December 15, 2024: Third Sunday of Advent/Gaudete Sunday

Even as we wait for Christmas Day to celebrate the Nativity of Christ, we are jumping for joy.

We recognize that God is among us, and He gives us reason to rejoice no matter our external circumstances.  Like the reading from the prophet Zephaniah, God delights in us.  He has made possible a way for us to be free from sin.

We are no longer afraid of His presence, like when the Hebrews were frightened to see God descend on Mount Sinai.  He comes to us with the desire to transform us so that we live in devotion to Him, making space for Him in us.

Furthermore, we can take a cue from St. Paul, who wrote the words in today's 2nd reading while in prison:  No matter our circumstances, we rejoice always because God is close to us, and that grounds us with a great assurance of peace that surpasses what we can understand.  I think back to Gaudete Sunday many years ago in college when St. Teresa's put on a huge celebration for us right before we entered our week of testing at the semester's end. Even with all we had going on, we could rejoice that God is among us, because we recognized it in the community we had at St. Teresa's that made Him real.

I'm glad that I've become more aware of God's Presence by writing these short reflections on the Scriptures of Sunday and Holy Day Masses, which started exactly 11 years ago on Gaudete Sunday, December 15, 2013, as I rode a wave of a newfound appreciation of faith in those initial months after college.

We rejoice that God comes to us, which is giving us a joyful new purpose in life.

December 12, 2024: Feast of Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe

We rejoice because God delights to dwell among us.

He revealed His presence in our world powerfully anew to San Juan Diego along with miraculous roses and La Virgen's image.

We leap with joy like St. John the Baptist because God dwells among us, delights in us, and works marvelously in us.

December 9, 2024: Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception

God filled Mary with graces from her conception so that she could be a pure vessel, a tabernacle for the Son of God.

Similiarly, God has chosen us to be part of His plan of salvation.  He fills us with His grace from baptism so we can be tabernacles and bear the Son of God into the world.

May Our Lady, most pure, intercede for us, and, as the Patroness of the USA, for our land.

December 8, 2024: Second Sunday of Advent

In a world marked by gloom, God has brought us reason from great joy.

He has done great things, especially in leading us out of the doom and gloom into joy.  Indeed, He leads us from a life marked by sin to a life marked by His presence active in us.

He has spoken His Word, manifested fully in Jesus Christ.  He was heralded by the prophets, culminating in St. John the Baptist.  John called people to repent so they would be ready to receive so wonderful a gift as the coming of Christ into the world, living in His way of love.

It's just like the Blessed Mother Mary did, whose Feast of Immaculate Conception we would typically celebrate on December 8.  She provides a great model of how to receive Christ with joy for the joy He is, and live devoted to Him.

May she, the Patronness Saint of the USA, continue to intercede for God's blessings in our land, that Christ's presence may truly bring us alive.

And may this Advent continue offer us reason to rejoice as we make a place for God to enter our lives as we follow the highway He lays out before us to encounter His presence and abide with Him.

Bishop Barron's homily this week offers great insights into the idea of a highway leading us from sin to a new way of life in God.  For we don't have to be stuck in sin anymore because God, through the redemptive power of Christ, has made a way for us to leave it behind and embrace His presence fully.

December 1, 2024: First Sunday of Advent

Coming straight off one liturgical year, we enter a new year with continued emphasis on the End of Time and the coming again of our Savior Jesus Christ as promised by God.

He will set everything right with our world.

As we prepare for the coming of the fullness of God's Kingdom, we hear the call to prepare our hearts.

Indeed, we lift up our souls to God Who is faithful and has promised to bring salvation.  He is truly our hope.

We seek to live in conduct that is pleasing to God so that we may be ready for His coming again at the end of time, and also to welcome Him into our hearts now, the kind of conduct by which we bless others.

November 24, 2024: Solemnity Sunday of Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe

We acclaim Christ as a great King on this last Sunday of the liturgical year.

As the readings make clear, especially the Gospel, He is a different kind of King.

He doesn't follow the typical ideas of an earthly King, like what Pontius Pilate has in mind when he questions Jesus.

Furthermore, Christ transcends the idea of an earthly King.

He entered into our humanity to show us the reign of God's love by dying for us on the Cross.

Now He lives and reigns on High as the Mighty One, the Alpha and the Omega, holding all time in His hands.  He spreads that love to all the world, because through the Cross, Love has triumphed, as His Kingdom shows.  The reading from Daniel describes how the Son of Man comes on the clouds, imagery of God's revelation.

We have the opportunity to advance the Kingdom of God by opening our hearts so God may reign in us, and cooperate with His grace as we live to honor Him Who shed His blood for us so we could enter that Kingdom and be priests to serve our God. This Kingdom will not end, in the spirit of the words from the first reading in Daniel, because it stands for Who God is, characteristics that are timeless.

One notable person who did so much to advance the Kingdom of God in the Western Hemisphere was San Padre Junipero Serra, who founded several missions up and down the California coast.

Cardinal Cupich has done much to serve the Kingdom of God in the course of 10 years since his installation as Archbishop of Chicago on November 18, 2014.

Holy Name Cathedral celebrated its 175th anniversary on November 18, 2024, and the occasion is a great opportunity to reflect on how this cathedral parish community has advanced the Kingdom of God through worship and service.  It was splendid to attend a special Mass celebrated by Caridnal Cupich at the Cathedral today to celebrate this milestone.

20 years ago, on the eve of Christ the King Sunday, I attended my Confirmation Enrollment Mass.  The liturgy gave me the opportunity to be aware of how by my Confirmation, I would live more fully in the Kingdom of God, to show God's timeless characteristics, especially His Love, to the world.

Indeed, as I reclaimed the 2nd reading today, from the ambo, I gazed upon Christ the King in the rose window at the other end of Church, flanked by Alpha and Omega.  He Who was once dead, now is alive and rightly rules.

November 17, 2024: 33rd Sunday in Ordinary Time

God has promised He is coming again.  Christ will come to set everything right, and establish a new order for everything.  He has already revealed this new order in the Paschal Mystery of His Death and Resurrection.

Those of us who were faithfully in relationship with God in this life and lived that relationship in righteousness will shine.

We can count on God to fulfill His promises because Christ came to offer the one perfect sacrifice that makes us, His Chosen, righteous before Him.

Now, we live in a state of readiness, living out the righteousness God imparts to us as we await His coming again, making ready by helping to bring forth the Kingdom on Earth now.

It is a Kingdom that will one day come in its fullness and last forever. For even though Heaven and Earth shall pass away, as Jesus said, His Word shall not, and that will be at the foundation of the Kingdom where we will be with Him forever, even as He is with us now.  We will live in the fullness of His Love that, as Bishop Barron said in his homily for this Sunday, He has revealed already in the Paschal Mystery, and the revelation to come will manifest His Lordship.

It was a special evening in Oak Park at the Sunday evening Mass with the Confirmation enrollment when the young people preparing for this sacrament expressed their commitment to the process.  It was a time to recognize how they are chosen to be part of advancing the Kingdom of God that is coming, even as we recognize how God has chosen us to be part of His Kingdom.  This week, I will reflect on my own Confirmation enrollment Mass 20 years ago.  And this week marks 10 years since Blase Cupich was installed as Archbishop of Chicago, and his role in shepherding the church in the Archdiocese of Chicago to Eternal Life.