Wednesday, December 5, 2018
saint Nicholas eve
Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of
death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff
comfort me.
Saint Pope John
Paul II was an example of someone who walked through the valley of the shadow
of death and feared no evil. The Lord’s rod and staff sustained him through the
nightmare of the Nazis and the Communists. Both were evil empires devoted to
the destruction of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for all except
for the few selected elite. These
empires systematically replaced God with the rule of the chosen ones of the
State. People from both the Fatherland and the Motherland sat by and watched
the evil grow without taking decisive action, making the adage ‘All that is
necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men (or women) do
nothing.’Remember to measure our nation and our politics with Gods Rod (Rods were often used in
ancient times to measure) and not the political States or the media nor the
opinion of the rich and the powerful. Let us be ever ready to speak up for what
is righteous using Gods rod, which are His laws of justice and mercy, working
tirelessly and remember Saint Pope John Paul II words of encouragement, “I plead with you –
never, ever give up on hope, never doubt, never tire, and never become
discouraged. Be not afraid.”
Let us also carry with us for the journey the Staff
of God which is truth, not worldly truth but Gods truth. “The word of truth,
publicly, indeed almost liturgically, proclaimed was the antidote the Rhapsodic
Theater sought to apply to the violent lies of the Occupation. The tools for
fighting evil included speaking truth to power.” [1]
Saint Nicolas Eve
Today traditionally is the Eve of the Feast of
Saint Nicholas and is celebrated throughout much of Europe with sweets and
gifts to children. Legend tells us that Nicholas was a man of action and used
his abundance that the Lord provided him to give special protection to children
and unmarried young women. Let us find some way today to practice both the
spiritual and temporal works of mercy. Today would be a good day to do
something that helps children or young unmarried women from the abundance that
God has provided us. For those who cannot share it is suggested to fast twice
this week as was the practice of Saint Nicholas and give the cost of the food
you would normally spend to help those in need. From the store house of your
spiritual abundance your prayers can make a difference: pray especially for women
who are enslaved in addictions and/or the sex slave trade. Thousands of men from over 80 countries
consistently pray for women lead by an online organization called “e5 men”[2].
Perhaps the Lord is calling you to this.
Saint Nicholas,
Santa Claus, and the Angels
As is well-known,
"Santa Claus" comes from the Dutch rendering of Saint Nicholas, a
fourth-century bishop famous for giving gifts anonymously to children and the
needy. However, as Father Francis Weiser argues in his Handbook of Christian
Customs (p. 113), the various legends surrounding Santa Claus actually come
from the god of Norse and Germanic mythology, Thor (after whom Thursday is
named). Thor was portrayed as a large, jovial old man with a long white beard
whose symbolic color was red (owing to his association with fire). Thunder was
said to have been caused by the rolling of his chariot (drawn by two white
goats) across the clouds, and his home was said to have been
"Northland," somewhere among the icebergs. The fireplace was also
considered sacred to Thor because it was through it that he came into his
element, the fire. We owe this odd metamorphosis of a Christian saint into a
pagan god to New York City. When the Dutch founded the city in the seventeenth
century, they observed the Catholic custom of "Saint Nicholas' visit"
on the saint's feast day (December 5). This the Dutch did even though they were
Protestant. When English Protestants later commandeered the city, they were
offended by the practice, but their children very much liked it. The compromise
that was eventually made was to transfer the giving of gifts from the 5th of
December to the 25th and to add so many pagan elements to the story that the
figure of the saintly Catholic bishop (who, incidentally, was notoriously
intolerant of heretics) would no longer be recognizable. The older Christian
custom is that on the night of December 5 (the vigil of Saint Nicholas Day),
children write notes addressed to the Child Jesus and put them on their window
sill, whence St. Nicholas carries them to heaven. A variation of this custom,
prevalent in South America, is to write notes sometime between December 16 to
24 and to put them in front of the crib, from which point Angels carry the requests
to heaven. Though the value of bringing children up on these stories is open to
debate, at least the older customs explicitly tie the reception of gifts to the
advent of Christ and portray the other figures (Nicholas or the angels) as His
assistants. There was also a charming custom of "St. Nicholas" (a man
dressed as a bishop) bringing gifts to children in person on his feast day.[3]
As we
begin the Advent season let us take up the nature of God by reflecting on these
traits that make us a model for our children and our sisters and brothers in
Christ. Today reflect on:
Creativity
vs. Underachievement
Approaching a
need, a task, an idea from a new perspective (Romans 12:2)
1000 This
"how" exceeds our imagination and understanding; it is accessible
only to faith. Yet our participation in the Eucharist already gives us a
foretaste of Christ's transfiguration of our bodies:
Just as bread that
comes from the earth, after God's blessing has been invoked upon it, is no
longer ordinary bread, but Eucharist, formed of two things, the one earthly and
the other heavenly: so too our bodies, which partake of the Eucharist, are no
longer corruptible, but possess the hope of resurrection.
2708 meditation engages thought, imagination, emotion, and desire.
This mobilization of faculties is necessary in order to deepen our convictions
of faith, prompt the conversion of our heart, and strengthen our will to follow
Christ. Christian prayer tries above all to meditate on the mysteries of
Christ, as in lectio divina or the rosary. This form of prayerful reflection is of great value, but
Christian prayer should go further: to the knowledge of the love of the lord
Jesus, to union with him.
Blessed are the Peacemakers
Seventh,
Christ blesses not peace, but peacemakers. Peacemakers are not pacifists.
Peacemakers are warriors, but they are spiritual warriors, warriors against
war. Sometimes war can be conquered only by war. Everyone speaks highly of
peacemaking. How, then, is that countercultural, except to terrorists? Because
the peace that Christ blesses is the peace the world cannot give. It is peace
with neighbor, self, and God; not with the world, the flesh, and the devil. It
not a peace with greed, lust, and pride, but the peace that comes through poverty,
chastity, and obedience, three most countercultural virtues. These two kinds of
peace are in fact at war with each other. Our world's peacemakers will embrace
Christ's peace, but only if they do not have to give up the world's peace and
only if they do not have to fight for it. Thus, paradoxically, we lack true
peace because we are reluctant to war against the enemies of peace, and also
because we do not put the three ingredients of Christ's peace in the proper
order. We preach incessantly about peace with neighbor, but seldom about peace
with God. Thomas Merton reminds us of this necessary order in three wonderfully
simple sentences when he says, "We are not at peace with each other
because we are not at peace with ourselves, and we are not at peace with
ourselves because we are not at peace with God." Christ does the same in
putting the first table of the law first, as Moses did. We need to relearn
lesson one. Christ blesses peacemakers, but when you are at war, you can make peace
only by waging and winning war. Christianity is judgmental and repressive and
negative. For Christianity says to us that we are at war, ever since a certain
incident in Eden, and war judges the enemy (that's why a war is fought: because
a judgment is made about an enemy) and represses the enemy (that is what
defense is: repressing the enemy's offense) and negates the enemy, destroys the
enemy (that is what offense is, destroying the enemy's defense). Our enemies
are real, just as real as flesh and blood; they are principalities and powers.
They are not men; they are demons. And they are also our own sins. Our Lord
told us that he came into the world to bring a sword to wage and win this war.
The sword is a cross. Happiness does not consist in pacifism; happiness
consists in peace, and peace can be obtained only by waging and winning a war
to make peace. The cross is like a syringe; it gives us a blood transfusion. It
is the opposite of a normal sword. What Christ does is exactly the opposite of
what Dracula does. Dracula, like the demons, takes our blood, our life. Christ
gives us a blood transfusion. We are on a battlefield between Christ and
Dracula. When Christ says that peacemakers are blessed because they "will
be called the sons of God," he does not mean that peacemaking is the cause
and being a son of God is the effect. The other way around: only the sons of
God can make God's peace, do God's work. Peacemaking is the effect. But
peacemakers are called sons of God. They are known to be sons of God because we
recognize the cause by the effect.
Blessed are You when Men Persecute You
The
eighth beatitude blesses not just pain or suffering, but persecution, that is,
suffering imposed by rejection and hatred. This is the only one of the
beatitudes that Christ repeats, both to emphasize it as the final and most
outrageous beatitude of all, and to emphasize that it is not merely the pain,
but the rejection, the reviling, the slander, that is blessed. But how can this
be? Everyone wants to be loved. How can it be blessed to be hated? One possible
explanation is utterly inconsistent with Christ: a kind of sneering
superiority, as if it were blessed to say to those who hate us, "I
wouldn't want love from worthless fools like you." Surely it is great
grief that the persecutors are fools. Of course, they are not worthless fools;
if they were, there would be no reason for our grief for them. And therefore,
grief on our part that they are not blessed is real, if we love our persecutors
as Christ does and commands us to: "Love your enemies." Notice that
he does not say, "Do not use the word enemy, it is not nice." We have
enemies, but we must love them. The reward that makes persecution blessed is
the same as the one that makes poverty blessed: the kingdom of Heaven. Persecution
has the same blessing as poverty because persecution is a form of poverty,
poverty not of money, but of love, that is, of being loved. Both money and love
are blessed only when they are given: "It is more blessed to give than to
receive." We desperately crave love from the world. But the world is not
Christ. The world is fallen, fallen into the knowledge of good and evil. The
world is therefore afraid of Christ as the cavity is afraid of the dentist or
as the liar is afraid of the light. (I use the word world here in the scriptural
sense: not as the planet (Gaea, matter), which God created good, but as the
time word, eon, that designates the era of sin, the kingdom of the devil.
Persecution is not blessed in itself, but it becomes blessed if it is
persecution "for righteousness' sake", for the sake of God, not only
explicitly, but also implicitly, that is, if you are persecuted for being that
which God is: for being Godlike, for being righteous. Thus the righteous pagan
like Socrates is also blessed when he is misunderstood, hated, rejected,
persecuted, and killed, like Christ. Just as your peacemaking is a sign that
you are a child of God, and thus blessed, so being persecuted for the sake of
your righteousness is also a sign that you are a member of His kingdom and thus
blessed. Blessing comes only from what is good, and persecution, poverty, etc.
are not good in themselves. Christ is not a Stoic or a Hindu or a Buddhist;
blessing does not come from not caring about the good things of this world, which
God created, nor from seeing through this world as an illusion, as maya, nor
from the clever device of spiritual euthanasia by which our desires for things
are quenched so that we can avoid the suffering that they bring. No, the
Christian knows something real and good in itself that the Stoic, the Hindu and
the Buddhist do not know (even though they may implicitly long for it and even
attain it in the end), and that something is, simply, Jesus Christ. He makes
blessed even the nails in His cross. And only He makes them blessed.
He that Loses His Life for My Sake shall Find It
Our
ninth desire is for life, and the ninth blessing is death. Death contains all
the other paradoxes. Christ teaches us this blessing of death not in words
only, but also in deed — by his cross, which sums up all the beatitudes. And
the cross reveals the hidden source of all eight beatitudes: the historical
fact, not the abstract principle, that God, out of sheer love for us, became
incarnate, died, and rose to save us from sin and death. As Dorothy Sayers said,
"The dogma is the drama." By this dramatic judo, death itself was
turned into an instrument for life, as an earthen dam is overwhelmed by the
waters of the flood that conquers it, and the dam is swept along and made into
a part of the flood itself. So the flood of God's infinite life, when it
entered our world, not only conquered death but turned death itself into life's
most powerful instrument. In the words of the old anthem "Open our
Eyes", "Thou hast made death glorious and triumphant, for through its
portals we enter into the presence of the Living God."
The secret of happiness is very simple. It
is Jesus. Not just the philosophy of Jesus, but Jesus, his real presence.
We
anticipate that final death, and its final blessing, in all our little deaths now.
Our participations in Christ's eight beatitudes are those little deaths. We not
only anticipate it, we actually participate in it, in these little deaths, the
real little (or large) dyings that we do every day. And we also anticipate and
actually participate in the final blessing, "the presence of the Living
God," every time we "open our eyes" and see who it is that is
really present there. Where our eyes see only the most undramatic little wafer
of bread, look who is present! How absurd that we find it easier to get up off
our knees than to get down! The secret of happiness is very simple. It is
Jesus. Not just the philosophy of Jesus, but Jesus, his real presence. He
actually comes to us in such unlikely vehicles as poverty, pain and
persecution. He has weird taste in vehicles. He came to Jerusalem on a donkey.
And when he comes, he acts with power, though usually also with subtlety and
not bombast. He really works! I am haunted by my memories of a few precious
hours in the company of two happiest groups of people I have ever met in my
life. In both cases I was supposed to speak to them. In both cases, they spoke
to me — with very few words, like Mother Teresa, like Jesus. One group was in
fact Mother Teresa's nuns, in Boston's worst slum. Another was a convent of
contemplative Carmelites in Danvers, Massachusetts. What they said to me,
simply by being who they were, was unmistakable: "See how happy I am; see
how happy Jesus makes me!" This is how happiness happens: it is not so
much taught, like math, but caught, like measles. The Church is in the business
of spreading the good infection, like in "The Invasion of the Body
Snatchers", only this is a good infection. And that is "the new
evangelism". And it is also the old evangelism that won the world two thousand
years ago. It will do it again, for there is no argument against real
happiness. The smiles of the saints are the arguments that will win the world
for Christ again. They are unarguable. Only one thing, then, is necessary to
create a world of happiness from pole to pole. And it is not doing any of the
many good things that Martha did, but doing the one thing that Mary did: just
sit at Jesus' feet; just be in his presence, know his love, all day. That is
the scandalously simple secret of happiness.
"Read
these counsels slowly. Pause to meditate on these thoughts. They are things
that I whisper in your ear-confiding them-as a friend, as a brother, as a
father. And they are being heard by God. I won't tell you anything new. I will
only stir your memory, so that some thought will arise and strike you; and so
you will better your life and set out along ways of prayer and of Love. And in
the end you will be a more worthy soul."
Your heart weakens, and you clutch at an earthly support. Very
good: but take care that what you grasp to stop you from falling doesn't become
a dead weight dragging you down, a chain enslaving you.
Daily Devotions
·
Make
a Jesse Tree, as a family, today. Here's
a guide. . . to help you get started.
·
Make
preparations for the feast of St. Nicholas. Tonight many families put out their
shoes or stockings for St. Nicholas to fill. Also, many families celebrate with
a party on St.
Nicholas Eve.
[1]
George Wiegel, Witness to Hope, 1999, p66.
[6]http://www.escrivaworks.org/book/the_way-point-1.htm
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