The Thirty-third Sunday
in Ordinary Time
(C)
Dear brothers and sisters,
Have you noticed something odd or out of
place these past many days? I certainly have, and I am sure you have, too.
Already before the Solemnity of All Saints, garlands and ornaments were hung in
stores; holiday lights began illuminating the autumn darkness; and Christmas
trees were seen through living room windows.
As I say, all of these are out of place
for this time of the year. Many people will disagree with me, but this is
because too many Christians have, first, forgotten the liturgical year and,
second, forgotten that Christians are supposed to be distinct from the world.
If we were supposed to live according to the standards of the world, Jesus’ warning
that “You will be hated by all because of my name” would be meaningless, and we
know that nothing Jesus said or did was meaningless (Luke 21:17).
With the liturgical year and its calendar,
time itself takes a new and profound meaning. No longer is the passing of time
the slow march towards death, but it becomes the way in which “the Church
celebrates the whole mystery of Christ, from the Incarnation to Pentecost Day
and the days of waiting for the Advent of the Lord.”[1]
For those who follow the liturgical year, it is a source of many blessings, for
Just as the Lord
has punctuated the sky with stars, and the fields with flowers, and the years
with seasons, so has he punctuated the seasons themselves with feast days, that
by this distinction made from the daily services, the holy solemnities may lead
slothful characters, at least after a time, willingly back to prayer, and idle
minds may by these annual feasts make themselves ready for the Lord.[2]
“In fact, throughout the course of the year
the Church unfolds the entire mystery of Christ and observes the birthdays of
the Saints.”[3]
Liturgical Christmas Time, the authentic
Christmas season, “runs from First Vespers (Evening Prayer I) of the Nativity
of the Lord up to and including the Sunday after Epiphany or after January 6;”
this year, in the United States of America, it will last until January 12th.[4]
The authentic Christmas season has nothing to do with the commercialization of
a great and holy feast that has everything to do with the immense and almost
unimaginable love God has for sinful humanity.
For whatever reason, more and more Americans
are anticipating holidays and holy days earlier and earlier. As but one
example, in some places, Trick-or-Treating was held more a week before
Halloween. As I said a moment ago, Christmas decorations are already erupting seemingly
everywhere, and we have not even arrived at Thanksgiving. All of this saddens me.
The culture of instant gratification has forgotten how to wait in patience and
so has lost much of the joy these special days once brought.
About this time every year, several people
share an article on various social media with a headline to the effect of, “Putting
Christmas decorations up in September is good for you.”[5]
The bold claim of the headline is based on the words of Psychoanalyst Steve
McKeown, who said, “Decorations are simply an anchor or pathway to those old
childhood magical emotions of excitement. So putting up those Christmas
decorations early extends the excitement.”[6]
My experience, at least, contradicts his words; lots of people decorate earlier
and earlier each year, yet they do not seem any happier going about town; quite
the opposite seems to be true. Even if his claim is true, we have to ask ourselves
what Christmas is about; is it about some fuzzy feeling linked to receiving
gifts, or is it instead about the manifestation of God’s love for us on the day
when the sun of justice arose with its healing rays (cf. Malachi 3:20)?
At the risk of sounding like an old man –
I am only 41, which, for some, myself included, seems old – the secular
observance of Christmas is not today what it was twenty years ago. When I was
in high school and college, I had the great pleasure of getting paid to play
for seven years: I was first hired by Kay-Bee Toys as a Parental Video Game
Advisor, a seasonal position that led to my being hired as a regular sales
associate. Then, it was rare to see Christmas decorations before Thanksgiving or
to hear Christmas music (which then actually sang about the Birth of the Savior
instead of mere sleighs and snow); indeed, if you put up decorations before
Thanksgiving, people thought you were being ridiculous; not is almost expected.
Shopping about for gifts was a mostly enjoyable experience, with greetings of “Happy
Holidays” and “Merry Christmas” being heard many times each day. Helping shoppers
find a gift for someone was usually fun. Back then, "Black Friday" was called "Green Friday," before customers started shoving each other, because half of our annual sales were made on that one day.
In more recent years, however, things are
vastly different. Last year, for example, I kept track of the number of times a
cashier wished me either Happy Holidays or Merry Christmas; the total, sadly,
came to zero. What have we allowed to happen?
Some will say, “Father, society has
changed today; that’s simply the way it is and we cannot change it.” To those
who might say this, I remind you that we are part of society and that some
seventy percent of the American people still claim to be Christians.[7]
It’s high time we lived like Christians. Saint Augustine once rightly said, “Bad
times! Troublesome times! This men are saying. Let our lives be good, and the
times will be good. We make our times; such as we are, such are the times.”[8]
I do not raise this issue today to be a
Grinch (the cartoon is better than the movie) or a Scrooge (The Muppet
Christmas Carol is the best version of the classic work by Charles Dickens).
Rather, I raise it to up us recover the joy of the holy days that are yet to
come and to help us “to serve with constancy the author of all that is good.”[9]
I do not want to exhaust ourselves with premature celebrations; I want us instead
to enter fully into the liturgical year so that its beauty, peace, and joy can
be ours.
If our mindset is to anticipate Christmas
rather than to celebrate the actual day with its following season, we will miss
the beauty and the hope the season of Advent offers, and Christmas Day will
lack something of the sacred joy that should permeate it. If we anticipate our
holidays and holy days so much so far in advance, by the time they actually
arrive we will already be worn down and ready to move on to the next
anticipation, only for the cycle to keep perpetuating.
This coming Sunday, the liturgical year
enters its final week with the Solemnity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the
Universe. In two weeks, the liturgical year will begin anew as we enter into
the season of Advent with its “twofold character, for it is a time of
preparation for the solemnities of Christmas, in which the First Coming of the
Son of God to humanity is remembered, and likewise a time when, by remembrance
of this, minds and hearts are led to look forward to Christ’s Second Coming at
the end of time.”[10]
It is against this backdrop that we heard the warning of the Prophet Malachi: “Lo,
the day is coming, blazing like an oven, when all the proud and all evildoers
will be stubble” (Malachi 3:19).
Let each one of us, then, humble ourselves
and submit to the liturgical calendar, seeking to enter into each aspect of the
mystery of the life of Christ Jesus. Let us reject the busy commercialization
of what are meant to be holy and reflective days. Let us strive to prepare
ourselves for the Second Coming of the Messiah through the season of Advent, so
that we might “not act in a disorderly way,” but might instead imitate the great
Saints of the Church who strove to unite themselves to Christ in every aspect
of their lives (II Thessalonians 3:11; cf. II Thessalonians 3:7). Amen.
[1] Universal Norms on the
Liturgical Year and the General Roman Calendar, 17.
[2] Saint Paulinus of Nola, in James
Monti, A Sense of the Sacred: Roman Catholic Worship in the Middle Ages
(San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2012), 259.
[3] Universal Norms on the
Liturgical Year, 1.
[4] Ibid., 32.
[5] “Putting Christmas decorations up
in September is good for you,” Hully Daily Mail, 16 September 2019. Accessed
16 November 2019. Available at https://www.hulldailymail.co.uk/news/uk-world-news/putting-christmas-decorations-up-september-3323337.
[6] In ibid.
[7] Cf. Pew Research Center, Religious
Landscape Study. Accessed 16 November 2019. Available at https://www.pewforum.org/religious-landscape-study/
[8] Saint Augustine of Hippo, Sermon
on the New Testament, 30.8.
[9] Roman Missal, Collect
for the Twenty-third Sunday in Ordinary Time.
[10] Universal Norms on the
Liturgical Year, 39.