is a right way and a wrong way to make sacrifices.  Remember, Able offered the best firstling of his flock, and that sacrifice was pleasing in the eyes of God, while Cain’s offering of fruit of the soil was not so pleasing to God.¹  That was why Cain grew jealous of Able and eventually committed fratricide. 

            This theme of offering sacrifices the right way as opposed to the wrong way appears throughout Scripture.  Remember the poor widow who deposited the two small coins vs. the rich people who put in large sums of money in the temple treasury?  Jesus said: “this poor widow put in more than all the other contributors to the treasury.”²  Or the time when God rejected the burnt sacrifice offered by King Saul.  No?  Well, the prophet Samuel had to remind King Saul that to God, “obedience is better than sacrifice.”³  If obedience is what God prefers, why then has man, since the beginning of time, been placing on the altar of sacrifice the flesh of animal as offerings to God?

            The answer has to do with the Incarnation—the reason why Jesus took on our human flesh.  The Son’s obedience to the Father’s Will resulted in the Incarnation—the Son taking the flesh of humanity so that He can place his human flesh on the altar of the Cross as the perfect sacrifice to God the Father.  The Passion of Christ is the perfect sacrifice because it is the perfect act of obedience.  And so, when we conform our will to the Will of the Father, we can offer our act of obedience, which is grafted onto the Son’s gift of himself to the Father.  You see, when you unite your sacrifice to Jesus’ sacrifice, it gives flesh to the act of our obedience, which, when placed on the altar of God, becomes a fitting sacrifice to God. 

            So if you decide to “give up” something for Lent, let it be for the right reasons.  Whatever you do, whatever you give up, make sure that it is a fitting sacrifice in honor of the Supreme Good, who is God.  And as you going along your Lenten journey (these five weeks of Lent), don’t forget, each Sunday during the Offertory at Mass, when those among us in the congregation come forward to the altar to present the bread and wine to be consecrated during the Eucharist, don’t forget to offer yourself, your life, and your sacrifices—and present them to be included in the sacrifice of the Mass, where the Sacrifice will be transformed into flesh—into the Body and Blood of Christ.

 ¹ Genesis 3-5.  

² Mark 12:43.

³ Samuel 15:22.

            The Feast of the Chair of St. Peter commemorates Jesus choosing Peter (and his successors) as the pastor of the whole Church when Jesus says: “You are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church.”²  We associate Rome with St. Peter because Scripture tells us that after the angel helps Peter escape from prison in Jerusalem, Peter travels to the West where he eventually establishes the Church in Rome. 

            And it was for the Church that Peter became a martyr.  To his executioners, Peter requested that he be crucified upside down because he did not feel worthy to die in the exact manner as Our Lord.  And this fact is crucial in understanding the geographical significance of the Church in Rome.  Hundreds of Christians where martyred in Rome during the early persecutions and their bodies were quickly buried in the cover of night in graves along a nearby hillside by fellow Christians.  It was common to chop off the hands of those who had been crucified in order to get them down from the cross faster.  And in the case of St. Peter, whose crucified body hung upside down, in their rush, the Christians cut off his feet to take him down and quickly bury him in the hillside pagan cemetery before they were detected.  They dug a grave with no special markers to keep the location secret so the grave would not be desecrated.  His remains “remained” buried on that hillside for many years. 

            During those years, Christians in Rome became more affluent, so they were able build a mausoleum-type monument over the grave of St. Peter but without any specific Christians markings so as to blend in with the other pagan monuments in the cemetery (because the Church was still being persecuted).  During that time, Christians would make pilgrimages to the gravesite and would lower long strips of cloth into the opening of his tomb.  The cloth was intended to touch the bones or relics of St. Peter and themselves become second class relics to encourage the devotion of the early Christians.  

            It wasn’t until around the year 313 that Christians were free to openly practice their faith, under the rule of the Emperor Constantine, who himself was a covert to Christianity.  Constantine didn’t think it was fitting for the great Peter to be buried in a pagan cemetery and so he wanted to build a basilica over Peter’s tomb.  So he gave the pagan families one year to remove their deceased from the cemetery.  Then he built a marble encasing around the monument over Peter’s tomb and leveled the hill, burying the remaining graves and the marble encasing that housed the monument of Peter’s grave.  Constantine built the basilica on that leveled site, the altar of the basilica set over the tomb buried in the ground underneath.  That was in the 4th century.  Twelve hundred years later, in the sixteenth century, the basilica fell in such disrepair, that a new basilica was built, the one that we know as St. Peter’s Basilica in Vatican City.  The new altar sits a story above the original altar built by Emperor Constantine. 

            In 1939, Pope Pius XI requested to be buried in a crypt located under St. Peter’s Basilica.  So an excavation began under the basilica to discover the actual buried tomb of the apostle Peter.  They found the buried monument and when they open the grave, inside it was found the skeletal remains of three different people—a woman and two young men.  Archeologists and scientists were baffled…until they noticed that one of the walls of the burial monument had a hollow chamber.  This hollow wall was lined inside with marble with an inscription that translates “Peter is within.”  There were bones inside this secret chamber that scientific testing revealed to belong to one person, a robust man who had been 60 to 70 years old.  Every single bone of this man was accounted for, even the smallest phalanges of his hand…except all of the bones of his two feet were missing.  The bones had dirt matching the dirt from the original grave.  Moreover, there were hundreds of deteriorating thin strips of cloth inside the secret chamber, which must have been from those early pilgrims who came to the monument and lowered those cloth strips to touch the relics but ended up falling inside.  The early Christians under persecution, fearing that Peter’s tomb would be desecrated if discovered, placed other people’s bones in the “decoy tomb” while securing the actual bones of St. Peter in the wall of the monument…where they remain still today, underneath the altar of St. Peter’s Basilica.

            I went through this “CSI”/cold case-esque explanation of the Chair of St. Peter because it is natural for us as Roman Catholics to love Rome and the successor of Peter.  Rome is the center, the geographical heart of the Roman Catholic Church…and the seeds of this love can be traced back more than two thousand years ago when our loving Lord promised to Peter: “On this Rock, I will build my Church.”  In many ways, this prophecy has unfolded in divine providence.  Rome is the foundational heart of the Church; it is the doctrinal heart of our faith.  And over the course of two thousand years, the Church has cooperated with providence and grace to fulfill the literal words of this prophecy.  The Chair of Peter is spiritually, doctrinally, and yes physically built upon St. Peter, the Rock. 

¹ Matthew 16:13–19.

² Matthew 16:18.

            God, on the other hand, when we break one of his laws, treats us much more mercifully.  God doesn’t give us a fine, throw us in jail, or sentence us to death every time we break the divine law.  No, God instead gives us a conscience, which stirs in us a desire to do the right thing.  Now you might think our conscience is there to make us feel guilty; that is one of the effects of having a conscience.  But the actual purpose of our conscience is to gently invite us to see the error of our ways.  In a way, our conscience is God’s way of reminding us of the truth.  That is why King Herod felt so disturbed!  He interpreted his conscience as troubling him; all the while it was God who was inviting King Herod, through his conscience, to see the Truth that is God Himself.  But instead, Herod tried to bury the truth, kill it even…that’s why he had John the Baptist killed.  But on some subconscious level, Herod knew that you can try to manipulate the truth, bury it, even kill it, but the Truth that is God will always be resurrected.  That is why he thought Jesus was St. John resurrected.  The truth will always rise (to the surface).   

            On February the fifth, the Church celebrates the Memorial of St. Agatha, who was one of the great virgins and martyrs of the early church.  I remember as a young boy, reading the story of St. Agatha in my Book of Saints that our parents gave to my sisters and me.  And I was deeply disturbed by the cruel and unusual way that she was put to death.  I was so troubled, in fact, that I asked my older sister: “Was it true?  Did it really happen that way?” And my sister had to assure me that some good came out of it.

            The name “Agatha” means good.  Agatha’s goodness coincides with her name as well as her way of life.  Agatha was a true “virgin” in the theological sense because she glowed of a pure conscience; she was a true virgin because she wore the crimson of the Lamb’s blood as her cosmetics.  You see, her robe bore the indelible marks of Our Lord’s crimson blood as a witness to anyone who desires to know the Truth.

            When the world condemned Agatha to prison, she was filled with such joy and festal spirit in offering her bitter suffering to God, that is was said she looked like a bride walking towards her wedding banquet.²  Now, as a priest, I have seen many a joyful brides on their wedding day.  But I imagine St. Agatha to be more joyful that all of them as she made her way to the dungeon.  For Agatha knew the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.  Whereas the world condemned her, believing she was losing her life³, Agatha saw her martyrdom as the way to unite herself with Christ, her Bridegroom, for all of eternity.  You see, the truth, no matter how hard it is to bear, can fill you with that much joy! 

 ¹ Mark 5:14-29.

² Liturgy of Hours, Volume III, February 5.

³ Jesus said: “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” John 14:6.

          Now I’m not really advocating using Cliff’s Notes, at least not for its unintended purpose.  It’s supposed to be used as a study aid in conjunction to, not in lieu of, the source material.  And I mention this because the Gospel reading today, the story of the Magi, can itself be considered a Cliff’s Notes version of the entire Gospel story.  If we take the time to examine it, we will find that the story of the Three Kings is the Gospel story encapsulated into one story…because on a most fundamental level, the story, as well as the entire Gospel, teaches us that anyone who goes searching for Christ, when they encounter Him, they will be changed in such a way that, although they may go home, they always find a better route, a different way to go home.

          That is the recurring theme that runs throughout the entire Gospel—this change of heart, a conversion that leads one to take a different route.  And we see this theme even on the level of the three gifts that the Three Kings presented to the Christ child: gold, frankincense, and myrrh.  It is particularly apropos to us, after having just survived what was for some a hectic season of shopping for and returning gifts…it is worthwhile to see what we can learn from what the Three Kings gave to God.  After all, if you think about it, the gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh were the first Christmas presents—the first gifts that Jesus ever received for Christmas. 

          The first is the gift of gold.  Why gold?  Because it is the gift most fitting for a king.  Gold represents the best that we can possess in this life and to a king deserves the best.  Did you count how many kings were in the one Gospel story?  There were five of them.  Let’s see, there were the Three Kings, King Herod is the fourth, and then there is Jesus, the King of kings.  King Herod spent his entire screen time worrying that the Child King would take all of his possessions away—that’s why he later orders that all of the first born male babies slaughtered—the slaughter of the Holy Innocents.  At the birth of the King of heaven, a king of earth is troubled because he fears losing his possessions.

          In the Christmas season, there is this subpar genre of gift-giving known as re-gifting.  Now I won’t divulge if I myself have been guilty of what some believe to be a déclassé social faux paux (there is a limit to my public confessions per homily).  But if you think about it, everything that we possess was first given to us by God; everything from our time here on this earth, our treasure we possess, and even our talents, they are all gifts first given to us from God.  And so, what we decide to give back to God in terms of what we possess is in essence a re-gifting of what God so generously gave to us.  And I mention this because whereas we tend to re-gift to others those things that we might not use or have excess of, we should re-gift to God as King only the best that we have.  That what it means for us to offer Christ the gift of gold.  The Three Kings were kings in their own right.  But unlike King Herod, they weren’t afraid to lose their earthly treasures in order to follow the Christ…and that’s what they did when they gave the Baby Jesus the gift of gold…they left Bethlehem, their pocketbooks a litter lighter, which allowed them to successfully traverse a different route to get home.

          Now the second of the magian gifts is that of frankincense, which as some of you may know is incense.  In the time of Jesus, one would only burn incense to signify a sacrifice to God.  That is the irony of the Three Kings—they were not Jews who believed in the one, true God.  No, the Three Kings were from the East and believed in pagan gods—they were idolaters.  Yet we called them Wise Men because when seeing the man, they acknowledged the God.  By giving Jesus frankincense, they paid homage to his Godhead. 

          They say that our prayers rise up to God like incense—that is why we use incense during Mass from time to time—to remind us that our prayers should always accompany the sacrifices we offer to God.  Now when it comes to the second gift of incense or prayer, the theme of changing our course applies in a very subtle way.  We can make sacrifices—real ones that, in the eyes of the world, appear meritorious.  But without prayer, our sacrifices are mere burnt offerings that never rises pass the amount of their worldly value.  Even the most simple sacrifice we make is augmented in value with the offering of prayer because in our prayer are the implicit virtues of trust in God, docility to God’s will, patience and constancy, and humility.  All of those virtues require a willingness to be ourselves transformed and so we ourselves become part of the sacrifices that we are offering to God.  Incense and prayer…the second gift. 

          Now we come to the third and final gift of myrrh.  Myrrh is an embalming agent used for the body of the dead, which, if you think about it, is an unusual gift.  You wouldn’t give myrrh to God who cannot die, only to man who can die.  And why give myrrh to a newborn baby?  What the Three Wise Men understood that so many people after them failed to grasp is that unlike every person, who is born to live, Jesus is the only person who was born to die.  You see, Jesus, as God, he was the author of life and therefore himself cannot die…unless he took our human nature, unless he was born of the Virgin so that he can offer his human life as a sacrifice.  So that is why the Three Kings gave Jesus myrrh, the gift of one who is to die.

          And this gift of myrrh, believe it or not, can in many ways be our gift to Jesus.  Yes, we were all born to live.  But we were also born to die to ourselves.  I don’t know about you, but I always found the notion, “if you give up your life, you will receive eternal life” to be kind of counterintuitive.  But it is actually one of the first lessons that we learned as a child.  When we were young, we were given certain toys, like a ball for instance, and we had fun playing with the ball, throwing it up and catching it on the way down.  But we eventually learn that to build any type of relationship, we have to give something away.  A child may at first resist your taking the ball away from him, but he soon learns that to play catch with someone, you have to first give the ball away to have the ball thrown back or returned to you.  Yes, playing by oneself is fun, but by no means near as fun as playing catch with someone else.

          This idea of giving something away just to receive it back is not so counterintuitive or uncommon as you may think.  You have to give someone a greeting, “Hello,” to receive one back, “Hi, how are you?”  In basketball, you have to pass the ball to another player at some point, in order to be passed back the ball…otherwise, it wouldn’t be much of a game if everyone kept the ball to themselves.  You have to send out a note, via e-mail for instance, to receive a reply back.  Life is a series of giving what you have away, in order to receive it back…because by giving, we are received into a community, a body larger than a body of one.  Because ultimately, that is what heaven is—a community of saints who all have give up their earthly life to Christ so that they can inherit life everlasting in heaven. 

          We know that the Wise Men went home by a different route—but it doesn’t mean that their journey home was just as easy as the old route.  If it were the easier route, they would’ve taken it to begin with.  No, they were willing to go out of their way, to take the more difficult way home because they knew that Herod was waiting for them if they returned by the old route.  They went out of their way, the road less traveled, and in the course of it, found the path of righteousness. 

          Gold to the King, frankincense to the God, and myrrh to the Man.  St. Thomas Aquinas points out that each king did not offer one of each gift.  No, each of three kings gave each of the three gifts.  All three of them gave the best they had in the form of gold.  They offered their prayers with their frankincense.  And they gave their life, symbolized by myrrh. 

            In the remaining days of the Christmas season, this season of giving, the Gospel reminds us of the true spirit of giving by giving us the story of the Three Kings.  No wonder I so much go back to revisit this story.  It reminds us that we cannot encounter Christ, each and every day, without somehow being moved to change our heart, to redirect our mind, to conform our will, so that we go home to the heavenly kingdom by the path of righteousness.  The story of the Three Kings is the Gospel story in one story.  It is the Gospel story because it is the story of our life.

            Then it inevitably happened.  For me, I must have been in high school at the time…one Christmas, when my three sisters and I, while browsing in the Hallmark store during the holiday shopping rush, we started brainstorming on how else to spend Christmas day.  You see, as kids we got toys for Christmas.  So naturally, we would spend a good part of Christmas day playing with them.  But as teenagers, we had outgrown receiving toys…yet we wanted to recapture some of the excitement and spirit of what Christmas felt like when we were little.  In the Hallmark store, we found a large thousand count jigsaw puzzle that we decided we would spend Christmas day putting together as a family.  I still remember the puzzle; it was a cartoony depiction of the Seven Wonders of the World.  Let’s see, there was Stonehenge, the Egyptian Sphinx, the Great Wall of China, the Colosseum in Rome, the Taj Mahal, the Leaning Tower of Pisa, and the Mayan Pyramids. 

            Believe it or not, I was not very good at putting the pieces together.  I would get stuck on the particular image of a single puzzle piece rather than being able to step back and use the picture on the box to see where each piece fit in the grand scheme of things.  Puzzle solving limitations aside, I have fond memories of the time we spent assembling our annual Christmas puzzle.  It was the beginning of a tradition that our family would continue for some years thereafter. 

            Whatever your tradition, if you think about it, everything seemed bigger at Christmas as a child…because as a youngster, we see Christmas through the lens of a microscope.  To a child, everything looks bigger than its actual size because children, when they see normal size images, they use their imagination to magnify the objects just like a scientist uses a microscope to enlarge objects invisible to the naked eye.  That’s why some of our childhood memories of Christmas seem bigger in scope…because our imagination has augmented for us the wonder and awe of the Christmas season. 

           Now I don’t know about you, but Christmas nowadays is not the same as I remembered it from my childhood.  The Christmas specials on TV—they don’t stir in me the same warm fuzzy feelings like they did when I was a kid.  The anticipation of opening a present—the wonder and surprise is not there anymore.  I can kind of already guess what’s inside just by looking at how a present’s wrapped.  (I know, my puzzle-solving abilities have vastly improved since I was in high school.)  Much of the anticipation that fills the world at Christmas is this sort of unconscious sense that we can go back or recreate what Christmas was like for us when we were little.     

            The problem is, as we advance in age, we start to see Christmas not through the lens of a microscope like a child does, but rather, adults see Christmas through the lens of a telescope.  As adults, we can look back in time through many years of Christmases past, to our childhood memories, which can be vivid, yet, at the same time, can seem so far away because of the passage of time.  An astronomer looks through a telescope at things that are big, like planets or a shooting star, but sees them as smaller than their actual size because of the distance in space that separate him from the objects he sees through the telescopic lens.  And in the same way, adults have to travel the distance of time to see past experiences that are stored in our memory.  So whereas children use their imagination to make their experiences bigger in scope, adults use their memory to bring into focus experiences of long ago.  Our loved ones who cannot be with us this Christmas because we are separated from them by distance, like the courageous men and women of our armed forces who protect our freedom, they are made present to us this Christmas by our memory, when we remember them today though they are absent from the Christmas dinner table.  And our loved ones who have gone before us in death, they live on in our memories and we are reunited with them when we remember them in prayer at this Eucharist celebration, where heaven and earth are united at the eternal banquet feast.  Our memory is like a telescope that brings into focus people and experiences that are far away in distance or time.

            But that still does not solve the puzzle of how, as we grow older, do we recapture the wonder and awe of Christmas.  There is still one missing piece to the puzzle because there is yet another way to experience Christmas.  Instead of looking around like a child does or looking back like an adult does, a spiritually mature soul also looks inward to experience Christmas.  That is how those who were present at the birth of Our Lord celebrated the first Christmas.  We see it in the nativity scene, whether here in the narthex of the church or displayed in your homes.  They are all essentially the same.  The figures of Mary, Joseph, the shepherds, even the barn animals, they are like pieces of a puzzle that, if you position them just right, they all are gazing at the baby Jesus.  It is recapturing a scene, a snapshot of a memory of them welcoming the baby Jesus after his birth into the world…but more importantly, they were also receiving Him as he was conceived into their hearts.  The Blessed Virgin, when she looked upon her baby boy, she must have desired to nurture his human body with her milk, but she also pondered the mystery that one day he would nurture our souls with his divine Body and Blood.  St. Joseph, the foster father, looked down upon the son he had adopted, the same Son who would one day extend his divine inheritance to us, the adopted sons and daughter of his Father in heaven.  And the shepherds, to them, it was a silent night on earth, but when they closed their eyes, they heard the reprise of the Christmas hymns sung by the choir of angels.  Even the barn animals, the oxen and the donkey, tradition tells us that their breath kept the infant Jesus warm from the harsh elements.  What wonder they too must have felt when they considered that that child would warm the hearts of Christians each and every year from the bitter cynicism of the world.

            When you visit a doctor, the first way you explain to him how you are feeling is by listing your physical symptoms.  The doctor will then ask you about your medical history to give him context with which to understand your ailment.  But always each and every time, the doctor will also place his stereoscope upon your chest to listen to the sound of your heart.  It’s one thing to see your symptoms (a cough, a running nose) and it’s helpful to be reminded of your past health problems.  But a doctor has to see what is going on inside of you to put the pieces of the diagnostic puzzle together. 

            It’s the same thing when it comes to our experience of Christmas.  There’s nothing wrong with experiencing Christmas through a microscope like a child does, but it shouldn’t be the only way.  Otherwise, we just experience the mystery of the Incarnation like trying to put together a jigsaw puzzle by looking at each piece up close and separately.  And there’s nothing wrong with experiencing Christmas through the lens of a telescope.  That’s what traditions are—yearly rituals that let us relive the joyful memories of the past.  But that shouldn’t be the only way either.  That is like what I tried to do with my sisters—we started the new tradition of putting together a puzzle in the hopes of recapturing some of the magic of our childhood past.  But experiencing Christmas only through the lens of a telescope is like using the picture on the puzzle box to recreate a preconceived image of Christmas, ruling out the possibility that we too can be a figure in the nativity scene.  We too can place ourselves into the scene of the birth of Our Lord this Christmas, like a puzzle piece that is placed onto the stage of divine providence, when we, like the figures present at the First Nativity, immerse ourselves in the unfolding of the mystery before us.  

            That is the lesson to remember if we start feeling the spirit of Christmas slipping away as the years roll by…that Christmas is too big in “scope” to experience only under a microscope or a telescope or even a stethoscope.  Christmas is a mystery to be pondered, not a puzzle to be solved.  Christmas is a gift to be adored, not a present to unwrap.  The Spirit of Christmas is not a feeling to be recaptured.  The nativity scene is not something we should pass by in our homes every day this Christmas season; it is designed to remind us to stop in wonder and praise of the King who has come into our lives.  Christmas is meant to be seen through our imagination, held in our memory, and pondered in our heart. 

            You know, it’s ironic that our family’s first Christmas jigsaw puzzle was that of the Seven Wonders of the World…It’s ironic because Christmas is the Wonder of all wonders—the Mystery of the Incarnation.  You see, the wonder of Christmas is that the God who once dwelt among us two thousand years ago now can dwell within our hearts!¹

¹ Paraphrase from Roy Lessin.

           The second type of blindness we can experience is intellectual darkness.  This darkness that the intellect experiences we call ignorance.  Our mind needs light to understand.  That is why we have the image of a light bulb going off when we finally understand something.  Our mind is illuminated in a particular way when we understand something.  So what is this type of light that our mind needs?  It is the light of Truth.  Now Jesus said, “I am the Truth”…with a capital “T.”  And it is in this way that Jesus, as the Truth, is the Light that drives out the darkness of our ignorance.  So every time we understand something new, the light of Truth drives out a little bit more of the darkness of ignorance from our mind.  And if we seek the Truth and not our own dim vision of reality, we will start understanding with our mind’s eye the truth the way God sees the world. 

            Now the third type of darkness, like the others, we have all experienced from time to time.  It is spiritual darkness.  Now, there are many ways we can experience spiritual darkness in our soul.  It can take the form of despair.  Despair is the darkness in the absence of the light of hope.  When we think that something good is impossible to achieve, we lose hope.  Jesus himself is the source, the light of our hope that pierces the darkness of despair. 

            Another form of spiritual darkness is doubt.  Doubt is the opposite of the virtue of faith.  When we doubt, we fail to believe; and in essence, we are blinded by doubt because we have not learned to maneuver our way with the eyes of faith.  And again, Jesus is the light of our faith that cast out the darkness of doubt.  The blind men whom Jesus cured may have lost their sight, but they were able to find their way to Jesus with their eyes of faith.  The more we believe the less need we have to see physical proof with our eyes.

            Then there is the darkest of all spiritual blindness—it is the “heart of darkness”…caused by our sins.  You see, sin has a way of turning us inward.  It is a self-love that sees others as what they can do for us and sees things as objects to possess for ourselves.  But Jesus has already come to break the chains of self-love.  A heart full of darkness is a heart void of the Love of Christ.  So the more room we make for God in our heart, the more he can fill our heart with the Light of his Love.  That is the greatest light that Jesus brings this Advent season.  The warmth from His Love can melt the coldest of hearts.  The light of his Love can dispel the darkness from even the most hidden reaches of our heart. 

            Truth, faith, hope, and love—those are the forms of light that we should pray for.  So whatever our blind spots, God will shed light on them if we ask him to.  And no matter what form of darkness we may encounter this Advent season, let us invite the Light of Christ into our hearts.

            Whatever the version, the story is timeless: Ebenezer Scrooge, a miserly and bitter soul whose worst character flaw was that he treated Christmas day like any other day of the year.  On the eve of Christmas, he is visited by an apparition, the ghost of his former, now deceased business partner, Jacob Marley, who warns Scrooge that he will be haunted by three spirits: the Spirit of Christmas Past, Christmas Present, and Christmas Future. 

           Even to this day, the image of the last spirit, the Spirit of Christmas Yet to Come, haunts me.  He is always depicted as a dark ominous phantom, his face hidden under the shadow of his hooded robe, his boney finger pointing at the empty grave with the name “Ebenezer Scrooge” already engraved in the tombstone.  Even Mickey’s Christmas Carol managed to make him appear scary. 

            Well if you think about it, the story A Christmas Carol is really a story that takes place during Advent.  All of the events with the exception of the last scene occur before Christmas day.  And so today, as we celebrate the First Sunday of Advent, the Church invites us to ourselves properly prepare for Christmas, lest we waste another year missing the true spirit of Christmas.

            During these next four weeks of Advent, the readings at Mass will introduce you to larger than life characters—true, real-life people richer in spirit than any character from the Charles Dickens classic tale.  And if you listen closely, these characters will speak to you.  And at the risk of sounding like the ghost of Jacob Marley, don’t say that I didn’t warn you that during this Advent season, you too will be visited by three spirits: the Spirit of Christmas Past, Christmas Present, and Christmas Yet to Come.

            Now I know what you’re thinking: “This is some homiletic gimmick carefully crafted to keep you from tuning me out.”  (It is that.)  No, but more importantly, every year during Advent, the Gospel readings reintroduce us to these biblical spirits who will help us understand the true meaning of Christmas.  The first is the Spirit of Christmas Past: John the Baptist.  John was the last in the tradition of the great prophets.  All of the Old Testament prophets had one underlying message that John himself echoed: “Prepare the way” for the coming of the messiah.  Since the age of the prophets, the human race was told to keep watch for the Miracle of miracles.  So for generations, people held their breath in anticipation, hoping to be in the right place at the chosen time.  So if the world was waiting so long to see this Wonder of wonders, why did only a handful of people recognize the signs of the time?  Why was it that only the shepherds heard the celestial serenade of angels singing, “Gloria in excelsis Deo”?  And why did only three kings from the distant Orient know to follow the shining star to Bethlehem?  Because people did not make room for him in the inn much less make room in their shut-in hearts to receive Christ. 

          And not wanting us to make the same mistake, you will hear from St. John the Baptist in the next two weeks, reminding us to ourselves “prepare the way for the Lord.”  St. John is the Spirit of Christmas Past because his is the voice of one crying out in the darkness, which has echoed through the corridors of time to every Advent season, including this one, warning us against following the strands of thousand of twinkling Christmas lights to the malls, but rather to seek the single candlelight hanging above the tabernacle, the stable where Christ can be found in any church.  John’s is the prophetic voice warning us not to be fooled by the plug-in scent of gingerbread house or artificial holly berry spice, but rather to inhale the incense of frankincense, the gift of the magi in adoration of the Body of Christ.  Christ is the peace that no discount sales price can buy.

            Now the second spirit, the Spirit of Christmas Present, you will meet on the Fourth Sunday of Advent.  The Virgin Mary is the Mother of Christmas.  Mary has every claim to the title “Mother of Christmas” because she was the first to celebrate Advent as she carried the Child of God in her womb until Christmas day.  And everywhere she goes, she bears Jesus into the lives of those she pays a visit.  That is the Gospel reading for the Fourth Sunday of Advent—the Visitation, where Mary, while carrying Christ in her womb, makes haste to share Advent with her cousin Elizabeth who was also with child.  Not only was Elizabeth’s spirits raised, but the child in Elizabeth’s womb also leapt with joy.  You see, even though Mary was still bearing Christ in her womb, she was already presenting Jesus to the world because she had already conceived Him into her heart. 

            Mary is the Spirit of Christmas Present because Mary makes “present” Christ to those who desire to conceive Christ in their own heart.  It is that Christmas spirit that should fill our hearts this Advent season as we patiently endure the long checkout lines at the local Wal-Mart or Target stores or as we circle around the mall parking lot searching for the last empty space before it reaches maximum capacity.  In our frantic quest for the perfect present, let us ask Mary to inspire in us patience, lest we be tempted to lay on the steering wheel horn, the vehicular equivalent of a “Bah Humbug!” that dampens the Christmas spirits of others. 

           Now we come to the last of the Advent spirits: the Spirit of Christmas Yet to Come.  You’ve already heard from him.  This “Spirit” made an “appearance” in today’s Gospel reading.  He came in on a mysterious-appearing cloud, but not cloaked in the shadow of darkness.  No, he comes robed in the radiant light of his glory.  The Spirit of Christmas Yet to Come is the Son of Man at the Second Coming.  You see, Jesus came into the world on the first Christmas and he will come again on the Last Day.  But unlike the Ghost of Christmas Future from the movies who was a dark figure that represented death, the Son of Man is the Light that banishes the darkness.  Whereas the Spirit of Christmas Future showed Ebenezer Scrooge the empty grave and then pushed him into it, the Son of Man will raise our bodies from our graves and usher the righteous souls into eternal life. 

            You know, it’s ironic that Christmas is the celebration of the Light that comes into the world.  Yet the commercialism that capitalizes on the Christmas season chooses to focus on monetary profits when it names the busiest shopping day of the year as Black Friday.  Don’t get me wrong, you may very well see me standing in the checkout line during the Christmas shopping rush…but all good things in moderation.  So here at Prince of Peace, there are many opportunities to escape the chaos and the noise of the holiday shopping season.  Last Friday, commercial retailers had Black Friday.  This coming Friday, Prince of Peace will have Light Friday.  This coming Friday in the Mary Chapel at 7:00 p.m., there will be an evening of Eucharistic Adoration and praise and worship music, an alternative to spending the holidays shopping at the malls. 

           Now most movies that are based on books have to cut out a lot of details to streamline the narrative into a two hour long running time.  Many of the movies based on Charles Dickens’ novel don’t bring up the detail that originally, the ghost of Jacob Marley, on Christmas Eve, warns Scrooge that each of the three spirits would visited him on three separate nights—the first on Christmas Eve, the second on Christmas day, and the third the following day.  That’s why when Scrooge awakens in his room, the first question that he asks when throws open his bedroom window and sees the young boy passing by is: “What day is it?”  Scrooge half expected that he had missed Christmas yet again and that is why he does back-flips when he learns that it is still Christmas day.  Apparently the spirits decided to do it all in one night instead of three. 

             That’s what could happen to us—the Church could let us go on our merry way and, in the course of it, miss the true spirit of Christmas.   But instead, the Church gives us the season of Advent to slow us down enough to spend some time recalling the past coming of Christ, to invite Christ into our hearts in this present Advent season, and to look to the future advent of Christ at his second coming.  Past, Present, and Future—those are the spirits of Advent.

            If you think about it, the story A Christmas Carol is an allegory of a conversation a soul will have to have with God at the final judgment, when the soul is asked to make an account of its life.  But the moral of the story is that we don’t have to wait until the final judgment to have this conversation with God.  In our prayer—tonight even, we can examine our conscience and ask God, to show us our past, to see when we have glorified God by our actions and when we have fallen short of a life of grace.  And we can ask God to guide us in the present moment to make the right choices by understanding our role in the lives of others as well as understanding all of the consequences of any missed opportunities.  And we can ask God to reveal to us what to hope for in the future so that we can pray incessantly that God’s will be done in this spiritual war between light and darkness. 

            So in the days ahead, it should be our desire to be visited by the Spirits of Advent Past, Present, and Future.  Because after we have experienced our own “An Advent Carol,” we pray that “God bless us, everyone!” with the true spirit of Christmas.