Happy Unidentified Generic Holiday, Please Spend Money

Surely you've noticed by now (Yes, I have. And don't call me Shirley.) that most major retailers have decided to ban the use of the word Christmas from their advertising and in-store promotions. The American Family Association is attempting to get 1,000,000 names on a petition to protest this practice. You can sign the petition here.

The stores are giving the excuse that they don't want to offend anyone. Of course they don't seem to mind offending Christians. They sell Christmas trees and Christmas cards. They employ Santa Clause to pump up toy sales. But, they don't want to mention the "reason for the season".

Here's an idea. There are hundreds of thousands of independent retailers who aren't ashamed to mention our Lord's birthday. I suggest that you spend your money with them. Here in the St. Louis area, there are shopping districts like St. Charles, Kirkwod, Kimmswick, and many others where they are actually nice to you when you spend your money. You're probably dealing with the owner, who actually appreciates your business.

You may spend a little more. You may not. You'd be surprised how competitive many of them are because of their low overhead. If we don't make our voices heard, the devil will be winning a major battle here, detracting from our Lord's birth.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

A few weeks ago, there was a thread on Delmenico Bettinelli's excellent blog concerning preaching, particularly the fact that sin is rarely the topic. Some excellent points were made, and it's often true that we preachers don't speak to controversial issues.

Since this was my weekend to preach, and I knew that the readings could be an excellent basis for a discussion of sin, I took up the challenge to preach on it. I also promised to post the homily on this blog.

I think it's worth mentioning that the responses varied at each of the three masses at which I preached. As usual, the 10:30 am mass today was the most interested and the most receptive. I noticed a lot of heads nodding in agreement. I also noticed a lot of people who wouldn't make eye contact with me! I was particularly pleased that my nineteen year old daughter was very complimentary, much more than usual. I firmly believe that young people want and need guidance and direction and would welcome more instructions on how to live good, Christian lives.

I know that there is plenty of room for improvement, but here's today's effort. (This is the written script. The actual delivery varied slightly, according to the audience, but what you see here is 99% as it was given.)


HAPPY NEW YEAR! Today marks the beginning of the Church’s year. The First Sunday of Advent. Out with the green! In with the purple! It’s the first day of year B. It seems like just yesterday that we were starting year A. I don’t know about you, but it will take me a while to get used to writing “B” on my checks.

The church tells us that Advent is a time of devout and joyful expectation. The use of musical instruments and altar flowers is supposed to be moderate during Advent so as not to take away from the anticipation of the full joy of Christmas. Even the color violet is kind of quiet and peaceful. Everything in Advent is supposed to be geared toward the coming miracle of Christ's birth.

Of course, the world we live in doesn't make Advent any easier for us. At the time that we're supposed to be devoutly and joyfully anticipating Jesus' birth, the world around us is basically going crazy. From now until the end of the year, everything is all about parties and shoppint, especially shopping. It seems like every year the Christmas ads start a little earlier. Oh, wait a minute. My mistake. They're not Christmas ads. They're holiday ads. We're not supposed to talk about Christmas in 21st century America. Don't want to offend anybody, you know. But, whatever you call the season, the ads started even before Halloween. With all that going on around us, we're supposed to be devout and prayerful. It ain't easy.

We begin this season of joyful expectation on a rather somber note with today's readings. Isaiah asks God, “Why do you let us wander, O LORD, from your ways, and harden our hearts so that we fear you not?” Isaiah lived about 700 years before Christ, but he could just as well have been writing today. Why DO you let us wander so far from your ways, Lord? Why ARE our hearts so hard that we don’t fear you anymore? It was Isaiah who wrote about the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit. In Chapter 11 he listed wisdom, understanding, counsel, fortitude, knowledge, piety and the fear of the Lord. OK, catechism students, which one is the greatest? The fear of the Lord. How many of us today actually fear the Lord?

God is love. God is peace. God is forgiveness. But God is also justice. Somehow, we seem to have gotten the idea that God is a nice old man, very George Burns-like, who will let us get away with anything. Particularly here in the United States, we seem to think that the Kingdom of God is a democracy where the majority rules and we can do pretty much whatever we want. WRONG!!!

Our God is the same God who destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah. Our God destroyed the world with the great flood. In spite of the fact that He sent His Only Son to die on a cross for our sins, HE’S STILL GOD. Remember, In a few minutes, we'll say the words: “We believe in one God…..He will come again in glory to JUDGE the living and the dead.” The Gospel tells us today that we’d better be ready.

“Jesus said to his disciples: Be watchful! Be alert! You do not know when the time will come.” “You do not know when the Lord of the house is coming, whether in the evening, or at midnight, or at cockcrow, or in the morning. May he not come suddenly and find you sleeping. What I say to you, I say to all: (Watch!)

That sounds pretty clear. God is going to send His Son back again to judge each one of us. Is He going to be merciful, or is He going to be just? Is He going to say, “Well, you followed most of the commandments most of the time? I guess you’re in.”? Or is He going to say, “What happened to the Beatitudes? What about the Golden Rule? I even had that one printed on all the rulers when you were in school. Have you treated others as you would be treated yourself?

We begin Advent with Isaiah's rather grim question to God, asking why He lets us wander so far from his ways and Jesus' warning to “Watch”. The Church tells us that Advent has a two-fold purpose. One is to prepare for Christ's coming as a child born of a virgin and the other is to prepare for His coming again.

If company's coming, what's the first thing you do. Most of us will clean the house. Maybe that's what we're called to do during Advent; clean up our spiritual houses. We know that God will forgive our sins if we're truly sorry and ask for His forgiveness.

The trouble with sin is that it sneaks up on you. You've all heard the story that if you put a frog into a pan of boiling water, he'll jump out. But, if you put that same frog in a pan of cold water and turn on the heat underneath it, the frog will sit there and get cooked because he doesn't notice the water getting hot. Most of you know that my wife is a Weight Watcher leader. Most of you also know that she's smarter than I am. She gave a very good example at her meetings this past week of how easy it is to slip off the plan. It just takes one little mistake, maybe just one piece of cake. But, once you've made that little slip, there's a tendency to say, “oh well, I messed up now. I might as well have another piece. Then the next thing we know, we've gained five pounds and are ashamed to go back to Weight Watchers meeting. Then, before we know it, we've gained twenty pounds.

Isn't sin a lot like that? It just slips up on you. Take driving, for example. Do you remember when people stopped at red lights? It doesn't seem like that long ago. You hardly ever saw anybody run the light. Then, slowly, gradually, you noticed a few people going through after the light turned red. Then a few more. Now, it a rare occasion when you see a light change and at least three or four cars run the red. And, if you ask those people if they think they did anything wrong, they'll say “no”.

Look at the advances we've made in the sin or pornography. I'm mostly talking to the men now. Do you remember, back in the fifties and sixties, when Playboy magazine was such a big deal? C'mon. Don't pretend you didn't look at it, at least to read the articles. It wasn't easy to get. You had to go to the Rexall Drug Store and buy it. That was embarassing enough. Then, you had to hope that you didn't run into someone who knew your parents, or that the cashier wasn't someone from the neighborhood. When you got it home, after you read the articles, of course, you might accidentally look at the pictures. In those days, it was pretty hot stuff. But, by today's standards, it was nothing. There are pictures in today's newspaper that are more revealing than the pictures in Playboy, back in the olden days.

But, nowadays, you don’t even have to leave your house to see things that would make Hugh Hefner blush. Between cable TV and the Internet, you can satisfy just about any perversion you can imagine, and some you probably can’t. Pull up a chair and see every kind of sick, twisted thing your heart desires.

If someone would have told you in 1970 that in thirty years, you would have a machine on your desk that would deliver that kind of material into your home at the push of a button, you would have said they were crazy, especially if they told you that your kids and grandkids would be able to look at it too. But, like the frog, we let it sneak up on us and didn't even notice. I wonder what Jesus will say to the folks happily logged onto www.smut.com when He comes.



Now, you’re thinking, at least I hope you’re thinking, “C’mon Deacon, I don’t do that stuff. I don’t even know how to use the Internet.” But, do we do anything to stop it? Is it just as big a sin to pretend that sin isn’t happening? Remember, He said, “May He not come suddenly and find you sleeping.”

What about birth control. That's a very controversial subject. How many Catholics do you know, you may even be one of them, who say that what happens in the bedroom is nobody's business? The Church can't tell me what to do with my own body. Well, here's what's happened. At one time, not that many years ago, every Christian church, every single one of them, was against artificial birth control.

Gradually, one by one, most of them caved in to pressure from their members, and reversed their position. One Church didn't, and you belong to that Church. As artificial birth control became more and more prevalent, abortion wasn't far behind. At first, abortions were only performed in the first trimester, the first twelve weeks. Then it became the first two trimesters, and today, it's possible to have an abortion, right up to the time of the child's birth. As you heard in Archbishop Burke's letter last Sunday, now the states want to allow children to artificially created for the sole purpose of killing them for medical research. Look how far we've come in just a few short years. The water we're all sitting in is getting hotter all the time.

Of course, the other effect of the wide-spread use of artificial birth control and abortion is promiscuity. God created the sacrament of marriage so that a man and woman might become one flesh and participate in the creation of life. For many people today, marriage is just an old fashioned idea. We'll just move in together. For a lot of couples today, the only reason to get married is to have a party and get gifts. We've even coined the phrase “recreational sex”. How tired are you of seeing the endless commercials on television for Viagra, and for birth control devices? As our family was sitting in front of the television after dinner on Thanksgiving, we were treated to a commercial for some new devise. I don't know about anybody else, but I was embarassed.

There was a story in the news just this week, of a Catholic elementary school in New York that's being sued by a former teacher. The teacher was fired because she's single and pregnant. Imagine that! The ACLU is claiming that her firing was discriminatory because only women can become pregnant.

Here's an idea. If you want to teach in a Catholic school and you're single, practice what you teach. Sex outside of marriage is a sin. How can you teach our kids the Ten Commandments if you only follow nine of them, especially when it's so obvious. It's part of your job. So while the ACLU is ignoring their real purpose in life, keeping the Nativity scene out of public places, you have to ask yourself, “Does that school , or any Catholic school, really have a choice?” There shouldn't even be any discussion.

“May He not come suddenly and find you sleeping.”

So, let's get back to Advent. The time of preparation for Christ’s birth has become a time to make and spend money, a time to focus on the material, rather than the spiritual. But, we know better. Advent is a time to reflect on Jesus' coming and to prepare for it. We should no more approach Christmas with an unclean soul than we would with an unclean house. It's a good time to think about just how hot the water we're sitting in has gotten since the last time we took part in the Sacrament of Reconciliation. And, it's a good time to go examine our consciences and go again. We’re all sinners, but a merciful God has given us this sacrament so that our sins can be forgiven.

[pause]

There are a lot of prayer aids available for the Advent season. You just received a very good book of daily reflections in the mail from Father Gary. Especially at this time of year, we should pray every day. We should reflect on the meaning of Advent and Christmas.

Remember what Jesus told the Apostles, “May he not come suddenly and find you sleeping. What I say to you, I say to all: (Watch!)”

Happy Anniversary

Thirty-seven years ago this week, I became a Catholic. I was baptized, made my first confession, had my first communion and was confirmed all in that one week. You may be wondering what would cause such a fervor of religious enthusiasm in a twenty year old Baptist kid from north St. Louis.

Thirty-seven years ago today, Jan and I were married. That was the sacrament I was really interested in. The priest who officiated at all five of the sacraments was Father Donald Eichenseer, my wife’s cousin. That explains how I was able to pull off such a sacramental extravaganza in just six days.

This was in 1968. Most of the Vatican II changes hadn’t taken effect yet. He told me that I had received five of the Church’s seven sacraments. He told me that I would never receive Holy Orders and I would have to die to receive the last rites. Well, in the years that followed, the Church restored the permanent diaconate, so I have received the sacrament of Holy Orders. And “last rites” is now the sacrament of the sick, and I’ve received that one as well.

I invited Fr. Don to my ordination, and he graciously came and concelebrated. Now, if I can just get him to anoint me, he’ll be seven for seven.

The reason I’m telling you all this, is because it really points out the power, the complexity and the wonder of God’s amazing plan for all of us. Out of all the millions of people in the world, how did an Irish protestant kid from Jennings, MO bump into a German Catholic girl from Hecker, IL? What are the odds? If you go back even further, how did my mother-in-law from Kirkwood meet my father-in-law from Hecker, IL, back in the 1940’s? At the same time, my mother, from Palmyra, MO met my dad from St. Louis. All those things had to happen for me to be standing here today.

What about my great grandparents? Eight Irish people got on eight boats and managed to find each other in the United States. It’s so amazing I can’t even think about it without getting a headache. Yet every one of us has a similar history and it goes back for hundreds, even thousands of years. In all of that time, if just one person had missed the boat, or had the flue, or stayed home from a church picnic, we wouldn’t be here today.

God's plan for us is more complex than any of us can possibly imagine. But, each of us has a part to play. We never know how our interaction with someone else will affect our lives here on earth, and our eternal lives. It's certainly something to ponder as we approach Thanksgiving and the beginning of Advent.

St. Rose Philippine Duchesne

The year was 1769. It would be seven years before the Thirteen British Colonies would declare their independence from England. It was six years since France lost the Seven Years War and the title to all the American lands west of the Mississippi to Spain. Not knowing this, in 1764 Laclede and Chouteau had started a fur trading post on the west bank of the river. They named it St. Louis, after the King of France.

Meanwhile, back in France, a little girl was born to Pierre Francois Duchesne, a successful businessman in Grenoble, and his wife Rose. Forty nine years later, in 1818, Sister Rose Philippine Duchesne would arrive here in St. Louis.

A lot happened to Sr. Rose during those 49 years. As a young girl, she was determined to come to America to evangelize. She was educated, first at home, then by the Visitation nuns. At the age of 19, without her parents’ knowledge or permission, she joined them.

During the French Revolution, religious communities were outlawed and the Visitation Convent was closed. After the revolution was over, Rose tried to re-open the convent, but the nuns had scattered and she couldn’t find enough of them to do it. So, in 1804 she joined the Society of the Sacred Heart and turned the convent over to them.

In 1818, James Monroe was President of the United States. The Revolutionary War and the War of 1812 were over. It would be three years before Missouri became a state. William DuBourg, the Bishop of Louisiana, was trying to figure out how to govern a diocese that covered thousands of square miles. He asked France to send him some help. Rose and four other sisters were among those who answered the call. They landed in St. Charles where they started the first free school for girls west of the Mississippi.

Then they moved to Florissant where they opened a convent, an orphanage, a parish school, a school for the Indians, a boarding school, and a novitiate for the Sacred Heart order.

In 1827, Mother Rose started an orphanage, a convent, and a parish school in St. Louis. At the age of 72, she founded a mission school for Indian girls in Kansas.

Mother Rose Philippine Duchesne died in St. Charles in 1852, at the age of 83.

We've all seen the movies and TV shows about pioneer life in the United States. Mother Duchesne endured all that and more. She didn't just build a little cabin with her husband. She built institutions! She built schools, and orphanages, and convents. She did it with the help of a handful of nuns! She's an example for all of us that nothing's impossible with God's help.

She lived the pioneer life, with all the danger and all the hard work well into her eighties. Her example of holiness and persistence in the face of great obstacles and great dangers should be an example for all of us. And, she did her best work right here in St. Louis.

SIN (Did I get your attention?)

A current thread on Domenico Bettinelli's web log discusses the fact that people aren't hearing about specific sins from the pulpit in their parishes. It's an interesting topic and one that, I'm sure, every priest and deacon wrestles with. I posted the following:

One of the reasons for the restoration of the permanent diaconate was to incorporate the voice of husbands and fathers into the liturgy through the homily. If nothing else, living in a house with five other sinners gives me a perspective on sin that the pastor doesn't have.

In fact, right now my family is going through a serious crisis involving one of my kids and sin. I won't go into the details here, or from the pulpit, but I will tell you that it's tearing me up inside. I can certainly talk about this particular problem with a lot more conviction than I could have just a week ago, and I will.

One problem though, is that most of the people in my parish are older. Many, if not most, of them have grandchildren older than my children. If I would speak on Internet pornography, or premarital sex, or any of the sins of the flesh to this group, many of them would look at me with blank stares. On the other hand, I've always thought that if a homily saved just one person, it was worth the effort.

Of course, I also have the disadvantage of not being a priest and not being in charge. My pastor has never been critical of anything I've said. But, I'm always aware of the fact that I can only preach with his permission.

I'll admit that I rarely address specific sins. But, on a recent weekend, I did tell my parishioners that some of them are going to hell. I expected to get some negative feedback, but in fact got only positive responses. What surprised me the most was a compliment from a particular parishioner who NEVER comments about anything I say.

I honestly believe that the folks in the pews are actually hungry for some practical guidance on how they can live their lives, and more importantly, how they can assure themselves a good spot in heaven.

Interestingly, the readings for the 27th of November, my next weekend to preach, are very much about sin. It's also the first Sunday of Advent. Based on the comments here, and what's going on in my life right now, I will ask the Holy Spirit to inspire me to prepare a homily along the lines suggested here.

I will post it on my blog the weekend of the 27th and report on the reaction, if any.

Bonfire of the Vanities: Married Priests? Big deal...

I just discovered Fr. Martin Fox's blog, "Bonfire of the Vanities." In this entry, he gives an excellent priest's-eye view on the issue of married priests.

This is a topic where everyone seems to have an opinion, but why not ask the people who would be affected the most?

I once visited a Redemptorist priest in his rectory, a very nice place to say the least. He made the comment that he thought married priests might not be a bad idea. I asked him how he would feel if I became a priest and moved in with my wife and four kids. Would it interupt his prayer and meditation if one of my roudy sons was dribbling a soccer ball down the hall with his music blaring? It didn't take long for him to admit that it might not be such a good idea after all.

But, I digress. Read Fr. Fox's entry for some good insight.