"Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down, with the mountains quaking before you, while you wrought awesome deeds we could not hope for, such as they had not heard of from of old."
As a principal, teacher, or parent, making a change is often most successful when you get involved. When I consider Catholic school leadership and/or education, there were times when I would need to get involved in disciplinary and/or academic situations with students. There were instances when I would need to spend more time forming, supporting, and managing teachers and staff. There were opportunities when I would have to encourage and work toward a stronger partnership with parents and families.
While I can't say that I was always able to help students, personnel, and/or family members during those situations, getting involved would often help to change behavior.
When I served as an administrator of PreK - 8 grade schools, I would often squat down to interact with the littles face to face. This posture would help me to connect with students in ways that towering over them never would.
This lowering, in both physical and metaphorical ways, signaled an intimacy that could demonstrate safety, concern, and/or seriousness.
On Christmas...well, technically on the Annunciation...God rend the heavens and came down to earth.
God came to us in the human person of Jesus Christ. God entered our human existence in its entirety in all things except sin. He came to us so that we might have eternal and abundant life. God lowered Himself so that we might be lifted up.
God entered into the mess of human life: frailty, poverty, refugeeism.
God went to the margins: the poor, the widowed, the lame, the blind, the sick, the oppressed, the captive, the brokenhearted.
God came, in the person of Jesus Christ, the second person of the Trinity, to show us the way, teach us the truth, and bring us to fullness of life.
God rent the heavens to lower Himself so that He could be face to face with us and say: "I love you and you matter."
The closer that it gets to Christmas, the harder it seems for my kids to wait. As they gather and make presents for each other, me and my wife, and family and friends, their excitement literally bubbles. They want to share what they made for their siblings. They want to show me the wrapped version of gifts. They yearn to have their recipients open what they have in store.
They also have visions of what they hope they will get for Christmas dancing through their heads, too. After putting up our tree this evening, they imagined what it will look like with presents underneath. They talked with friends this afternoon online and they exchanged intel on the gifts they hope will come on Christmas morning.
They cannot wait until Christmas.
Waiting, as my kids will tell you, is hard.
This type of waiting has a definitive endpoint. Yet, it is still difficult, especially as we inch closer to Christmas. Anticipation mounts.
Come on, Christmas!
We have all experienced a different, albeit still frustrating, type of waiting this year: COVID-19 and when it will end.
At first we thought it would be over by summer. Then we hoped it might go away before the holidays. Now, even with accelerated vaccines in distribution, the end might is still unknown although it may, hopefully, be on the horizon.
Whereas waiting for Christmas morning brings excitement and hopeful anticipation, waiting for an unknown endpoint can bring frustration, anger, and dejection. There is no excitement when you do not know when, or even if, things will change.
Waiting, as we can all attest to, is hard.
Yet, waiting is a key ingredient to the season of Advent. Advent is a time of preparation. We are called to repent and "make straight the way of the Lord" so that on Christmas our celebration has room for Christ in addition to all of the presents and parties.
In a sense, waiting is a key ingredient to life. As I have to remind my kids all the time, they are not yet adults. Whether it is getting a smart phone or staying up later or driving a car or voting or fill-in-the-blank with another adult activity, there are many aspects of life that we have to wait for. Learning to read, receiving first Holy Communion, multiplying, whistling and many other skills and events are also opportunities to practice the art of waiting.
But, perhaps the true lesson in how to wait comes from these later examples. Whereas my four-year-old son is soaking up a lot about his letters and sounds and vocabulary, he will not just hit a magical age or season of life and know how to read. Similarly, receiving Holy Communion or driving or multiplying all require preparation. Yes, there are certain development stages that need to pass - a certain degree of logical reasoning, physical maturation, a law with age restrictions - but none of these things just happen if all you do is wait for them.
Instead, we must actively wait. We have to practice our addition facts before we can multiply. We need to go through sacramental preparation in order to be ready to receive Jesus in the Eucharist. We need to pass tests, thankfully, before we can have a license to drive.
And, we can't just wait until Christmas to make room in the inn of our hearts for Christ. Whereas He can do anything, including breaking through a Grinch-cold heart on Christmas morning, chances are good our hearts will be as empty as boxes by mid-morning on Christmas unless we actively wait.
Start by spending even just 60 seconds over the course of these final 9 days before Christmas just thinking about how much He loves you.
Or, pray a good, honest, authentic prayer. Prayer is nothing more than a conversation with Jesus. Talk to Him.
Maybe, if you're up for it, accept the Advent Rosary Challenge and pray one Rosary between now and Christmas. Or, pray one each day. As I've said before, Mary brought Jesus into the world after 9 months of actively waiting for Him throughout her pregnancy. She can bring Him to you in 9 days if you ask her.
Need some encouragement like my kids because you're tired of waiting? Consider praying this prayer from Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. Trust in the work of God. He is who He says. Believe.
Finally, consider receiving the Sacrament of Reconciliation. Just like you used to clean the house before someone actually came over to your house, clean out your heart for the most important Guest to arrive there on Christmas.
-Lyrics from Christ Be Our Light, written by Bernadette Farrell in1993
One of the most beautiful celebrations of the Eucharist I have ever participated in was on December 13, 2012, the day of the funeral mass for my father, Robert Zelenka. While it was a typical cold mid-December day in Northeast Ohio, I distinctly remember that it was an unusually sunny day.
I also have a vivid memory of serving as a pall bearer and feeling and seeing the light cascade through the church windows as this song played. Holding onto my father's casket, waiting in the center aisle for the procession, reveling in the light of the sun, I remember singing this song at the top of my lungs as its lyrics spoke directly to my heart.
"Christ be our light! Shine in our hearts. Shine through the darkness. Christ be our light. Shine in Your church gathered today."
For as much pain as I was in and for how much I missed my dad, this song intermingled with the literal light and shone brightly through my darkness and flooded my heart with peace.
My dad was one of many people in my life, and one of the most important, who served as a light of faith for me. Through his efforts to ensure that we went to mass every Sunday and holy day of obligation, that we prayed before meals, that we received faith formation and/or Catholic education, my dad helped light my pathway to Christ.
Somehow, I felt at this moment what I had been taught my whole life: death has no power over us.
As we reach the third week of Advent, and rejoice in expectant hope over the coming of our Savior, Jesus Christ, may the light of Christ break through the literal and figurative darkness surrounding us at this time and show us the way forward.
He is who He says He is. He conquered sin and death. And, He came to earth to show us the way to eternal life: Himself.
Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life.
He lights the way.
Yesterday, December 13, is also the Feast of St. Lucy, whose name comes from the Latin word for light. Legend has it that somehow St. Lucy's eyes were gouged, only to miraculously return. As such, she is the patron saint of those who are blind or suffer from diseases of the eye. Her feast, much like the processional song at my dad's funeral mass, was placed in the midst of a season of darkness to symbolize the light of Christ breaking through the darkness.
Perhaps one of my favorites lines from a movie is from The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, when Lord Elrond says to Aragorn, "Put aside the Ranger, become who you were born to be."
Up until this point in the story, while Aragorn has helped lead Frodo, Sam and the Fellowship of the Ring in their quest to destroy the ring, he has hesitated to claim his rightful role as the King of Gondor. As a result of this conversation with Elrond, Aragorn claims the throne of Gondor, unites the various groups battling the forces of evil and assists in the ultimate destruction of the ring.
I find this moment in J.R.R. Tolkien's tale so moving because I think that most of us - myself at least - hide our true selves and settle for a lesser version of who we were created to be. There is something, most likely our fallen nature, that holds us back from being the person that God created us, and the world needs us, to be.
We all need to put aside our version of the Ranger in our lives - the shadowy, mysterious, lesser version of ourselves - and claim our rightful role as children of the one true King, Jesus Christ.
This means that we have royal blood coursing through our veins.
We are made for greatness, built for holiness and destined for sainthood. It is time to become who we were created to be.
Today's Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe is a wonderful reminder that God's not done with us yet in His quest for us to become who He intended us to be.
First, in the today's Gospel, Mary goes to visit her cousin Elizabeth. Both she and her husband Zechariah had all but given up hope of having children. When the angel Gabriel comes to visit Zechariah and tell him the good news of his wife's pregnancy, Zechariah responds in disbelief, claiming that both he and Elizabeth were too old to have children (Luke 1:18). In addition to this great blessing, Elizabeth responds with joy over the visitation of her cousin, "And how does this happen to me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me? For at the moment the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the infant in my womb leaped for joy" (Luke 1:43-44).
Elizabeth and Zechariah, despite their disbelief, are swept up into God's plan for salvation. To me, this is a wonderful reminder that God isn't done with us yet.
Second, the apparitions of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico in December 1531 also speak to this theme. Juan Diego, the person to whom Our Lady appeared, was a poor, 57-year-old widower. God wasn't done with him yet.
Our Lady also brought about the conversion of over 9 million people in a relatively short period of time as a result of these apparitions. Not only did this bring out cultural changes in the Aztec practice of human sacrifice, it also stood as a rebuke to the methods of the Spanish missionaries. When we look at otherwise hopeless situations like the rise of the nones (those with no religious affiliation), abortion, the death penalty, systemic racism, and abuse of all kinds, we have to remember: God's not done with us yet.
He is moving. May we have faith enough to trust that and to allow ourselves to be moved.
May we keep becoming the people that He created us to be. Decision by decision. Moment by moment. No matter our state in life, no matter how old/young we are, no matter how far off from God's plan we might find ourselves, we can still become who He created us to be. To once again quote C.S. Lewis, "(E)very time you make a choice you are turning the central part of you, the part of you that chooses, into something a little different from what it was before" (Mere Christianity, 1952).
Remember: you're not finished yet. And neither is God.
I honestly think there is about a 10 degree window of temperatures in which I am actually comfortable. Maybe about 20 degrees. Otherwise, it is too hot or too cold. Factor in the oddity that is South Bend humidity, and that window can get smaller. Considering our great God placed our home planet at just the right distance away from the sun to actually sustain life - imagine if we were just a bit closer or further away! - it's too bad that my comfort window is even smaller.
The same goes for things like the amount of time that mass takes. COVID-impacts aside, if mass is too short, it seems like we missed out on something. Go beyond the 60-minute mark and the pew somehow becomes the most uncomfortable seat ever created.
In today's Gospel, Jesus vents about people like me. He remarks how the people of His time found John the Baptist too ascetic, and Himself too indulgent:
For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they said, ‘He is possessed by a demon.’ The Son of Man came eating and drinking and they said, ‘Look, he is a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners.’ (Matthew 11:19)
Both are right because there will be time for each.
The juxtaposition of preparing the way of the Lord and joining Him at the banquet is not meant to pit the two at odds with one another. Jesus isn't trying to say that John's approach was inappropriate. Instead, He is highlighting the stubbornness of humanity. He is calling attention to the fact that most of our hearts are just too hard to change, that many of us - myself included - are too opposed to discomfort or too unwilling to actually enjoy something.
There is a time for both repentance and rejoicing. We must be willing to pivot and embrace both as Jesus needs and wants us to. In this way, our hearts must be soft, meek, malleable, flexible and open.
There will times in our lives where repentance will be the order of the day, or week, or month, season, year, or decade. COVID might be such a time. Or, maybe it was/is a period of loneliness, pain, frustration, sadness and/or loss. When we have reason to sing a dirge, go ahead and mourn (Matthew 11:17).
There will also be times in our lives when rejoicing is called for. Good, authentic, honest rejoicing. Weddings, graduations, births, birthdays, family reunions, holidays. Rejoice. I say again, rejoice! The flute is playing for us: let us dance (Matthew 11:17)!
And, there will be times, thankfully, where we won't be singing songs of lamentation or joy, where we won't be sulking or dancing. We will just be. This is okay, too! Life at either extreme isn't sustainable. There is a season and there will be time for everything.
In the words of C.S. Lewis (The Screwtape Letters, 1942), “Humans are amphibians...half spirit and half animal...as spirits they belong to the eternal world, but as animals they inhabit time." May we accept this dual role and may we respond to life in the ways appropriate to the season in which we find ourselves.
So, for now, let us jump fully into the season of Advent, where we wait in joyful, expectant, and repentant hope for the coming of our Savior, Jesus Christ.
"St. Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle. Be our defense against the wickedness and snares of the devil. May God rebuke him, we humbly pray, and do thou, O Prince of the heavenly hosts, by the power of God, thrust into hell satan, and all the evil spirits, who prowl about the world seeking the ruin of souls. Amen."
Pope Leo XIII composed this prayer to St. Michael in the late 1800s after having a vision of the destruction caused by the devil in the 20th Century. In 1886, he ordered that this prayer be prayed at the conclusion of Mass. This continued for almost 100 years, falling out of practice in 1968. More recently, in the Spring of 1994, St. John Paul II, encouraged the faithful to reinstitute this practice (https://www.catholiceducation.org/en/culture/catholic-contributions/the-prayer-to-st-michael.html). Some churches continue to invite congregants to pray this prayer after Mass.
Both of these popes realized and did not shy away from this fact: we are in a fight.
St. Michael the Archangel, pray for us.
In today's Gospel, in juxtaposition to yesterday's reassurance of rest, Jesus declares, "From the days of John the Baptist until now, the Kingdom of heaven suffers violence, and the violent are taking it by force" (Matthew 11:12). Put more simply: we are in a fight.
We are about two weeks out from Christmas, and lest we get too wrapped up in silent nights and jolly old elves, today's Gospel reminds us that discipleship is hard. Forces of evil are taking the Kingdom of heaven by violence. Our enemy, the devil "is prowling around like a roaring lion looking for [someone] to devour" (1 Peter 5:8).
C.S. Lewis (Mere Christianity, 1952) posed that Christmas is really about an infiltration: God entered into enemy-occupied territory in the form, not of a warrior or ruler, but as a baby. Meek. Weak. Helpless. Dependent. Disguised:
Enemy-occupied territory—that is what this world is. Christianity is the story of how the rightful king has landed, you might say landed in disguise, and is calling us all to take part in a great campaign of sabotage. God has landed on this enemy-occupied world in human form.
Jesus came to show us the way, teach us the truth, and bring us to new life. He conquered sin and death. In this way, He also taught us how to fight.
So as to ensure that it's clear that I am not glorifying, promoting or condoning violence in any way, Jesus did not fight darkness with darker darkness.
Only light can win that battle. And, just to be sure that I'm not giving too much credit to our opponent, darkness - no matter how dark - never overcomes the light.
NEVER.
So, put on the armor of righteousness (Ephesians 6:10-17). Read your Bible as a shield. Wield your Rosary as a sword. Strengthen your spirit with the Sacraments of Eucharist and Reconciliation.
“Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart; and you will find rest for yourselves. For my yoke is easy, and my burden light” (Matthew 11:28-30).
Rest.
When I first became a parent, which coincided with when I began this blog, I think I wrote about sleep at least once a year. While I haven't written about it in a while, and with children that are beyond newborn and toddler stages, sleep is something that continues to elude me.
If I expect that I might get to bed early, one of them can't sleep. On rare mornings when I can actually sleep in, one or more of them is up prematurely.
My lack of sleep isn't all their fault. In fact, it's probably unfair to continue to blame my tiredness on them - if it was ever fair at all. I frequently find myself staying up late and/or waking up early to work or workout or to do things less productive (like blogging!).
So, when Jesus talks about rest, there is a longing in my heart to meet Him wherever He is. Could I just wake up once and not feel like I need more sleep?
But, whereas Jesus might be offering some of us a semblance of physical rest, especially as it might pertain to chronic issues, I believe that Jesus is actually referring to the type of rest that St. Augustine famously said can only be found in God.
There is a restlessness in our hearts that the world cannot quiet. Fame, power, wealth, pleasure, honor, relationships, likes, material possessions, followers, esteem all lead to restlessness. None of them can pacify the true desire of our hearts.
Even our ministries can be pursued for reasons other than His honor and glory. I really hope that God shows up in this ____________. I just hope that He shows up as a result of my efforts more than someone else's.
Carrying out our vocations - in my case as a husband and father - can also be driven by pride instead of love. Can people see me as a devoted husband? Will people think I'm a good father because my kids are well behaved?
From all of these desires, Lord, deliver me.
When we come to truly accept Jesus as the way, the truth, and the life, we can see that when we follow Him, we can more easily navigate this world. It doesn't mean that you'll get a full 8 hours of sleep each night, but it does mean that you won't feel so slighted when a coworker or boss overlooks that you were involved in a project. You won't chase after pats on the back or atta-boys/girls. Purpose will become more important than a paycheck and you will be more driven by love than likes.
Discipleship is hard and laying down our lives in service of God entails great sacrifice.
But, in Him we can find deliverance from the restlessness caused by so many aspects of this world. In Him, we can continue to find the strength to do the work He has entrusted to us to do.
The key? Stay connected to His yoke. Without it we are either pulling air or trying in vain to move the plows and carts of our lives by ourselves.
Pray. Read the scriptures. Participate in the sacraments. Surround yourself with like-minded disciples.
He's there to offer help, healing, refreshment, strength, and rest.
St. Paul encourages us, "I have the strength for everything through Him who empowers me" (Philippians 4:13) and "Now to him who is able to accomplish far more than all we ask or imagine, by the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen" (Ephesians 3:20-21).
If our labors are for His kingdom, in service of His power, and in pursuit of His glory, may we take comfort in the fact that no matter how tired, labored, or burdened we are, He will make it seem easy and light. He wants us to be faithful. If it's His will, He will make our efforts successful. We will have strength for everything, and far more than all we ask or imagine, by His power that is at work within us.
