Dec 20, 2023
By Fr. Joe Nassal, C.PP.S.
Advent is an adventure into the very mysteries of life. Though we associate Advent as a season of new beginnings, since 2010, I also identify Advent with endings. My younger sister, Mary, died on the first Sunday of Advent in 2010 at the age of 47. My dad was 93 when he died four years later during the first week of Advent. Dad suffered a stroke the day after Thanksgiving in 2014 and never regained consciousness. He lay still, suspended between life and death for several days.
During those days of waiting, my niece, Kathleen, was expecting her first child. The family held a shower for her on the anniversary of my sister’s death. Kathleen had second thoughts about the date, but everyone said it would be good to have the shower on that day as Mary would have probably hosted it if she were alive. I was told her spirit was very much in evidence at Kathleen’s shower as I spent the day with dad so that Mom and my sister could attend. Mary’s son, Joe, and I had lunch and told stories about his mom.
Here the mystery of faith, of hope, of love takes shape. What form it will take, God only knows. But Advent ushers us into the excitement of welcoming and celebrating a child that is on the way; the memory and grief of a sister, daughter, mother who died too soon at 47; and a 93-year-old man struggling to die. The Advent mystery coming together in a single day of waiting.
Last Advent, I found a book by Episcopal Bishop Steven Charleston called “Ladder to the Light: An Indigenous Elder’s Meditations on Hope and Courage.” Bishop Charleston is an elder of the Choctaw Nation. In the introduction, he shares the vision of the kiva which he describes as “a square or circular underground chamber, covered by a roof of wooden beams with an opening in the center.” One enters the kiva “by descending the ladder” and once you are “inside the packed earth chamber of the kiva, you are in darkness.” The only light comes from above and the only way to reach it is to climb the ladder.
In Native American spirituality, the kiva “is a womb,” Bishop Charleston writes. “It is a place of origins.” This is where “life first began. As the tribe of human beings, we began our existence in the womb of the earth, beneath the surface, in a place of darkness. Through many different incarnations of life on this planet, we finally emerged into the light.”
Bishop Charleston describes this journey as “the ladder not to heaven, but to home.” Our journey on this Earth is to look for the light wherever we go. Which helps to explain what Bishop Charleston calls the “spiritual resilience of North America’s indigenous peoples” because “our traditional religious practices were banned. Our sacred objects were taken from us and either destroyed or put in museums as a curiosity for our conquerors. Our families were scattered into the diaspora. Even our languages were forbidden.”
And yet, as the bishop points out, “we are still here.” Native Americans “know something about resisting darkness.” They’ve been doing it “for more than five hundred years.” Which is why the kiva “symbolizes this spiritual resilience. It reminds us that we began in darkness . . . the nurturing darkness of the womb, a place of formation and growth. Over time, through the grace of the Spirit, we learned more, understood more, until we matured and were ready to take our place in the bright world of reality. We emerged from Mother Earth.”
Bishop Charleston sees the kiva as a metaphor for our times. It teaches us that “if we are in a time of darkness, we need not be afraid of it, because it is only the beginning for us,” he writes. “As a people, we have entered into darkness before, only to emerge into the light.”
The Advent wreath captures our hope of the light of Christ coming into the world to extinguish the darkness of sin and death. With so much darkness in the world these days, wars raging, violence increasing, chasms between various groups widening, and the polarization crippling so many institutions, lighting a candle on this wheel of hope calls us to prayer and possibility.
We are living in a time when people are losing faith in our institutions. Whether it is the church, education, health care, or politics, systems are collapsing around us. The polarization that exists on so many levels and in so many institutions, one wonders if we can ever learn to live in peace with those with whom we disagree? We have seen in recent years the attacks on diversity. In the Church, the battle lines are often drawn between tradition and change.
Our spirituality and charism call us to stand in the chasms that divide us, to be bridges of blessing and hope that seek to bring those who are separated, those who are far off, near through the Blood of Christ. It is a tall order. But Advent offers us the opportunity to practice what Anne Lamott calls “stubborn hope.” She writes, “Hope begins in the dark, the stubborn hope that if you just show up and try to do the right thing, the dawn will come. You wait and watch and work: You don’t give up.”
Whether we are waiting for a birth or a death or something in between, Advent advises patience, a patience born in our own stories of waiting, watching, and working with a stubborn hope that God is always in control.
Fr. Joe Nassal, C.PP.S., a noted author, preacher and retreat leader, is the vice provincial director of the United States Province.
Nov 25, 2023
By Fr. Dennis Chriszt, C.PP.S.
This is the feast of victory for our God!
Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia!
Today, the Church throughout the world
celebrates the great feast of Christ the King.
We rejoice that the promise made
by the prophet Ezekiel
has been fulfilled in Jesus Christ,
who came as the Good Shepherd,
who rescues us and tends us,
who give us rest
and who seeks for us when we are lost
and brings us back when we have strayed.
This is the feast of victory for our God!
Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia!
Today we rejoice that the Lord is our shepherd,
who leads us and refreshes our souls
who guides us in right paths,
who spreads a table before us,
anoints us,
and blesses us with overflowing grace.
This is the feast of victory for our God!
Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia!
Today we rejoice that the Lord has been raised from the dead,
and that through him all of us will be brought to life.
We rejoice that Christ will hand over his kingdom to the Father,
will destroy every sovereignty, authority and power,
will destroy even death,
so that God may be all in all.
This is the feast of victory for our God!
Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia!
Today we rejoice with the Son of Man,
who will come and sit on his glorious throne,
and all the nations will be summoned before him.
We rejoice with those who will be placed on his right,
those who have fed hungry,
gave a drink to those who were thirsty,
those who welcomed the stranger
and clothed the naked,
those who cared for the ill
and visited the prisoners,
those who did things for the least of their brothers and sisters,
and in so doing, did them for Christ.
This is the feast of victory for our God!
Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia!
When I was a seminarian
and was home for Thanksgiving,
I heard the shortest homily ever.
It was only one sentence long.
It was the Feast of Christ the King,
and after reading the Gospel,
the preacher waited for everyone to sit down.
He looked around the church
and simply said,
“If Christ is your King, prove it!”
Then he sat down in the silence that followed.
Today’s Gospel tells us how to prove it.
Today’s Gospel tells us what the Kingdom looks like.
Today’s Gospel impels us to witness to our faith
by what we say and do.
This is the feast of victory for our God!
Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia!
In baptism,
our King has anointed us
priests, prophets and royalty,
that we might worship and praise our God,
that we might proclaim God’s message
by our words and our actions,
and that we, like the King of Kings,
might care for those most in need
throughout our lives
This is the feast of victory for our God!
Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia!
However, we don’t do it alone.
Christ the King does not sit back and wait for us to act.
Christ our King helps us to do what we calls us to do.
Christ our King is more than the judge
who separates the sheep from the goats,
the good from the evil,
those invited to inherit the kingdom prepared for us
from the foundation of the world.
No, our King does not live in some far away palace,
protected from people he was called to serve.
Our King walks among us,
nourishes us with his own body and blood,
does for us what he asks us to do for others.
Our King never leaves alone,
never hides behind castle walls,
but is right here with us
at every moment of our lives.
This is the feast of victory for our God!
Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia!
Christ is our King!
Now let us prove it!
This is the feast of victory for our God!
Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia!
Note: This is the last scripture reflection in this series. Fr. Dennis, who is the director of advanced formation for the Missionaries of the Precious Blood, will continue to post homilies from time to time at https://www.dennis-chriszt-cpps.org/.
Oct 7, 2023
By Fr. Joe Nassal, C.PP.S.
Growing up on a farm, CP Estes knew her family had burned the land from time to time because “the ash made tired ground more fertile again.” But after one such burning, she asked her uncle what he would plant in the field and was surprised when he told her, “I will seed nothing.” Her uncle told her he would leave the landed unseeded “as an invitation.”
For just as it “was a blessing to welcome the stranger, to give comfort to the wanderer, and especially to the weary traveler,” her uncle told her, “So, too, the land has the hospitality of the true host. For the earth is so patient. It takes the seed, the weed, the tree, the flower; it takes the rain, the grain, and the fire. It allows and invites entry. It is the perfect host.”
Practicing hospitality is a hallmark of our Precious Blood spirituality. Unfortunately, many in our world have failed to listen to what the Earth seeks to teach us about hospitality. Sometimes it takes hurricanes and floods and wildfires to get our attention about climate change and global warming.
Our unwillingness to listen to the Earth, to learn from nature, is also reflected in our relationships with one another, especially with people from other cultures or creeds, with people who hold different views or who see through a different lens than we do.
Both the first reading from the prophet Isaiah and the parable from Matthew’s Gospel speak of being good stewards of God’s vineyard. In the parable, the tenant farmers go to the extremes by not only refusing to offer hospitality to those sent by the owner of the vineyard for his share of the produce but turning to violence. They even kill some of the messengers the owner sends to negotiate with the grape growers. Even when he sends his own son, the farmers “seize him, drag him outside the vineyard, and kill him.”
The parable reminds us how redemption and new life come out of ruin. The rejection suffered by Jesus will be the means of salvation for the world. Jesus is “the stone rejected by the builders” that becomes the cornerstone of a new creation.
In the vineyard of today’s world, the harvest of justice seems to be far off. Instead of harvesting hope, justice and peace in this vineyard, so many people taste only sour grapes of wrath, of war, of violence, and exclusion.
In these dangerous times, we draw some measure of hope—and a large challenge—from the message of St. Paul in the second reading. Our challenge is to cultivate an attitude that Paul describes: “Have no anxiety at all, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, make your requests known to God.” If we live the qualities Paul outlines—truth, honor, justice, purity, graciousness and love—then “the peace of God that surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.”
All of us have anxieties, all of us claim more than a few fears, and all of us have known failures even after our best efforts. There is certainly more than enough to be anxious about in our world today, but our challenge is to trust that in our prayer, when we live with grateful hearts, we will know “the God of peace will be with us.”
As people who work and pray in the vineyard of the Precious Blood, we believe it is out of the ashes that new hope will rise. At every Eucharist, we celebrate how God takes our failures and transforms them into a future full of hope. For it was on the night he was betrayed, that Jesus gave us the greatest of gifts, his body and blood.
Though at times we feel like tired ground, worn out and weary of life, unable to produce a harvest of justice; though at times we taste the bitter disappointments of life and respond with sour grapes; though at times sickness and loss and the death of loved ones stop us in our tracks, we proclaim our belief that God will continue to bring new life, new hope, and new growth out of the ashes of our lives.
Fr. Joe Nassal, C.PP.S., a noted author, preacher and retreat leader, also serves as vice provincial director of the Missionaries of the Precious Blood, United States Province.
