Set Me as a seal on your heart

Crossing the Potomac on the bridge the CSX railroad shares with Appalachian Trail hikers as well as less ambitious walkers like me, I saw them: the padlocks.   Many alien objects cling to that old bridge, from the disintegrating wooden crosspieces that held the ancient telephone wires, to neon-colored stickers for musical groups and outdoor equipment.  But most eye-catching are the padlocks on the fencing, brackets, and every fixture or protuberance that will hold them.

Padlocks on the CSX bridge over the Potomac.  
The couple you see here did not add to the padlocks.

Years ago, while still living in Rome, I first saw this bizarre phenomenon: clusters of padlocks clinging to the ancient and elegant bridges there: the Ponte degli Angeli, the Ponte Sisto.  In response to my baffled question, someone explained to me that there had been a movie, or maybe a television show, featuring a young couple desperately enamored of one another who visited Paris.  While strolling the City of Lights, the moon-eyed twosome paused on one of the beautiful bridges there to pledge their undying affection. One of them whipped out a padlock and clicked it to the rail as a token of their enduring love.  Millions of people saw that show, and bought padlocks; the bridges of the world now sag beneath the burden.

The padlock phenomenon reflects the universal human desire to make visible what is invisible, and to make permanent what is best, highest, and most beautiful in us.  It does not necessarily take a padlock, because human genius can come up with an infinite variety of ways to try to do this.  But because human genius is a reflection of the divine genius, God Himself is the one to ‘pull it off’, to make visible what is invisible, and make permanent the highest of which we are fleetingly capable, love.  

That is why we come, to adore Him Who is the invisible God in human flesh, His own love; the eternal Word of the Father, spoken from before all eternity, which shall not pass away. 

Christmas is very much about what we see, what finally we are able to see. Hidden but growing in His mother’s womb for nine months since His Incarnation, the enfleshment of God, now He appears at His Nativity, His birth, revealed before the marveling eyes of all who heed the host of angels.  What is by nature invisible, God, makes Himself visible.  Jesus is God’s ‘padlock.’

This is clearly laid out in the ancient text of the Preface of the Nativity, the prayer of the Mass after the Offering is completed, which follows the Lift up your hearts dialogue and precedes the Holy Holy Holy.

For in the mystery of the Word made flesh a new light of your glory has shone upon the eyes of our mind, so that, as we recognize in him God made visible, we may be caught up through him in love of things invisible.

At Christmas, we recognize in the infant whom we see, the invisible God we long to see.  And in that last phrase of the preface, where we pray to be ‘caught up,’ the Latin verb is rapiamur, a very strong, dramatic expression that means snatched up; embraced and taken away.  There is almost a violence to it.  Through our adoration of this baby we can see, we want to be snatched up and carried away into love of the things of God, divine reality, eternal life, and love, which until now had been invisible.   

God’s padlock is now visible, like the ones the couples write their names on and clasp to the bridge.  Moreover, God’s padlock is what any amorous pair can only dream of accomplishing with their padlock, or their love: God’s padlock is permanent.  

Cristina and Luigi, Marie and Pierre, Barbara and Joe want the padlock not only to be a sign of their love’s existence, but also to be a sign of its endurance.  You need not be a cynic to recognize that the padlocks will outlast the love they represent in too many cases.  Human love is fickle, and weak.  

However, even when love perdures in faithfulness and forgiveness, and our happy couple live a married life of mutual respect and fidelity, that love will pass away when they do.  Because not only can a padlock be destroyed and removed, the bridge itself one day will crumble into the water.  

The love poem we know as The Song of Solomon is one book in the Old Testament that seems not to fit at all, until we realize it rhapsodizes and reveals the divine love that comes to snatch us up and carry us away.  You will recognize this passage, often read at weddings:  Set me as a seal on your heart, as a seal on your arm; For stern as death is love, relentless as the nether world is devotion; its flames are a blazing fire.  Deep waters cannot quench love, nor floods sweep it away. (Song of Solomon 8:6-7)

That ‘floods cannot sweep it away” part appeals to young couple, but the only love that lasts, the love that the Song of Solomon describes, is the love Who comes in the manger.  And because He is perfect love, consummated in His giving up His life and His body to death on the Cross, He is the bridge that does not wash away.  His body, once tiny and helpless, later laid in the tomb, is raised; His body dwells now and forever in glory in the Divine Communion that is the Triune God, Father, and Son, and Holy Spirit.  

The baby Jesus not only is God’s padlock, but He Himself also is the bridge; the bridge between God and Man, between heaven and earth, the bridge from death into life.  Deep waters cannot quench love, nor floods sweep it away.  He Himself is the ever-lasting Way, He is the Love Who bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.  Love never fails. (1 Corinthians 13:7)

Our parish’s new Nativity set, which is the image of the Image of the invisible God.

When I see those padlocks on a bridge, in West Virginia, or Paris, or Rome, I see people yearning to make love visible, and to make love last.  What I want to show those people is what I hope you see this Christmas, that God has accomplished what they crave, has done precisely this: make love visible, and make love last.  Look at the Child, whose image is in the manger, and whose flesh is on the altar.  This is the sight come to snatch you up and carry you away to know and enjoy forever the invisible love of God.

Blessed Christmas to you, not only from me, but also from Father Santandreu and Father Novajosky, and from the good people whose days are spent here in the rectory to make you know God’s care.  Peace be on your houses; in your families, peace; and in your hearts, Christ’s peace.

Monsignor Smith

Whatcha doin' that for?

Happy holidays!, while seeming to be a dodge from mentioning Christmas, has a persistence to it, and perhaps even genuine value beyond that negative.  In addition to being a good wish, it is also a statement of fact.  The holidays mentioned, Christmas and the days of preparation for it, give much evidence being, well, happy days.  Look around you: people are in a good mood: optimistic, excited, and disposed to be generous.   That is enough to make people happy.  Why is that?

The “holidays,” as many people call them, are truly holy days, though they may not know or acknowledge that.  What makes them holy?  They are a time of preparation for the coming of God as Man, which not only is commemorated but also in fact occurs at Christmas.  Advent is holy because it is ordered to what happens at Christmas, and people can be happy, and often are happy, because they are ordering their days toward that great event.

Most of the conventional activities associated with this period, such as gift buying, food preparing, home decorating, family gathering, party throwing, and almsgiving, are all motivated by the desire to be ready.  There are many folks around us who may not have Jesus in mind as the encounter for which they prepare, but that missed perception does not eliminate the reality of their preparation.  When people participate in the preparation, they find themselves happy.  

The reason for this is found in human nature and dignity.  Rational creatures are invested with dignity on account of their end, which is to know and love God, the ultimate end of the universe, summarized an author in a philosophical article I was reading recently.  It follows that when we are moving toward and preparing for an encounter with that God, our human dignity is heightened and strengthened.  When much of society sets about this noble activity, as in Advent, human nature is burnished and bright: people are happy.  

The Prayer after Communion for the day that falls seven days before Christmas (December 18; Saturday of the third week of Advent this year) reveals that preparing to celebrate is a sanctifying and elevating activity:  May we receive your mercy, in the midst of your temple, O Lord, and show fitting honor to the coming solemnities of our redemption, through Christ our Lord.

It is true that many of the people charging about and reveling are not fully intent upon the redemption that comes at Christmas.  However, it is also true that in allowing themselves to be drawn into the solemnities, and in fact contributing to them, they are ordering themselves and their days in some way, however incomplete, to the encounter with God which is their goal and end.  Every activity suitable to this celebration elevates and enhances their human dignity.  This is another way of saying that it brings joy to them and those around them.  

These holy days are happy indeed because they remind everyone what they are truly for.  We look around us at all these semi-witting participants in the great undertaking of Christian life not with scorn for what they do not know, do not recognize, or do not accept; but we look at them with love and fellow-feeling.  We look at them with grace and gratitude.  We look at them with hope, that this taste of the joy that comes from preparing for the coming of the Divine Child will lead them to seek, to find, and to embrace a faith-filled lifetime of happy, holy days.

Monsignor Smith

Please Sir, may I have some more?

Don’t spoil your appetite!  Many is the mom who admonishes her kids, not always in vain, with those very words in these days when treats and tasties abound, often as prologue to celebratory meals lovingly prepared and presented to be enjoyed with some ceremony.  The holy days of Advent and Christmas feature much feeding, and sometimes it can be hard to finish one massive meal in time to move on to the next; an embarrassment of riches, indeed.

It is odd, therefore, that even as we look forward to the great feast of Our Lord’s Nativity, united in worship as Christ’s pilgrim people, we do so by… eating.

The God Who Comes will be found in a feed trough, and that is no accident, nor devised by some clever set designer.  The Blessed Mother about to give birth goes to the home of her husband’s tribe, a tiny town known as the House of Bread – Bethlehem.  Food references abound, and if this awakens your hunger, that is because it is supposed to do just that.  But the best way to prepare for the promised banquet is, counterintuitively, to chow down now. 

All through Advent, we chew figuratively, and meditatively, on the promises of God laid down by the holy prophets.  We ruminate on the psalms, the poetic songs of praise and petition that passed our Lord’s lips with the familiarity of His own name.  We drink in the glory of the Gospel, the News so Good we can become tipsy from joy, with thirty-gallon jars filled to the brim standing by with more.

But more than a figure is the fact and food of Our Lord’s Body and Blood, which He has lovingly prepared and presents for us to enjoy with no small ceremony.  This is the Main Course, giving us entrée into the Divine Life that he brought bundled with His newborn body into that manger.  We show our appreciation for this gift by destroying it, devouring and digesting Him Who lays the spread.  

Remarkably this repast reverses the results of regular meals.  Rather than turn the food into what we already are, as we do (some of us to excess) with meat and bread, fruit and cheese, augmenting the flesh we already have with more of the same, this food transforms us into what it is, and what we long to be: ever-living bodies, raised and glorified with God.  You are what you eat.  

Repeated application of this food therapy results not only in augmentation, but also in a reduction: Christ’s presence in our bodies reduces the persistence and power of sin, dropping the dead weight that accumulates over time like so much cholesterol.  Reducing resistance increases speed, and we fly toward our heavenly goal with souls and bodies made light with eager joy. 

Perhaps because we are sated, perhaps because we are delighted, and please do not let it be because we are distracted, it can be easy to miss the Prayer after Communion:  We implore your mercy, Lord, that this divine sustenance may cleanse us of our faults and prepare us for the coming feasts. Through Christ our Lord.  This food sustains us on our journey, but marvelously makes more room, not less, for more of the same, by cleansing us of what we have consumed in our selfishness and sin.  This morsel is the foretaste of heaven itself, the first course that does not fill us, but rather frees us.

Therefore even now, long days and still longer nights away from the joy of our Lord’s birth, we light the pink candle and Rejoice in the Lord always; I say it again – Rejoice!  (Entrance antiphon for Gaudete Sunday, Phil 4:4-5)  The Lord spreads a banquet in the sight of our foes; to allow him to feed us will only enhance and enliven our appetite.  Our Mother, the Church, not only approves; she insists.

Monsignor Smith

Hushed, not rushed; alert, not asleep

Quieter and violet-er than the paricolored pandemonium that swirls outside the Church, the liturgical season of Advent is a shock to the system of the most welcome sort.  Last Sunday, the sounds of the Mass were so different from what had marked the previous Sunday, and the sights too signaled a change.  Even the solitary candle burning in the wreath stood out in the suddenly deepening dark.  Adding to this contrast, the sights and sounds of the so-called holiday season surround us everywhere else we go these days.  With the relentless necessities that keep us going there, it is easy to discern that this time of prayer offers us something that we need. 

A few years ago, a parishioner quoted with enthusiasm a sermon she had heard from a priest in another church.  He had told everybody that he wanted them to “relax” during Advent.  I can see how someone might get the impression that quiet and reflection are meant to bring about relaxation, but this overlooks the awkward reality that at no time did our Lord tell anybody he loved or called to “relax.”  “Reconsider,” maybe; “repent,” definitely.  “Rejoice” – well, always, as Saint Paul says.  

The call to pull back from the activities that can absorb us during this time is not a call to chill out, but rather a call to retreat from what distracts us and redirect our attention to the God who speaks with the still, small voice.  This increase in our attentiveness starts with the admonition to wake up! that we heard on the first Sunday of the season.  Stay awake, be alert, lest you miss it; this is not the same thing as relaxing.

May no earthly undertaking hinder those who set out in haste to meet your Son, we pray in the collect of the second Sunday of the season.  Set out in haste – again the opposite of trying to be more laid back about things.  Yes, it does connote a departure from a certain ‘place,’ a place of mundane preoccupations and busy-ness.  But it also makes clear a purposeful and unhesitating moving toward that requires us to let go of all encumbrances and activities that would hinder us.  Simplification, surely, but hardly relaxation.

The Son, our Savior, is indeed coming to us, but it is not fitting for us to park ourselves in place and wait for Him to come to us.  Watching, waiting, moving, and greeting are our purpose, because of our eagerness for what he brings: our rescue, as the Prayer over the Offerings expresses it.  

The marvelous songs and music of this season are filled with both yearning and confidence, and to cultivate both of these is the work that will make a home in our hearts for the One who is to come.  His very smallness when He arrive makes it easy for those who are not prepared to miss him, or turn Him away.  This we wish to avoid.

The King shall come when morning dawns, and we all know that to welcome the dawn we have to rouse ourselves while it is still dark.  That requires that we settle down a little earlier in preparation.   Calm down, put other things aside, raise your heads and behold, your redemption is at hand.  You know Who is coming, and what he brings.  Repentance of all that He abhors is necessary for the readiness to receive what He offers.  This readiness leads to rejoicing.

Jerusalem, arise, and stand upon the heights; behold the joy which comes to you from God. This is the Antiphon we recite or sing this Sunday at the time of Holy Communion.  Arise, stand, behold; set out in haste; this is the work of the season. Enjoy it; take nourishment from it; give thanks for it.  Rejoice by all means, but this is no time to relax.

Monsignor Smith