Author: Capital Catholic Happenings

The fullness of time

Written by Br. Innocent Smith, O.P.

Sometimes people are nostalgic for an era they never lived in. They might prefer the fashion, the music, or the mores of a bygone era, or they might look forward to some future period when all of their political or cultural aspiration will be realized. On one level, a critical evaluation of the glories of the past can be helpful in giving us a measuring stick for our own achievements. Nevertheless, we must be always conscious of the importance of living our lives to the full in the world in which we really exist, not obsessed with our own imaginary construction of the past or future.

The reason for this is that although there is a certain contingency to our existence at this moment in history—I did not choose to enter the world I did, but happened to do so following upon the concrete decisions of others that ordered their lives in a certain way—nevertheless my existence at this moment fits into God’s providential plan. There is no contradiction between contingent human decisions and divine providence. God freely creates the soul of each of us at the moment of conception, a moment that occurs on the basis of the union of our parents. This, incidentally, is the core of the tragedy of abortion—although this child may not be desired by his or her parents, whatever the contingent circumstances may be, he or she is created and loved by God.

On the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, we celebrate the marvelous congruence between the contingent human action and divine providence in the conception of Mary. The parents of the Virgin conceived her in the normal manner, but on this occasion God not only created her soul but did so in a way that preserved her from every stain of sin by virtue of the death of his Son, which he foresaw, preparing her to be a worthy dwelling for Jesus. Mary’s parents lived at a particular moment of history, unchosen by themselves, and decided to marry each other at a time they themselves chose. The child that was born to them, whom they decided to name Mary, was to play an integral role in the mystery of redemption: in the fullness of time, at the exactly appropriate moment, she was to bear a son, and name him Jesus.

Meditation: Reflect on the ways God’s providence has worked in your life through contingent events. Pray for your parents, and those who have played an important role in your life.

For you shall be comforted!

The world doesn’t work the way it should. Freak accidents ruin our plans; the greatest passions dwindle to boredom; our best friends annoy us; death snatches our loved ones and they are gone. Conflict is built into the structure of the world—we are not even at peace with ourselves. The sin of Adam has shaken the earth, and nothing is stable anymore.

Sin causes us pain because it doesn’t belong. God made the world good, free from sin and death. But when Adam and Eve rejected God’s love and chose to create their own path to happiness, they lost the special gifts of closeness to God that they had enjoyed, and the earth became a place of struggle and pain.

But sin is not the last word about us. Our hearts still long for God, and he gives us his grace that we might be lifted out of our sin and filled with the very presence of the Divine Trinity. This is our hope—that God did not make us for death, but for life eternal as his adopted sons and daughters. Jesus came to earth for this purpose, and he will come again to bring this work to completion.

God calls us to hope for a goodness that we often can’t see, that will be fulfilled only in the world to come. In Advent especially we realize that the longing for heaven can itself be a kind of pain, because we see the brokenness of the world and the brokenness of our own hearts, caused by the blows of sin, and we yearn for the wholeness of Christ.

Christ offers us this holy longing in the second beatitude: “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.” Left to our own devices, we mourn selfishly, sinking into self-pity whenever something of ours—a relationship, a piece of property, even a comfortable lie—is taken away from us. By God’s grace, we long for his presence and mourn what separates us from him, hoping to be made more like him; we mourn our sins and those of the world because we long for Christ to come again and bring us the comfort of the heavenly Jerusalem.

Today’s meditation: Reflect on Jesus’ mercy. Offer God one of your selfish desires and ask him to take it away.

“Blessed are the poor in spirit”

Advent begins with both a bang and a whisper. Now that Thanksgiving is out of the way, stores, commercials, and TV channels are roiling with the frenetic energy of Yuletide cheer, while each of us struggles to remember what it is we are actually preparing for.

But the clash between noise and stillness is nothing new. Thinking of the Messiah’s coming, Isaiah begs the Lord to come in thunder and earthquake, while St. Mark reminds us that Jesus comes so quietly that we might miss him unless we keep careful watch.

The first beatitude helps us resolve the apparent conflict: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” Our world has its own values and priorities, according to which the poor are usually somewhere between despised and pitied, but never blessed. Jesus opens the door here to a new way of living: the poor in spirit are those who don’t need to create their own meaning, to wrest wealth, power, and happiness from the world by their own brute strength. The poor in spirit place their hope in God, and live in his presence wherever they happen to be, however chaotic or earth-shaking their surroundings may be.

Jesus Christ is the stillness at the heart of the world’s noise. He invites us to become poor in spirit, to be with him now, sharing a foretaste of the kingdom of heaven even on this earth.

But Christ will come again, with a splendor and a majesty that will shake loose the foundations of the world—stillness doesn’t mean immobility. We can’t make ourselves ready for that day by our own power; we can’t force ourselves to be poor in spirit. Jesus himself prepares us for his Second Coming through this beatitude, offering us a new wealth, a new kingdom, and new life: grace. May the life of grace grow in us this Advent, letting us live in God’s presence, in noise and in quiet.

Today’s meditation: Ask God to increase your desire for him.

Written by Br.  Gabriel Torretta, OP

Advent is a time of preparation. But preparation for what? The Church only exists because Christ has already come to us, so Advent might just seem like a collective form of play-acting, where we pretend that we don’t know what’s coming, like naughty children who have long since found where their parents hide the presents, but still have to act surprised on Christmas morning. And that’s what Advent would be if Jesus Christ were just another historical figure whose birth we celebrate, like George Washington or Martin Luther King.

But Jesus is not just a historical man who lived in the distant past. Jesus is the Messiah, the Chosen One of God, God-made-man. His birth, life, death, and resurrection restructured human life in the world—eternity is now always present to us in the living person of Jesus Christ, reigning in heaven.

God became man and lived on this earth in Jesus Christ; in heaven he reigns now, present to us in the liturgy, the sacraments, and the life of prayer; at the end of time he will come again, glorious in his judgment of the living and the dead. Advent allows us to prepare for—to reflect on and be changed by—these three ‘comings’ of Christ: in history, in our hearts, and at the last judgment.

Throughout Advent we will be presenting a series of short meditations that focus on the transformation that God offers us in Jesus Christ. To prepare our hearts for Christ’s Second Coming, we will explore the New Law that Jesus gave us to transform us by his grace: the Beatitudes, the Law of the heavenly Jerusalem. At the same time, we will reflect on the historical coming of Christ, praying with the mysteries of Mary’s life and looking to be made like her, as she was made like Christ.

Today’s meditation: Ask God to show himself to you in a new way this Advent. Spend some time in prayer, reflecting on the three ‘comings’ of Christ.

Check back on Thursday for the next reflection of the Advent 2011: Live Anew Series.

Elizabeth Lent, junior at Notre Dame and parishioner from Little Flower takes us back to World Youth Day.  Read about her final night at WYD.

After Benedict XVI drove through the crowd in his Popemobile, we could actually see him walk on stage.  He gave an opening prayer as the youth continued its energetic cheers, again and again… “Esta es la Juventud del Papa!”  A group of youth carried a life size cross across the stage while the audience quieted in reverent anticipation of the Pope’s words.

Sitting all day under the heat of the sun, we were hoping to be blessed with shade to cool ourselves and water to quench our thirst.  As the vigil approached, threatening clouds appeared and youth murmured about the approaching rain storm in fear that it would soak our sleeping bags (lying out in our assigned sleeping zone).

Then it began to drizzle.  The crowds erupted into cheers, not relenting in their enthusiasm for God and the spirit of Catholic youth.  It continued to rain harder, and the high winds forced the Pope to take cover under the stage.  The youth cheered louder and louder; they would not give up.  We were all fighting against this act of the devil who was trying to prevent our celebration of faith, The Holy Father, and God the Father.  Well we won.  The Pope addressed the Youth, “Say a little prayer and then maybe the rain will stop.”  Hail Mary’s in all languages scattered the crowd, “…Salve Regina, Madre de Dios…  In minutes the rain had stopped.  It was a miracle.  I felt completely engulfed in God’s love.

Though the rain did start up again, this was the climax of World Youth Day.

Pope Benedict XVI prepared the exposition of the Blessed Sacrament and everyone knelt in adoration of Our Lord for some time.  It was powerful to see the juxtaposition of the Pope with the actual presence of God himself.  We had all been cheering and praising our Pope, but God our Savior is the true omnipotent being we are honoring.

The rest of the night was spectacular.  Renewed by the spirit of the youth and of Our Lord, we slept happily (though a little uncomfortably) on a sandy dirt ground among fellow believers.  Waking up to a gorgeous sunrise and Mass with the Holy Father, the experience could not have ended any better.  As a friend and I sprinted with our backpacks after the final blessing to the metro in order to catch our plane home, thoughts about what we had just witnessed were running through my head…

Wow, that was crazy.  I just saw the Pope, like with my naked eye, no big screen needed or anything.  What am I supposed to make of all this? I sure hope I make my flight… I don’t even know what to think right now, I guess I am just so overwhelmed by the amount of faithful Catholic youth out there.  And we talked to so many people who were so energetic about sharing their faith.  That one French girl was really geared up, so cool!  I am so blessed to have been able to come here, wow, thanks God.  And that rain, amazing! This will be a week I will never forget.

God bless you all and thank you so much for your prayers!

Eliz.

Elizabeth Lent, junior at Notre Dame and parishioner from Little Flower takes us back to World Youth Day.  Read about her experience at Cuatro Vientos.

Saturday, August 20^th-Sunday, August, 21^st

The past 48 hours have been a whirlwind of emotions, culminating World Youth Day 2011 in an unimaginably high spirit of enthusiasm and hope.

At 9:15 am on Saturday morning our group head out to make the 5 mile hike to Cuatro Vientos, an airport outside of town where the vigil would be held that evening.  That night everyone would sleep outside and then wake up to attend mass with the Pope on Sunday morning.  Carrying backpacks stuffed with our next three meals, sleeping bags and pads, we prayed the Joyful mysteries of the Holy Rosary and sang the Chaplet of Divine Mercy…For the sake of His sorrowful passion, have mercy on us and on the whole world… We also joined in signing praise songs with other groups walking along side us.  Making friends with some fellow Americans from California, we got lost with them a few times during the hike; don’t we all lose our way in life occasionally, knowing though that the Lord will always come after us like the lost sheep, just as he did through the helpful volunteers scattered all over to help direct the crowds.

Arriving at Cuatro Vientos at noon we maneuvered around masses of people all gathering to honor the Pope andreceive his words and blessing.  We left our things in section D8 where we would be sleeping that evening and then proceeded to stuff our pockets with food, water, a journal, cards, and anything else we would want for the rest of the day.  Next stop was to claim our seats in front of the stage where Pope Benedict XVI would lead a vigil celebration that evening and we would not return to our backpacks until 11pm.  Our group, fortunate to receive tickets for the front section of seats, secured the seventh row in the second bunch of seats, front and center from the stage.  As we waited for the Pope’s arrival at 7pm, the sun’s heat beat down on us but we were all just so pleased to be sitting down, it was a blessing to see how much we take for granted in our ordinary life, something so simple as a chair.  We also may take advantage of how present Our Lord is to us each and every day.  We may not always make us of his love for us, believing that we can do it on our own, but nothing can be done without the power and love of God.

Throughout the afternoon, several bands performed and pop culture music was played on loud speakers.  It was purely fun the many times the whole community of youth stood up on our chairs, waving flags, singing, and dancing along to these songs we were all familiar with, uniting us into one body, one family.  As we had these 6 hours to spare, my friend and I who are working on a documentary film about World Youth Day had a lot of time to go around and meet with youth from several countries.  Asking why they came to WYD and what they believed to be the significance of the youth in the Catholic Church, we had the opportunity to interview two young adults from Ethiopia, several girls from Canada, two English guys, an Aussie, and others.  At one point we talked to a brother and sister from Southern France.  The sister answered our questions in French, and though we had no clue what she was saying, it was clear to see she was quite hyped up and enthusiastic about her faith.  The excitement and emotion that came through in her eyes, hand motions, and tone of voice was absolutely powerful.  It makes me smile now, remembering how alive this young women was.  This is the spirit of the youth in the Church, the spirit that we are all hear fighting to renew in the world.

Written by: Elizabeth Lent, Junior at University of Notre Dame and parishioner at Little Flower in Bethesda

Photos by: Elizabeth Lent