On Friday, as I
made my way to St. Cloud to take my mother Christmas shopping (don’t all you
mothers wish you had a son like me?) I began to hear the reports of the tragic
school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut.
I realized rather quickly that my original homily, focused as it was on
the call to rejoice would not be quite right in the aftermath of such violence
and loss of innocent life.
And yet we have these beautiful
readings which call us to rejoice – even when we may not feel like
rejoicing. Even when our feelings may be
more in line with a short Latin poem that a friend of mine composed: Nocte fletuum angelis./Mundi
frangitur./Vocis voces in caelis/Clamant malum lucem extinguitur. Translated into English it means: Night of weeping angels./The world is shattered./Resounding
voices in heaven/Cry out: Evil has extinguished the light. It easy, in the face of such horror to feel
that evil is triumphant and that the light has been extinguished. So what can we say? How should we respond? And what is God saying
to us today through our Scriptures?
St. Paul
wrote his letter to the Philippians, the source of today’s second reading from
prison. One would not think this would
be an occasion for rejoicing. And yet,
not only does Paul encourage us to rejoice, he wants us to rejoice in the Lord
always, and then he says, “again I say, rejoice.” Where did Paul, in the midst of his suffering
and trial, get the urge to rejoice? It
comes in the next sentence: The Lord is
near. For Paul, who was expecting the Lord’s
return in short order, the fact that the Lord was near overcame the sufferings
of the present and infused his heart with joy.
What
about the prophesy of Zephaniah that contains our first reading – that
exhilarating call to rejoicing that seems so full of hope and excitement and
which is set so stunningly by Handel in
his “Messiah?” Zephaniah’s times were
not easy. The kingdom to which his
prophesy is addressed had fallen into complete moral and spiritual decay. The king had entered into an alliance with
the Assyrians which included acceptance of their gods. So Zephaniah is faced with rulers who act
like foreigners. He could see the fraud,
violence and complacency that accompanied the disintegration of the political
leadership. Added to the political
turmoil was an increasing belief among the people that God was powerless to
act. That their situation in life had
become permanent.
When we
read the entirety of Zephaniah’s prophesy we encounter his catalogue of
accusations against the rulers of his day.
And then he ends his prophesy with the bold call to rejoice and shout
for joy. Why? Because the Lord is in their midst and he
comes to bring them forgiveness and comfort.
In other words, the dire situation in which they live is not the end of
the story – that God can and will act on behalf of the people.
That is
the message for us on this Gaudete Sunday (the Sunday of rejoicing) as we face
yet another senseless act of violence.
That we are not alone, that the light is not extinguished, that our God
is with us. That is the constant theme
of this Advent and Christmas season – that our God has come to us with
salvation, forgiveness and strength.
That is the message of the Advent wreath whose candles we light one by
one. That is the message of the
Scripture and song that we share during these weeks when not only do the nights
seem long and cold but tragedy, once again, visits our land.
In the
aftermath of the shootings at Columbine, Archbishop Charles Chaput, who was
then the Archbishop of Denver wrote to his people of his feelings and
experience in the wake of that tragedy.
He writes: “The impact of
what happened this past week in Littleton, however, didn't fully strike home in
my heart until the morning after the murders, when I visited a large prayer
gathering of students from Columbine High School, and spent time with the
families of two of the students who died. They taught me something. The students who gathered to pray and comfort
each other showed me again the importance of sharing not just our sorrow, but
our hope. God created us to witness His love to each other, and we draw our
life from the friendship, the mercy and the kindness we offer to others in
pain. The young Columbine students I listened to, spoke individually -- one by one
-- of the need to be strong, to keep alive hope in the future, and to turn away
from violence. Despite all their confusion and all their hurt, they would not
despair. I think I understand why. We're creatures of life. This is the way God
made us: to assert life in the face of death.”
In our Gospel, John the Baptist
responds to the questions of those who came to him about how they should order
their lives. He gives each group some
rather practical advice. Archbishop
Chaput did the same: “We need to change.
But societies only change when families change, and families only change when
individuals change. Without a conversion to humility, non-violence and
selflessness in our own hearts, all our talk about "ending the
violence" may end as pious generalities. It is not enough to speak about
reforming our society and community. We need to reform ourselves.”
And so, what I learned from the
Scriptures is that rejoicing is necessary to hope. That in the darkness and the violence we need
not a giddy, superficial joy but a deep down recognition that God has not
abandoned us, that God, in fact, grieves with us – he too, lost a Son in an act
of violence and hatred. I learned that
in the midst of darkness there is light – the light of the resilience of the
human spirit, but even more the light of Christ whose presence among us we are
preparing to celebrate. I learned that
when the evil seems to have extinguished the light that I need to rejoice even
more.
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