Keeping “God-with-us”

Message from Fr. Jose Koluthara, C.M.I.

Infant Jesus, implant in us the seeds of justice, love and peace and make them grow in us so as to experience your presence always.

In his classic Christmas story The Story of the Other Wise Man (Harper, N.Y., 1899), Henry Van Dyke wrote of keeping Christmas not just one day but every day: “Are you willing to believe that love is the strongest thing in the world – stronger than hate, stronger than evil, stronger than death – and that the blessed life which began in Bethlehem… all those years ago is the image and brightness of Eternal Love? Then”, said Van Dyke, “you can keep Christmas, and if you can keep it for a day, why not always?” Why not, indeed?

In today’s liturgy, each of the three scripture texts offered by the prophet Isaiah, the apostle Paul and the evangelist Matthew reminds us that the reason we can keep Christmas today and every day is because Christmas celebrates the gift of God-with-us. Through the incarnation and birth of Jesus, an event that is prophesied in today’s first reading (Is 7:10-14) and celebrated as fulfilled in today’s Gospel (Mt 1:18-24), God has become forever involved and fully invested in humanity.

One connotation of “God-with-us” is worth noting, suggests Karl Rahner (The Great Church, N.Y.: 1994). “When we say that God is the Lord and goal of humankind, that without God there is no meaning to our lives, that God is our helper and saviour on whose providence we are dependent, that God in mercy, will forgive our guilt… that for those who believe in, hope in and love God, God prepares an eternal life of happiness, then we shall have interpreted “God-with-us” in the right way”.

Bearing witness to the gift of “God-with-us” in one of his Christmas homilies, Oscar Romero, martyred Archbishop of San Salvador, affirmed that “Jesus’ birth attests that God is now marching with us in history, that we do not go alone and that our aspiration for peace, for justice, for a reign of divine law, for something holy, is far from earth’s realities. We can hope for it, not because we humans are able to construct that realm of happiness which God’s holy words proclaim but because the Builder of a reign of justice, of love and of peace is already in the midst of us”.

God in our midst, God-with-us, Emmanuel, this is the ultimate gift of Christmas that gives all our other days and nights meaning, purpose and vision. This is the reason we may choose to skip all else in order to keep Christmas truly… to keep the gift of God-with-us.

Transformative Grace

Message from Fr. Jose Koluthara, C.M.I.

Lord Jesus, free me from the despair that kills hope and lead me to a renewed reliance on God.

During this month, transformation seems to be the order of the day. In preparation for Christmas, most of us will transform our homes and businesses with decorations that celebrate this happy season.

While this transformation is only a cosmetic and a temporary one, the liturgy for today puts us in touch with a transformation of another sort, viz., the profoundly transformative power of the coming of our God. Isaiah (35:1-6,10) describes this transformation in terms of a desert blooming and of the fearful and feeble becoming brave and strong. His vision of the blind gaining their sight, the deaf beginning to hear, the mute being able to speak and the lame leaping bears eloquent witness to the conviction that nothing is impossible for God. As evidence of the power and possibilities of God at work in him, Jesus, in today’s Gospel (Mt 11:2-11), will allude to these very healings and add to them the even greater transformation of lepers being made whole, the dead being raised and the poor hearing the good news of salvation preached to them. Like Isaiah before him, Jesus understood that nothing is impossible for God.

The Bible is relentless in its conviction that nothing that is distorted or deathly need remain as it is. God’s power and God’s passion converge to make total newness possible. God’s promises of messianic possibility work against our exhaustion, our despair and our sense of hopelessness.

Newness is indeed possible, and this God has affirmed in Jesus. In embracing this hope, Christians distinguish themselves from those who despair, and from the self-sufficient who believe that they themselves can produce the newness. To avoid both the despair that kills hope and the pride that ignores grace, believers are called home each Advent to a renewed reliance on God.

For too long we stood on this earth in a false security. In our spiritual insanity we dared to think that we could, by our own power, avert the dangers and banish the night. We believed that we could harness everything and order the universe to our liking. But, over and against our daring and desires stands the message of Advent; it is the Lord, the Coming One who came and who will come again, who will bring about the transformation of our human hearts by Gospel grace. If we want to transform life again, if Advent is truly to come again, the Advent of home and of hearts, the Advent of the people and the nations – then we must allow ourselves to be shaken and sifted and if need be, to be shattered by grace.

An Agenda for Advent

Message from Fr. Jose Koluthara, C.M.I.

Lord Jesus, may your peace dawn on me when I struggle for justice. Amen.

“Justice for Peace” may be the right caption for this agenda. There are literally millions who suffer from injustice from the point of view of earthly blessings. One answer to this inequity is offered to us today through the person and ministry of John the Baptist.

John is portrayed in today’s Gospel (Mt. 3:1-12) as turning away from the blessings and securities he could have enjoyed, e.g., sufficient food, decent living conditions, comfortable clothing and the companionship of family and friends, in order to embrace a life of penance and fasting and a ministry that would not gain him any measure of popularity. He was to be the voice that truthfully pointed out sins and persevered in calling the guilty to repentance. John’s was not a pleasant job or a pleasing message, because preparations for welcoming the One who would bring peace, justice, harmony and the gifts of the Spirit can only be described as drastic and radical. John is held out to us each Advent not simply as Jesus’ herald but also as the one after whom the church is to model itself. Just as John’s was the voice that prepared for the first appearance of Jesus, so the church must be the voice that readies first itself and then all of mankind for Jesus’ second and ultimate coming. To put it in another way, John’s agenda dictates and continues to drive the church’s agenda: to work for peace and to struggle for justice and for an enduring harmony among the desperate peoples of this world.

In today’s first reading (Is 11:1-10), the prophet Isaiah gives beautiful lofty and poetic expression to our most fervent hopes for justice and peace. He speaks of wolves being the guests of lambs and babies playing by the dens of cobras. But in order for lofty poetry to become living policy, the church must continue to struggle to make the message of John the Baptist its own agenda, this Advent and all through the year. For more than a century, the church has openly declared its social agenda as one that has necessarily evolved from offering charity to the promotion of justice. As Thomas Massaro (Living Justice, Sheed and Ward 2000), has pointed out, where charity tends to involve individuals or small group of people acting to meet the immediate needs of others, work for justice involves a more communal and even global awareness of problems and their potential long term solutions. Where the notion of charity calls to mind voluntary giving out of one’s surplus, the demands of justice point to an absolute obligation to share the benefits of God’s creation more generously.

Another Opportunity!

Message from Fr. Jose Koluthara, C.M.I.

Lord Jesus, deliver us from greed and hatred that lead to war and bring us to your peace, justice, healing and blessing. Amen

God has gifted us with yet another new year and blessed us sinners with yet another opportunity for realizing God’s purposes in our lives, in our world. With Advent, everything begins again and the air is filled with eager anticipation of what may lie ahead. With Advent comes a wealth of new possibilities and new chances to make right what was wrong in the now passing year.

We live now in a culture so profoundly secular that Advent is fast becoming a vanishing season. Advent now often seems like a little more than a few-weeks-long shopping prelude to Christmas commercialism. To reinvent the weeks of grace, hope and eager anticipation for God, the church, through the liturgy, calls for a return to the true purpose of Advent: repentance - a repentance that is realized and expressed in transformation.

To guide us in repentance that is both a turning away from sin and a turning toward God, we look today to our mentors in the faith, the prophet Isaiah, the apostle Paul and the evangelist Matthew. Paul (Rom 13:11-14) will call Advent believers to repent of that “Sleepiness” that puts off readiness for Jesus’ coming, thinking that it surely cannot occur in my lifetime or yours. Repent, exhorts Paul, of anything you would not like to be found doing when Jesus finally appears. His words remind us that procrastination can never be an adequate preparation for welcoming the Lord. Similarly, Jesus in today’s Gospel (Mt 24:37-44) invites disciples to be prepared, warning that Jesus’ coming will be sudden, unexpected and decisive.

With words that have yet to be fully appreciated Isaiah (2:1-5) calls for believers to be prepared for the Lord by repenting of war. This repentance must be so deliberate and absolute that even the instruments of war are to be transformed into implements that can help to provide for the hungry poor of this world.

Some may find war a distant and impersonal reality, a mere matter for the evening news or the history books; however, Isaiah’s challenge begs to be applied totally of war’s heinous offspring that surface in our daily lives – violence, aggression, anger, greed, the lust for power and the desire for revenge. Only when we repent of these sins will we be able to follow the heart and mind of the God who has come among us in Jesus. To that end, let us truly repent and redirect ourselves toward the coming Christ.