Blessed Are We: Sunday 4A

Long ago in China there was an old farmer. One day his horse ran off. As news of this reached his neighbors, they visited the old man to express their sympathy: "What bad luck to lose your horse!"

The farmer thought for a moment and replied, 'Perhaps..."

The next morning the farmer awoke to find his horse had come back. What's more, several wild horses had followed his horse home. The neighbors rejoiced, and came by to tell the old farmer how happy they were for his sudden good fortune.

The old farmer paused and said "Perhaps..."

Shortly after, the farmer's son decided to ride one of the wild horses. Unaccustomed to a rider, the horse threw the boy off and the son broke his leg in the fall. Again, the neighbors arrived to offer their sympathies for the misfortune: "What a terrible run of bad luck you're having!"

The old farmer thought for a moment and said "Perhaps..."

The very next day, military officials came into the village with orders to draft young men for war. They went from house to house, rounding up all the young men. But when they got to the old farmer's house and saw his son with his broken leg they moved on, leaving the boy alone. Once again, neighbors came to share words of congratulations to the old farmer for the good fortune to have his son passed by.

Once again, the farmer paused and said… "Perhaps."

The story is an old Buddhist parable, but it could be used to illustrate one of the great verses of the Old Testament, "For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord" (Isaiah 55:8, NAB). Natural human thinking isn't automatically right.

Equally, the parable can demonstrate a powerful New Testament teaching, St. Paul's hope-filled words "We know that all things work together for good for those who love God…" (Romans 8:28).

And perhaps it opens a window to understanding this Sunday's Gospel, which is anything but natural human thinking. You could go through the entire Bible line by line without finding a text more difficult to accept and understand. And yet the Catechism of the Catholic Church says "The Beatitudes are at the heart of Jesus' preaching" (CCC 1716).

How can this be? Which of us associates anything good with mourning, one of the most truly painful of all human experiences? Who doesn't resent persecution, especially for doing right? Not to mention libels and slanders and evil gossip, which send us running to a lawyer.

I think I could buy the notion that Jesus is talking to the apostles, or to future saints, or perhaps to the persecuted Christians of Iraq or the Sudan. But you sure can't square that interpretation with the catechism teaching that "The Beatitudes are at the heart of Jesus' preaching."

However, in the same place the catechism explains itself by saying that the Beatitudes show us the face of Jesus. Given his willingness to suffer and even die for us, that makes sense. It's easy enough to accept the Beatitudes as a picture of Jesus. But then the catechism hits us square in the face with what his words actually mean to each of us: it says the Beatitudes express our calling. It says "they shed light on the actions and attitudes characteristic of the Christian life" (CCC 1717)

In other words, the Beatitudes are meant to be lived. By how we act and how we think. Every day.

I try to be honest in my preaching, so I'll tell you frankly that scares the heck out of me. I was writing my homily before dinner and thinking hard about the Beatitudes as an actual vocation took away my appetite—which, as you know, doesn't happen very often.

I'm really not sure where this homily would have gone if the catechism hadn't come to the rescue. It was almost like one of those "Good news, bad news" jokes. After terrifying us with the challenge of living the Beatitudes, our magnificent Catechism of the Catholic Church calls them "the paradoxical promises that sustain hope in the midst of tribulations;" it says "they proclaim the blessings and rewards already secured, however dimly, for Christ's disciples" (CCC 1717)

Talk about reassurance! Far from being unbearable demands, the Beatitudes are promises that keep hope alive in the darkest circumstances. They contain blessings and rewards already guaranteed, even if postponed for a time.

I said a few minutes ago that the Beatitudes contain much that goes against natural human instinct. The catechism turns that thought around completely, saying that "The Beatitudes respond to the natural desire for happiness." But of course the Church also teaches us that this "natural" desire is of divine origin: God placed it in our hearts in order to draw us to himself, the only One who can fulfill it (CCC 1718).

The Beatitudes take over where God's promises to the chosen people left off: they fulfill the promises not in terms of the Promised Land but something much greater, the Kingdom of heaven (CCC 1716).

There's simply nothing that should frighten or dismay us in this teaching, because it tells us the ending of our story. There's no suspense about how things will turn out. God calls us to his own beatitude (CCC 1719). In the face of that, all else is relative.

The catechism says we can already see the Beatitudes lived out, and the blessings they bestow, in the lives of the Virgin Mary and all the saints. But I'll take that a step further: in our own parish community I see people sustained by the hope that springs from the "paradoxical promises" Jesus makes in the Beatitudes. I see them comforted as they mourn; I see them blessed as they accept disappointments and unfairness; I see them living here with eyes fixed on heaven.

With due respect to the wise old farmer, there's really no "perhaps" about it. Christ has promised and Christ is faithful.

Feast Full of Meaning: Baptism of the Lord

This week's big news story was that an Ontario Catholic school board was found guilty of discrimination when it cancelled a contract with Raelians, followers of a fellow whose website proclaims him to be a singer-songwriter, race-car driver, and—third on the list—the messenger to earth of its creators, a group of extraterrestrials.

I want to make it clear to any Raelians in the congregation this morning that I mean no disrespect to them. None at all. We've spent a fortune this week trying to repair the heating system and we cannot afford to be sued. I am sure Raelians are very nice people.

All the same, I am glad that I belong to a faith that started nearly two thousand years ago, and not to one that began in 1973, when its founder "had a dramatic encounter with a human being from another planet."

Not that there's anything wrong with belonging to a 37-year old religion! Again, I'm sure it's a very nice religion. But there are some splendid advantages to being part of an ancient faith, and one of them is simply that we benefit from centuries of accumulated wisdom .

Christian thinkers, many of them saints, have been pondering the truths of our faith from the days of the apostles. We call some of the earliest thinkers the Father of the Church, and we still gain profound insight from their writings.

This is particularly true of today's feast. If I had a year to prepare this morning's homily, and a double doctorate in liturgy and scripture, I couldn't come close to seeing the riches that ancient writers have found.

In fact, some of the connections they make are so startling that I'm sure they'd never occur to anyone without the help of the Holy Spirit. It's easy to see the connection in time between Christmas and the Epiphany, but not so easy to link Christmas, Epiphany and the Baptism of the Lord.

Yet the ancient writers treat them pretty much as one. In the fifth century, St. Maximus of Turin wrote "Reason demands that this feast of the Lord's baptism, which I think could be called the feast of his birthday, should follow soon after the Lord's birth… even though many years intervened between the two events."

Maximus becomes poetic as he continues:

"At Christmas, he was born a man; today he is reborn sacramentally. Then he was born from the virgin; today he is reborn in mystery. When he was born a man, his mother Mary held him close to her heart; when he is born in mystery, God the Father embraces him with his voice when he says: This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased: listen to him. The mother caresses the tender babe on her lap; the Father serves his Son by his loving testimony. The mother holds the child for the Magi to adore; the Father reveals that his Son is to be worshiped by all the nations."

St. Proclus of Constantinople, also writing in the fifth century, saw the Epiphany and the Baptism as one feast, even more wonder-filled than Christmas.

At Christmas, he wrote, "the earth rejoiced because it bore the Lord in a manger; but on the Epiphany it is the sea that is glad and leaps for joy; the sea is glad because it receives the blessing of the river Jordan.

"At Christmas we saw a weak baby, giving proof of our weakness. In today's feast [and he means the Epiphany!], we see a perfect man, hinting at the perfect Son who proceeds from the all-perfect Father. At Christmas the King puts on the royal robe of his body; at Epiphany the very source enfolds and, as it were, clothes the river."

Is your head spinning a bit? There's nothing wrong with that—every once in a while we need to be reminded that we are just taking little sips from the gushing fountain. When we talk about the "mysteries" of the Christmas season we don't mean that they are mysterious or impossible to understand, but we do mean that God has revealed himself in truly wondrous ways, making known his plan for salvation.

Today we recognize that God has made himself known not only in the historical events we celebrate. He has also revealed himself in the sacraments. Through baptism "the believer enters into the mystery of God's saving plan and begins a life journey in, with, and through Christ crucified and risen to the fullness of eternal life."*

*Thomas D. McGonigle, "Mystery," The New Dictionary of Catholic Spirituality, p. 677.

Epiphany: Rise Up!

My father was the best alarm clock I ever had. If I said "please wake me up at seven," he never forgot or got the time wrong, and unlike my battery-powered alarm, he never stopped ticking.

Of course there was a price to pay for such efficiency. He had an annoying tendency to knock on my bedroom door and say "rise and shine!" These are not words a teenager wants to hear. Rising's bad enough, but shining was out of the question.

But at the risk of annoying young and old, my message today is just that: rise and shine. Today we're challenged to respond to what we celebrated a week ago; the prophet Isaiah says it's now time to wake up and look at what's going on around us—something marvelous, something extraordinary.

Listen to those words of the prophet: they are an invitation to a deep and personal joy that he can barely describe. We will see and be radiant; our hearts will thrill and rejoice. We'll have wealth beyond measuring.

What does it all mean? I'd put it this way: If your Christmas was par for the course, it's time to change course. If you're not buzzing with the spiritual joy of this season, you need to arise—you need to look around and take stock. God's doing wonders all around us, and it would be a tragedy to miss out.

I'm saying this with some authority this Epiphany. I saw that star rising in the East, in Montreal to be exact! I was there with ten young adults from the parish attending "RiseUp," the annual Christmas conference of Catholic Christian Outreach, the university student movement. Without exaggerating, I can tell you that what I saw made me radiant, made my heart thrill, and my spirit rejoice.

Five hundred young people listened eagerly as powerful speakers proclaimed the Gospel without compromise. They lined up to be blessed. They lined up to go to confession. And they sang hymns of praise like a choir of thousands.

It was living proof, if any were needed, that the light truly has shone in the darkness. At a time of scandal, these students were spending their Christmas break praying and learning about Jesus; they filed past the tomb of the newly canonized St. André with the kind of devotion many think disappeared years ago; their faces, quite simply, shone.

I learned or re-learned three lessons during RiseUp. The first, of course, is that God never gets tired out! Throw a crisis of faith at Him, toss in a few wretched scandals, and He comes up with ever more abundant grace. Write off a generation, and then watch God renew and recharge them, raising up zealous leaders from the young themselves.

The second is that our faith cannot be—must not be—bland or routine. Our faith is glorious! Isaiah tells us that the glory of the Lord has risen upon us. He wasn't talking to wise men, or shepherds, or people of his own time. He was talking to people of all time. We're standing in a blaze of glory. How sad to think we might pull on sunglasses of boredom or convention and lower our expectations until they become modest at best.

We shouldn't let the historical side of Christmas obscure its timeless aspect. Certainly the star shone over the manger in Bethlehem, but it shines in our hearts today. So where do we get the idea that this great dawning has turned into a pale sunset?

The young look for what's exciting, not predictable. Many of the young people I saw kneeling before the Blessed Sacrament in Montreal were no less overwhelmed by the mystery than were the wise men at Bethlehem.

A third lesson is that God really does plan the Church to be a Church of all nations. CCO was started in Saskatoon by a couple named André and Angèle Regnier. But despite their names, neither Regnier is a francophone, and the movement was firmly English-speaking for 15 years. When CCO's board, of which I'm a member, began to discuss the idea of moving into Quebec, it seemed highly impractical—there is a difference in culture much greater than the language barrier. Yet the leaders of CCO couldn't ignore Quebec, and step by step—beginning by a brave move of the headquarters from Saskatoon to Ottawa—we have become a truly national movement.

An interesting footnote: for some years after Vatican II, Latin seemed to divide the Church. It was the focus of some who were very unhappy with modern liturgical changes. Now, it seems that Latin is again becoming a force for unity in the Church, judging by the way it allowed French and English students to sing the parts of the Mass in a common language.

CCO has one main purpose: to evangelize university students, and to teach them to evangelize others. Despite this focus, it has sent teams of students to China and Africa on mission trips. And missionary societies of priests, sisters, and laity were all represented at the conference, challenging the young to share their gifts even in distant lands.

You might be thinking that I didn't have time to reflect on the readings today and so decided to talk about "how I spent my Christmas holidays." Not true. My experience at RiseUp helped me live the mystery of the Epiphany, helped me pay homage, and allowed me to see the light that shines from the faces of those who behold the Lord.

But you don't need to have gone to Montreal to experience this, any more than you need to be in Bethlehem. Toss aside a narrow view of Christmas. Look around and be radiant—allow yourself to look deeply into what we're celebrating: true and lasting freedom from all that enslaves and oppresses, light that banishes the darkness of death and the fear of death, and a future full of hope.

And if you're a worried parent or grandparent, rejoice that the Church is always finding new ways to bring the light of Christ to your children, even in the toughest times. And rejoice that next year's RiseUp will be here in Vancouver!

Let's all take time today let our heartbeats quicken with the overwhelming truth of what Christ has brought to earth. And then kneel down and pay Him homage.

Mass at Dawn: Connecting to Christmas

Just give me a second here. I want to check my Facebook page.

Sorry for the interruption. Now as we gather on this Christmas morning… Oh sorry, someone just tweeted me.

Oh all right. Although at least one out of every fourteen people in the world has a Facebook account, I don't. And the only tweets I hear come from the birdbath in the rectory garden. I just wanted to get your attention!

Still, the movie "The Social Network," was definitely my favorite film of 2010. The picture is built around what one film critic calls "a melancholy paradox": a student named Mark Zuckerberg invented the social-networking internet site Facebook that now has more than 500 million members. But Zuckerberg himself "is so egotistical, work-obsessed, and withdrawn that he can't stay close to anyone."

Mark Zuckerberg is a peculiar fellow, if the film is to be believed, but he'll certainly go down in history for connecting people.

Facebook is just the most visible of the slew of modern ways of staying connected that started with e-mail, moved to instant messaging, texting, blogging, and then in the past eight years social networking sites like Friendster, MySpace, and of course Facebook.

Like much else in the modern world, these media are a mixed blessing. They allow families and friends to stay in touch despite great distances, and at little cost. But studies show that social networking has antisocial consequences for many.

One thing's for sure: social networking offers Christians both an opportunity and a challenge. The opportunity is obvious: used wisely, these media allow the Gospel message to be spread in a highly effective way. The Vatican offers a virtual library on its excellent website, while our own Archdiocese not only has a website but a Facebook page and a channel on YouTube for videos. You can even "follow" the Archdiocese on Twitter, the service that sends short updates to cell phones. The BC Catholic has its own website, and a blog called "the Busy Catholic."

And similar sites specifically for young people are hosted by the Office of Youth and Young Adult Ministry.

The Archbishop thinks these media are so important that he's asked us to hand out cards with the archdiocesan website on them as a way of welcoming both visitors and regular parishioners to the Church's on-line presence this Christmas.

Even our own parish got into the act: we put an ad in the North Shore News this week promoting the website findtheperfectgift.org, which features the Archbishop of Washington DC talking about Christmas.

But all of these electronic developments—exciting to some, scary to others—are nothing compared to the challenge that faces each one of us this morning. Are we here to "connect" to Christmas?

Are we like Mark Zuckerberg, whose Facebook friends are more virtual than real? Or are we like the shepherds who want a face-to-face encounter with the child Jesus?

And the biggest challenge of all: are we opening our hearts like Mary did, so that God himself can communicate with us?

The Gospel this morning shows us how to connect with Christmas. The shepherds lead us in the way of action: "Let's go!" they say. "Let us go to Bethlehem." It's the road we also must take to meet Jesus—not in a dream world, not in theory, but in the concrete circumstances of our lives. We need to ask ourselves right now "Where should I be heading? Where concretely is Jesus waiting for me?"

The opening prayer for this Mass reminds us that Christmas has consequences: "Father, we are filled with the new light by the coming of your Word among us. May the light of faith shine in our words and actions." For some this means meeting Jesus in what Mother Teresa called "the distressing disguise of the poor." For others it's an invitation to turn away from sin and self-centeredness.

For each of us, connecting with Jesus requires persevering in prayer, like Mary did. We need to ponder the message of this day in the depths of our heart. Can we find ten minutes behind a closed door to let ourselves treasure what we have heard and seen this day?

It's possible, of course, that there's no door you can close today in the middle of your hectic family celebration—there's no real chance at home today for contemplating the mystery of the birth of Christ. We have an answer to that problem: with the bulletin you'll receive a brochure that offers twelve ways of celebrating spiritually during the traditional twelve days of Christmas between now and the Epiphany.

They are delightful suggestions that would help almost anyone deepen and prolong the joy of Christmas. They are simple ideas that will, in the words of our Prayer After Communion, "increase our understanding and our love of the riches revealed" in Christ.

Thinking, serving, celebrating—these are all ways we "connect" to Christmas. Even websites and social media can connect us to the message of good news and salvation, and draw us closer to the kingdom where God reigns. Yet the ultimate connection is with Jesus Himself, and for that there is no substitute for the Mass. At every Mass the Lord fulfills the promise of salvation, pours out His Spirit on us, and communicates Himself to us. He becomes our Friend in a personal and intimate way that no social network can begin to touch.

So let us hasten to Bethlehem every Sunday, to glorify and praise God for all we have heard and seen today.

A blessed and happy Christmas to all, especially to Rob and Mary and family, since he inspired this blog in the first place!

Midnight Mass: Don’t Swap for Trinkets

Christmas arrived early at our house. The entire staff of St. Anthony's School came to dinner at the rectory last week and exchanged Christmas presents.

But the gifts came with a catch: they were almost all tacky. There was a Scotch tape dispenser shaped like a high-heeled shoe, a miniature set of bowling pins shaped like nuns, and similarly bizarre items.

If you were lucky enough to get a gift that wasn't in bad taste, you quickly lost it, since the complicated rules of the game allowed people to swap their present with one that had already been opened by someone else.

And while I was out in the kitchen, the teachers managed to hide the worst gifts all over the rectory. I can't open a cupboard without finding items that make the dollar store look like Birks Jewelers! If you forgot to buy a gift for someone you really don't like, see me after Mass and I'll offer you a wide selection!

But even tacky clouds have a silver lining. The gift exchange got me thinking about tonight's homily.

Because it struck me that in real life we sometimes reverse the rules of the teachers' gift exchange: we swap the most precious gifts for things or experiences that are of little or no value at all.

We give up the best for second-best, or even for the worst of all.

Tonight the light penetrates the darkness, and delight confounds despair. So why do I swap the light for the shadows, or joy for passing pleasures that can only weary and weaken me?

I don't know the answer to that question; it seems to make no sense to turn from the gentle light of Christ towards the harsh glare of the world and its foolish ways. But even if I don't know why we humans tend to prefer the darkness to the dawn, I do know this: the birth of Christ at Bethlehem is the answer to the violence, misunderstandings, addictions, fears, and hopelessness of our world.

Perhaps I should be more direct: this holy night offers each of us lasting freedom from the violence, misunderstandings, addictions, fears, and hopelessness that stop us from being "the best version of ourselves."

Let's be clear on this. Christmas is not kid stuff. St. Paul tells us that God has saved us, redeemed us, and purified us for himself. Christmas is the source of the grace and strength we need to live lives "that are self-controlled, upright and godly."

In modern jargon, Christmas empowers us. The light that shone through the night sky over Bethlehem now shines in our hearts—a light that warms us with the knowledge of God's love, and a light that heals us with the power of his mercy.

This simply can't be reduced to a children's story. Think for a moment of the dramatic rescue of the Chilean miners. After more than two months underground, ingenious human efforts brought the 33 captive miners to safety. No wonder it made headlines around the world.

But imagine the headlines if the rescue tube that brought up the miners had been used instead to deliver a rescuer. What would we have thought if someone had said, okay, I'll use the hole you've drilled to go down and join the men? I'll stay with them underground and help you figure out how to get us up again.

Now that would be a headline. But Christmas is far bigger news—that God came down to earth to share our danger, our isolation, our ills and our pains. And he came with a rescue plan that cannot fail if we're willing to follow it.

This is the "good news of great joy" that the angel announced to the shepherds as they shivered with fear. Good news, they said, for all the people. For you and me, in our unique struggles, worries and sin.

The good news offers a way out. Isn't that what Isaiah proclaimed when he said that the people who walked in darkness have seen a great light?

The good news offers a way out of addiction and despair. Isn't that what Isaiah meant when he said the yoke and rod the oppressor has been broken?

There will be a few moments of quiet time after the homily; I invite you to look into your heart for dark spots that need the light to shine on them. Let light penetrate the darkness, and let delight confound despair.

God invites us tonight to accept the gift he offers us and to reject all the tawdry and tacky substitutes the world proposes.

Certainly, that's a tall order in the middle of the night. So please take home a bulletin—it comes with a pamphlet that suggests ways of celebrating the traditional "twelve days of Christmas," marking each day between now and the Epiphany in a different way.

This holy night deserves our full-hearted response and the brochure can help us make it in concrete ways.

Let us walk in the light of the Lord's love revealed at Bethlehem. Whatever our situation, we are loved by Him. Our first and last thought this day should be that.

Pour Out Your Spirit (Advent 3.A)

I had a visit last week with my friend Father Benedict Groeschel, who is the most popular spiritual writer and speaker New York has produced since the days of Fulton J. Sheen. At 78, he has survived a heart attack, a stroke, and being run down by a car. With his cane and grey beard, he looks every inch the wise old man.

When Father Benedict asked how I'd been doing since our last meeting a year ago, I said "I'm doing fine, though I'm not as holy—or as thin—as I'd like to be."

He slowly leaned forward in his chair and replied, "Welcome to the club!"

Few of us, whether saints or sinners, are satisfied with ourselves. We make and break promises to ourselves, we slacken off, we don't feel we're making any progress. It can be disappointing or even frustrating.

Today's first reading can help. Isaiah paints a picture of an arid desert blooming with flowers; then he calls us to forget our spiritual arthritis and to jump with joy. It's a positive and hope-filled vision. But the prophet keeps us guessing—where do we find this strength and energy? What's the source?

I got part of the answer from my friend Heather who was in Palm Desert with her husband while I was shivering back East. She e-mailed me pictures from her holiday: photos of palm trees, swimming pools, and lush and beautiful fairways. It was almost enough to make me want to play golf!

But the background of some of the pictures showed the brown and bare slopes of the San Bernardino mountains—a reminder that every drop of water and every blade of rich green grass came from irrigation. Palm Springs advertises itself with the slogan "Like no place else." The truth is, without massive irrigation, it would literally be "no place."

There's the key to defeating the dryness of our spiritual lives—we need to be watered. My soul is a desert that won't flower unless it's soaked: Soaked by what Isaiah calls the rain of righteousness that pours down from heaven (45:8). His words are used in the entrance antiphon for next Sunday's Mass, the ancient verse Rorate coeli that calls the skies to open so that our Saviour might appear on earth.

It's the exact opposite of self-help. St. James says the farmer needs the early and the late rains to produce his crop. Positive thinking and even hard work will get him nowhere if the rain doesn't fall. So too with us: we need to be watered by God's Spirit if the dry soil of our lives is to be made green and fruitful.

By the way, there's something in this text that youth and the elderly should pay close attention to: St. James says both the early and the late rains are needed—in other words, the fields need water in both the autumn and the spring. We need the outpouring of God's Spirit at every stage of our Christian lives: the very elderly can bloom spiritually with God's help, just as the youngest can produce abundant fruit even at the beginning of their faith journey.

And it's all because God does the work! St. Paul says to the Corinthians: "I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God made it grow." (1 Cor. 3:6) We see the same thing in today's Psalm: It is the Lord who keeps faith, it is the Lord who gives food, it is the Lord who sets prisoners free, gives sight to the blind, and who raises up all who are bowed down. Not me, not you, but God.

So why do we try so hard when God wants to take over?

I suspect it's partly because we're impatient. We want results now. We want to lose ten pounds in ten days—at least I want to! We cram for exams, and we look for quick and easy returns on investments. Yet St. James says "Be patient!" Like farming, spiritual growth does demand work; the lazy farmer is a poor famer. Jesus said as much when he told us that as we sow, so shall we reap. But the rain from heaven is absolutely necessary, and neither the farmer nor the Christian can be successful without it.

Balancing patience, expectant faith, and personal discipline is a great challenge… too much for one homily or one Sunday. Let's focus on expectant faith as we pass the half-way mark of Advent: what could better than to ask God to pour out his Spirit as we prepare for Christmas?

Surely we all know that even our very best efforts can't ransom captives or make the desert into a garden. Only God can do it—and He will do it, if we ask. That's what St. Peter promised on the first Pentecost, using the words the Lord had spoken through the prophet Joel: "I shall pour out my Spirit on all humanity" (Acts 2:17).

I'm not suggesting some vague prayer for spiritual progress. We need to ask specifically, individually, and confidently for a fresh outpouring of the Spirit. Do it after Communion today, or before bed tonight. Do it walking in the rain, or on your knees at night. Or get up half an hour early tomorrow and pray at the kitchen table in the dark. Let's all pray this week for the "living water" that Jesus promised the woman at the well; let's pray for a spring of life within that will irrigate our dry hearts and make them green again.

Perhaps you've never prayed such a big prayer before. Maybe it seems too bold or too much for you. Try it anyway, and see what happens.

Taking Care of Business (Advent 1.A)

Lee Kravitz was about my age when he was fired from his important job running an American magazine.

Although he saw it coming, his firing was a huge shock for the workaholic editor. He asked himself the question every unemployed middle-aged man asks: what do I do now?

He tells us how he answered the question in his book "Unfinished Business: One Man's Extraordinary Year of Trying to do the Right Things." Lee Kravitz decided to use his severance pay to spend a whole year doing things he'd always meant to do, but never managed to accomplish—important things that had been set aside in his frantic life.

He looked up a mentally ill aunt he had once loved but come to ignore. He called on an old friend whose daughter had been ambushed in Iraq—and to whom he'd never managed to write a sympathy note.

Kravitz reached out to a friend he'd ignored for thirty years, despite having serious worries about his safety in Pakistan. He got in touch with a professor whose lectures had changed his life, but whom he'd never got around to thanking. He looked up a wonderful friend from university who had become a monk, and he worked to promote healing in his family by finding the truth about an ancient feud.

Notice that none of these things were making amends for wrongdoing—he was simply doing the good that he'd failed to do. He does make amends for a couple of things—a broken promise, an unpaid debt—but basically his year was spent doing the right things he'd always wanted to do.

It was, in other words, more of an Advent journey than a Lenten one. He wasn't doing penance, he was catching up on the things that matter. In Lee Kravitz's own words "We consign most of our most essential business to the bottom of our to-do list because we lack the time and energy to do the things that matter most in our lives well." But when he tackled the things that matter, he found that "great rewards will follow."

If this is true, it is true for believer and non-believer, Christian and non-Christian alike; Kravitz himself is Jewish.

But we Christians have not only special reasons but special seasons for doing the things that matter most. Advent and Lent are not only times of penitential preparation—they're our annual wake-up calls. Our time is now; we strive to live in constant readiness for the Lord's return. Christians don't need a mid-life crisis to make us to act.

All of us have "unfinished business," but there's no reason for it to pile up like a stack of unpaid bills. "You know what time it is," St. Paul tells us: "it is now the moment for you to wake from sleep."

Jesus makes the point even more directly: "Keep awake… for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming."

Spiritual alertness is central to the Christian life. From the time of Jesus to the present day the Church has waited for his return. The manana approach—saying "there's always tomorrow"—will never lead us to the Kingdom. We live what is sometimes called "the sacrament of the present moment," the belief that God wants to be present to us now, in the immediate circumstances of our lives, and not tomorrow, or next week.

One way to live the sacrament of the present moment is to be aware that God is always with us—to stop and acknowledge his presence in and around us. But another is to take care of unfinished business, because Jesus taught us that doing good to his brother and sisters means doing good to him.

Advent is the perfect time for both. The nearness of Christmas translates easily into the nearness of Christ, if we stay clear of the season's excesses. And the nearness of Christ is a constant invitation to do the right things as the perfect preparation for his birth in our hearts.

Our call to action today is fundamental, and comes from the Word of God. But the extraordinary year of Lee Kravitz can at least inspire us to have an extraordinary Advent. We need to grab some paper and a pen before bed tonight, or together after supper, and write down three things we'd be sorry we forgot to do for others if the Lord came tomorrow.

Each of us will have a different list. For some it will be expressing overdue thanks, for others paying overdue debts. But for all of us the list can be a reminder that the only day we really have is today: we know that now is the time.

So let's respond to our Advent wakeup call by taking care of unfinished business… bringing peace to our family, our friends, and ourselves.