Christmas Homily...

Once upon a time there was a great tall tree on a hill in the woods. He stood there all day long, dreaming of what he might become.  Some days he would dream that he would be carved into a great treasure chest, filled with gold, silver and precious gems and decorated on every side so that everyone would admire his beauty.  On other days he would dream that he would form the massive timbers of a mighty ship which would carry kings and queens across the oceans to the four corners of the world.  He wanted to be great and powerful.

One day a woodsman came and looked up at the tree and cut it down, making it into neither a beautiful chest nor a mighty ship, but a feed box for the animals. He placed it a barn and filled it with hay. The tree was very sad, because he would never be great nor powerful.

Then one day, a man and woman came to the barn. She gave birth and placed her baby in the feed box, because there was no place for them in the inn.  But then a strange thing happened, as the whole manger seemed to fill with light, and there were angels and a star above the baby’s crib, and shepherds and wise men came to worship the child, not like a baby in a crib, but like a King upon the finest royal throne.

But soon they all left and the memory of that wondrous night began to fade, and over the years the barn grew old and the crib grew rickety, until it was sold for  scrap to some Roman soldiers and carted off to Jerusalem, where it was made into a Cross for the execution of criminals.

That was the cross they placed on the shoulders of a man who was made to carry the it, a man who who seemed to glow with the same light as the baby so long ago in Bethlehem.  The man fell three times and was finally affixed to the wood with nails which dug deeply.  The people jeered at him and mocked him, while only his mother and a younger man stood weeping at his feet, until the man looked to heaven, prayed and breathed his last.

And three days later, when the sun rose, so did the man rise from the dead, and the tree stood taller and prouder than he had since he lived in the forest, for he knew now that now he was, indeed, great and powerful, having been made little and weak.  He had never been a chest for earthly treasures nor a ship for powerful princes, but he had been a throne for the Son of God, as his crib and his cross.

And what about us?  Do we want to be rich and powerful?  Do we want the whole world to acclaim our beauty and our strength?  Sure we do.

In fact, especially at Christmas we expect that everything is going to be perfect.  It’s that idea of Christmas that people my age got from the Cleaver family in the 1950’s.  Everyone sitting around a beautifully decorated Christmas Tree with a perfectly constructed fire burns in the fireplace, decorated with overflowing Christmss stockings with the name of each child neatly inscribed on each.

And everyone is singing Christmas carols as they smile at each other with understanding and love.  There’s grandma in the rocking chair sharing her wisdom with all who sit in rapt attention, while mom and dad look lovingly on, holding hands with the trace of a tear in their eyes.  Meanwhile, each child asks permission to open their next gift and giggle with joy at each lovely surprise.  Soon they will leaves for Church as snow gently falls from the sky and dad leads them in Christmas carols until they genuflect and kneel in their pews dressed in their new Sunday clothes….

At Christmas time we expect everything to be perfect, but most of the time it is not.  Many of you lost someone you loved this year, and they are not here this Christmas because they have died.  Some who hear my voice fought about some stupid little thing all the way to Church and are not particularly looking forward to going home in the same car.  Some worry about what the doctor said or about the people at work who already got laid off or about their son who did not come home from school this year.  Some worry about addiction, or that one who drinks too much, or about how hard it is to pray or even to sleep.

But the great good news of this day is that you do not have to be powerful or perfect.  The great good news of this night is that, like the tree on the top of the hill, you need only be little enough to be a throne for the Son of the Living God.  Little enough to make your hands into a throne to receive his incarnate flesh…Little enough to prepare your heart to be a crib where the incarnate Son of God might rest this night…with his healing, his love and hope.

So God does not expect from us perfection or power.  We are not made for that.  God waits for us to make ourselves as little as the Babe of Bethlehem, that we might receive him this night and he might rest in our hearts.

Thoughts on the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe

He came here because he couldn’t feed his sister, brother and widowed mother back home. So he got a job in Lawrence, where he got married, and then moved to Milford and Hopkinton and finally Upton, always staying one-step ahead of the bill collectors.

But every place he went they looked down on him as something less than a real American and so he took the jobs that no one else would do, shoveling out the stables or unloading the ships or pushing big heavy carts.

A fifty-hour work-week back then paid new immigrants less than $4, a third of which got him a single nine-by-eleven foot room with no water, sanitation, ventilation or daylight. It was, of course, cheaper to get a room in “a cellar-hole” in Charlestown, but those used to flood with every tide and the rats would tend to go after the children. 

Adult immigrants in those days lived, on average, just six years after stepping off the boat onto American soil. Yes, off the boat. That’s how Maurice Moroney, my great-great grandfather lived when he sailed to Charlestown from Cork, one hundred and sixty-five years ago.

But what got him through was his faith, especially in the Blessed Mother. That’s what got him through. Years ago, I saw a small and faded holy card of our Lady of Lourdes which I like to think Maurice used to look at and wonder:…if God could make her blessed through the homelessness, the flight into Egypt, the slaughter of the innocents and even the crucifixion of her own son, then maybe there is some hope for me.

Not unlike Elsie who came here with her husband from Latin America some fifteen years ago. They live not so far from Mission Hill and have 4 kids, including the five-year-old, who they think is autistic. Her husband is still undocumented because he can’t afford to pay for his green card and still put food on the table, so he moves from job to job. Last year his mother died back in Columbia, but he couldn't go because they would have stopped him from returning here to his family.

In Elsie and Juan’s living room there’s a picture of Juan Diego, kneeling before the Blessed Virgin at Tepayak. They pray each night before Our Lady of Guadalupe, looking a lot like the powerless little peasant at her feet, and Elsie often thinks “if she appeared to Juan Diego, then perhaps she can take care of us, too.”

They are like the more than 150,000 undocumented immigrants in Massachusetts, most of them are Catholic. Three times that number are recent legal immigrants to the Commonwealth. They are Hispanic, Asian and European, with more than 10,000 undocumented Irish. 

Which is why our Holy Father has asked us to pray for immigrants on this feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe. For we are immigrants, all of us, or great-grandsons of immigrants, who came here seeking a new life, and who through the intercession of the Mother of God found it.

Like the widower Juan Diego, who almost a half a millennium ago told the Bishop that he had seen the Virgin Mary. And when the Bishop asked him for proof, returned to the beautiful lady and, in the middle of winter, came back with a cloak overflowing with roses. 

Blessed Virgin of Guadalupe, Mother of Immigrants and Mother of Priests, keep them all safe, and lead them home to the Manger of your Son.

Some Thoughts on the Immaculate Conception

My favorite place to pray in Washington, D.C., where I lived for many years, is the Irish Chapel in the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception.  There’s no fancy sanctuary or big mosaic...there’s not even an altar in this chapel.  Just a statue of the Blessed Virgin with the Christ child playing on her lap in the middle of a gurgling fountain. 

But on the wall, not far away, is a 1200 year old Celtic Prayer that boldly states: There is no hound as fleet of foot, nor young soul so quick to win the race, nor horse to finish the course, as the Mother of God to the death bed of one who needs her intercession.  It’s like the line in the Memorare: Never was it known that anyone who fled to Thy protection, implored Thy help or sought Thy intercession was left unaided. 

Two hundred and twenty years ago, sixteen years before the founding of the See of Boston, the first Catholic Bishop of America in his first Pastoral Letter announced the Blessed Virgin Mary Immaculate as the first patron of America and recommended “...a fervent and well-regulated devotion to the Holy Mother of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ; that you will place great confidence in her in all your necessities.”  Bishop Carroll went on to recommend “a zealous imitation of her virtues and a reliance on her motherly superintendence.”

I have always thought of the life of the Blessed Virgin as the perfect song, immaculately conceived and perfectly executed in a life of saving grace. For the life of the “most blessed among women” is the most perfect song ever sung to the God of all beauty and truth. Composed in tones of humility, obedience and faithfulness, the composition begins with an Immaculate Conception and concludes with a sorrowful mother at the foot of the Cross. But the constant theme in every movement is the opening lyric: “Be it done to me according to your word.”

And so, as sons and daughters of America, we are sons and daughters of the Immaculate Virgin Mary, and we are bound to an imitation of her virtues.

To seek littleness, and faithfulness and love.