The Invitation of Christmas

Isn’t it remarkable the power of Christmas to bring people together?

For weeks now, people have had more and more in common as they went about the business of preparing, sharing a knowing look (sometimes of joy, sometimes of frustration) with folks in line with them at the cash register, laughing with the guys at the tree lot, and all trying desperately, simultaneously, to find a parking place. Christmas is something we have in common, despite our differences and diversity.

Now that the moment is upon us, look around you in our church and see, not only the number of people here, but see how they are with one another: fathers with daughters, mothers with sons, and even in-laws sidled up close, and beaming.

In fact, one of the things that I have noticed lately is how disappointed I become when I learn that someone from our parish is going to be away for Christmas. I know, I know, it is all in the name of bringing those families together – and heaven knows plenty of us are from someplace else. But I truly miss those folks who are part of our family of faith here in Four Corners, and feel their absence on the Holy Day.

The consolation prize is all the family members who come here, some of whom I only get to see at Christmas or First Holy Communion, and those folks I get to meet for the first time, who are uniting with us in celebration because of their travels.

This is the power of Christmas to bring people together, because it is the power of God, who would be together with us. By His power, He comes among us; and by his helplessness, He draws us to Himself.

That tiny child is not only no threat, but the most marvelous invitation. That God would so humble Himself in order to share our company, by also sharing our lot, our fate, is the most marvelous invitation ever issued, the invitation received and responded to again and again in the eyes and lives of tiny children and wizened faces who recognize this great gift and mystery.

One of my favorite lines from the liturgy of Christmastime is the antiphon of Vespers in the Divine Office. It begins: O magnum mysterium, et admirabile sacramentum, ut animalia viderent Dominum natum, jacentem in praesepio, which I translate, O great mystery, and wondrous sacrament, that animals should see the new born Lord, lying in their feed trough. So descriptive of the most unlikely and most wonderful scene, it has often been set to glorious music. Though the animals could see the Lord in their midst, and could even sense their Creator’s presence, they could not be united with Him in the way that we are, whose human nature He embraced. Though it was in their feed trough that He lay, He would become food for us.

That scene, and that infant, draw us together in this holy place so that we, in similar awe and wonder, might find Him set before us not only to behold, but also as food. Partaking in His holy Body and Blood, we become able to be united not only with one another, but also with Him in His radiant holiness, perfection, and divinity. This is true unity, true Communion, indeed.

Every laugh, every wave; every greeting (yes, even “Happy Holidays,” although Merry Christmas says it better) and every kindness or courtesy extended in the crowded marketplace, not only draw us closer to one another in our humanity, but echo the invitation and possibility of being united with one another and with our saving God, in His divinity and eternal splendor. Peace on earth, indeed.

So take some time this day to marvel with me at how Christmas brings people together, especially as we become one in this Holy Communion at the center of our life as the Church.

Even if you travel in these festive days, and especially if you are joining us for the occasion or even for the first time, join me in delight in being together in the presence of our new born Lord. Thanks be to God for bringing us together in this peace.

And so in unison with Father DeRosa, the rectory staff and pastoral team, and all of us privileged to serve you in this center of our blessed Communion, I am pleased to wish you and all whom you hold dear a grace-filled and merry Christmas.

Monsignor Smith

On being heard

Can you hear me now? Before the wireless company made it their slogan, that was frequently a very pertinent question – even in church.

Recently someone lent me a book about Theodore Roosevelt that discussed a campaign speech he made in Madison Square Garden in 1912 – ninety-nine years ago. It mentioned the effect of the quality of his voice (high-pitched and shrill) and noted that the loudspeaker would not be invented until the following year.

Imagine national-level politics without electronic amplification! That’s hard to do in our era of the 24-hour news cycle and viral videos, isn’t it? There is NOTHING we don’t hear – though like me, you may often wish there were.

Something else has been transformed in that same century’s time: the sacred liturgy. As children of the electronic age, we bring to church the expectation that we will hear everything at volume. The question “Can you hear me?” is often considered as if it had been “is the sound system working?”, as if nothing is audible unless coming through powered speakers.

Long before electricity, the first level of amplification at Mass was to sing, which increased the range and clarity of the words. The next level was achieved by having several people sing, and thus choirs found their role in the sacred liturgy. For many centuries, the choir would sing or chant the prayers of the Mass that most people never would have heard if only the priest had spoken them.

For homilies, folks would crowd around the pulpit, which was carefully placed in the church, and often lidded with a sounding board, to help reflect the preacher’s words toward the hearers. You can imagine how people would have to strain if they didn’t get close!

Now our expectations have swung to the opposite end of the spectrum. We expect to hear every word at Mass as we do listening to a news broadcast. But while this attention and clarity of communication have helped in some aspects of our liturgical participation, I think they have wounded others.

When the preacher is preaching, when the Sacred Scripture is being read, or even when announcements are being made, information is conveyed, so intelligibility is important. Amplification enhances the effectiveness of that communication. In other aspects of prayer and worship, understanding is not dependent upon the intelligibility of every syllable, and a clear line of sight from face to face is not essential to participation.

But the expectation has taken hold that the priest or minister, whenever he speaks, is speaking to us, facing us, and conveying information. This has resulted in our own time in a liturgical praxis that often has the priest behaving like a newscaster, entertainer, or some other “talking head,” when in fact he is leading the people in prayer to Almighty God.

Not everyone can be gifted enough to have the kind of high-pitched, shrill voice that is prized for great orators, so I concede the usefulness of microphones in the sacred liturgy. But before you count yourself left out of some aspect of worship that does not sound as if it were coming out of your television or radio, let the psalmist remind you that at the heart of our worship for millennia the question has been the other way round: Lord, hear my voice! Let thy ears be attentive to the voice of my supplications! (Ps 130:2) I paraphrase: O God, can you hear me now?

Monsignor Smith

Signposts in a Strange Land

One Pink Candle and Other Curious Signposts – that’s my title for the talk I gave to the RCIA group this week. Obviously, it refers to this week’s unique phenomenon signifying Gaudete Sunday, our day in Advent dedicated to rejoicing.

Gaudete Sunday takes its name from the first word of the Introit or Entrance Antiphon for the Third Sunday in Advent: Rejoice in the Lord always, again I say, rejoice. Indeed, the Lord is near. (Phil 4: 4-5)

The lecture introduced our inquirers to the fact that Christian worship is characteristically liturgical, and went over some of the aspects of the Catholic liturgy, including feasts and seasons, vesture and posture. The form and content of our liturgy is received from the Church and her tradition, to form our prayer and practice, and inform our faith. This lecture is always fun to give, since there are so many concrete and colorful examples to discuss – like this week’s Advent candle.

Oddly, though, in recent decades, American Catholics have lost sight of this element of the Mass, its proper antiphons. They are called proper because they are different for every day, feast, Mass, or occasion. Every Mass has three: the Introit, the Offertory, and the Communion. They are related to the Scriptural readings of the Mass and are often themselves based on Scripture, and are combined with selected verses from an appropriate psalm.

Possibly because the translations into English were slow to be available after the changes forty years ago, and possibly because musical settings were nearly non-existent, in most places they have been replaced with generic songs or hymns.

With the introduction of the new translation of the Missal, however, the Church has renewed all of its texts, and emphasized the value of all of them to the full celebration of the Mass. Since the texts, including the antiphons, have been available to composers for some years now in anticipation of their introduction, there are musical settings of them available.

I hope you have noticed and appreciated that, since summer, at all of our Masses with music, we have had these antiphons sung by the cantor or choir, and the text available to read in the program. It has preceded, but not supplanted, the songs we have grown accustomed to singing. On some occasions, the congregational song is clearly chosen because of its relation to this antiphon.

This is all part of our effort, encouraged by our Holy Father and the informed leaders of our Church, to sing the Mass rather than simply sing at Mass. Coupled with the new musical settings necessitated by the new texts of the commons of the Mass (which are those parts we sing or say every Sunday, like the Gloria, or the Lamb of God) this makes for a lot of new music.

Novelty can be exciting, but in liturgy it can also be unsettling. One of the key elements to liturgical worship is familiarity and repetition. For this reason, in introducing these antiphons this year, at the same time we have been learning the new Mass parts, we have not reduced or removed any of the songs or hymns that we previously had been singing at Mass.

So I hope that this Gaudete Sunday you appreciate hearing sung the full antiphon that is the reason we call it Gaudete Sunday. Along with that familiar pink candle, it is another beautiful signpost pointing our way to the heaven on earth that is our full participation in the Sacred Liturgy.

Monsignor Smith

The Church is Young

Did you know that this is the longest possible Advent? Since Christmas is on a Sunday this year, we have four full weeks of Advent, which started on the earliest possible date, November 27. Of course, that does not change the number of Advent Sundays, which I usually use for bulletin letters to share with you some insights into the Sacred Liturgy.

There is no shortage of material on that subject this year, since we have begun to use the new Missal. If you look back, this is what I was talking about last Advent; and I was using this space for the past few weeks to help make sure you were ready. I am not sure how much I helped, but I do want to say: you did a great job. Thank you.

Everybody approached the challenge of the change with great good nature and generosity. That in itself is a gift of the Spirit and an indication of your gracious disposition to receive the gifts the Church offers you. I am very proud of our parish.

I received many comments after the debut Masses last weekend. What surprised me the most was that three people commented something to the effect of: That’s the new translation? I already know that; it is the way I learned the Mass growing up – in Spanish.

I emphasized that the new translation is more faithful to the original Latin than the first English Missal. But because of that new fidelity, we now say the same things in English that Catholics around the world say in French, Spanish, German, Igbo, Japanese, and Hungarian. Unlike before, when the English said similar things, we now say the same words in the same way. What a gift!

The other thing was the questions that people asked: What does it mean when we say, Lord I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof? (That is a direct quote from Matthew 8:8, when the centurion wants Jesus to heal his paralyzed servant.) What was that big word in the Creed,…consubstantial? (The Creed was formulated carefully by the Church Fathers at the Council of Nicaea almost 1700 years ago, to be the very, very clear formulation of Christian belief. That is the English form of the precise word chosen to assert that God the Father and God the Son, Jesus Christ, are of the same substance. )

So now that we have these new texts, I have no shortage of explaining that I can do here, and in my homilies, because it brings to light so many elements of our Faith and prayer that had been hidden or disguised before. The fact that the text is new and different means we will be noticing these words and expressions more readily, before we make them part of our reflexive participation. So this is a wonderful time for all of us to deepen our knowledge and understanding.

Meanwhile, we have to get good at this by Christmas, so we can lead everyone who comes then in the new prayers. You could not help but notice how we priests were glued to the text, craning our necks and straining our eyes to read every word, whereas before we had many of the prayers committed to memory. I felt like a newly-ordained priest again, anxious not to make a mistake. This long Advent, beginning our lifetime of knowing and loving these words of the Holy Mass, is a wonderful time for us all to be young again together.

Monsignor Smith