My brothers and sisters in Christ I mentioned last week that every time
we hear the Holy Gospel Our Lord Jesus Himself is teaching us something,
He is asking of us something. And so as we hear the Gospel today, our Lord
is asking of us something that is so important, He asks that you and I
pray with great love a prayer: "Jesus, what am I to do to be ready for
Your coming?" We celebrate the great solemnity of Christmas in eleven short
days and so the question is urgent as more and more candles are lit on
the advent week the question becomes more urgent: "Oh Lord, what am I to
do to prepare a royal road for Your coming?"
I just got back on Thursday evening from California, one of the trips
that I’ve been taking lately in order to get ready for the spirituality
year for our seminarians here at Saints Peter and Paul, and I was there
for four days meeting with a priest who is going to be helping me with
the spirituality year, and he is spending a year in California living in
a Ukrainian Catholic Monastery in the California mountains. And Ukrainians
in case you are not familiar with that are the Catholics of Russia and
Eastern Europe and they are Catholics just as you and I are but they use
a form of the Mass that was developed in Byzantine Constantinople, where
as we use the form of the Mass that was developed in Rome and in the west.
And the monks all live in little hermitages in little wooden houses scattered
in the midst of the woods, and each morning at five fifteen in the morning
while it was still pitch black outside with the stars and the cold winter
sky overhead, I would walk down a path down the side of the mountain and
I would see off in the woods little points of lights, little flashlights
as the monks came out of their hermitages from the woods and they all gathered
converging on the chapel, and in the total mountain darkness it was really
beautiful to see the monks coming from the woods and all descending on
the chapel. These little points of light heading towards the great light
of Jesus who is contained in the tabernacle of the monastery church. And
the church itself is really wonderful, it is built like the traditional
wooden churches of the Carpathian mountains in Russia. The whole thing
is built in wood of rusted wood timbers, there are five onion domes on
top and everything inside from floor to ceiling is done in wood. And each
of the domes is capped by a Byzantine cross. Inside of the Church everything
is so simple except from the icons, everywhere there are painted golden
icons done in the traditional Russian style, and everywhere there are little
oil lamps that hang in front of the icons lighting the icon behind it,
and the center of the church is an (iconostasis) which is a wall covered
with icons and in the center of the wall is a holy door through which only
the priest can walk, and behind the door is the tabernacle which hangs
above a small altar, and the tabernacle is in the shape of a dove. Ours
has a door in front, theirs is a suspended dove, a silver dove, in the
middle of that dove is contained the Blessed Sacrament.
The Monks pray morning prayer and Mass at that early hour with only
candle light and the light of the icons and in dark the light in front
of the icons just makes them shine with an inner light. For two hours everything
is chanted in four part harmony, without any instruments to guide them
the monks chant in the most beautiful ancient harmonies, they are over
a thousand years old. The priest wears silken vestments and clouds of incense
fill the air of the tiny wooden chapel.
After two and a half hours of praying the sun is finally arisen and
they go to their monastery for breakfast, and I joined them there, and
they are in the middle of their forty day advent fast, they fast not only
in lent but advent. And they make our fasting look like nothing, the Russian
fasting is very severe, and so you walk into the refectory and you grab
a cup of water, put a tea bag in it and you go to this big loaf of peasant
bread and you cut off a big hunk and you sit down at the big rough monastery
table. There is no napkins or plates, you simply put your bread on the
table and eat in total silence.
And the monastery is drawing young men from all over the country to
come and join them and to live this kind of life. And you and I we would
wonder what would draw people to live that kind of a hard life? What is
the beauty of that monastery that attracts young men and old as well to
join them?
The Abbot, his name is Father Abbot Boniface, and he is an eighty-two
year old man, he carries a wooden staff, has a big white beard, wears a
long black veil like the Russian abbots of old and people are coming to
them to live this kind of a simple hard life. Why? What is it that the
monastery is all about?
The monastery exists for one reason, it is a group of monks who live
there waiting for Jesus to come again. And so everything in their life
is simple so that there is no distraction as they wait for Jesus to come
again. The only thing of great beauty is the chapel itself and the music
and the vestments and the music and the singing, those are the beautiful
things of their lives, everything dealing with Jesus is beautiful. The
rest of their life, their eating their living is very, very simple, so
that they can wait without distractions for Jesus to come again. ‘The whole
life of the monk is consumed in holy waiting’, they write, ‘on looking
out for the return of the bridegroom. This makes the monk an assiduous
faster and alert in prayer in order not to miss Christ. In his prayer he
scours all the horizons in search of Jesus and he is not afraid.’
And that really is the whole purpose of the Catholic life, isn’t it?
You and I in our prayer, we look carefully out at the horizon of God’s
grace, looking for Jesus to come, looking for His presence in our lives.
The Catholic life is a life of joyful waiting for Jesus to come and in
eager expectation for His return. And that is what the Gospel is all about.
People come out to the desert to see John the Baptist, and they come with
an eagerness as they hear Saint John speak, one after another they come
up to him and they say: "What must we do to prepare? What must we do to
be ready? " To the simple farmers and the business folk he says: "Be generous,
let the man with two coats give to him who has none, the man who has food
should do the same", to the government workers, those who collect taxes,
they come forward and Saint John says: "Don’t cheat people, collect nothing
over and above your fixed amount", the soldiers come forward and when they
ask ‘what are we to do to be ready?’ He warns them: "Don’t bully anyone,
be content with your pay." Those are not difficult things are they? And
so we come before our Lord: "What are we to do to be ready for Your Christmas
coming? What are we to do so that we live life in such a way that we hasten
Your second coming on earth?" And our Lord says: "Do the everyday
things of life well. Be a husband, and a wife, and a father, and a worker,
and do them well and lovingly, with Christ always in your heart as you
do these ordinary things."
Last week I read "With God in Russia" to you, I read about Father Walter
Ciszek and his temptation to leave Russia because his life seemed too difficult,
and God said to him: "But don’t you see that I come to you and My will
is done in the ordinary temptations, the ordinary trials and sacrifices
of every day?" And so Our Lord says the same to us.
You and I, each day we pray: "Oh Lord, make us ready for Your coming."
The monks live in such a way that they hasten the day that Jesus will
come again in glory. And we live in such a way as Catholics that we eagerly
wait the coming of our Lord.
This Christmas our Lord Jesus desires to prepare a home in us, a home
for Him in our souls in our minds and to dwell in us more deeply than ever
before. Let us eagerly await (for) Him to work this great grace in us,
so that Him living in us and never leaving again we may live without fear.
How wonderful to be like the monks who are not afraid, who have nothing
to lose because Christ is their all, is their God and is their joy. This
Christmas let us pray that Jesus will be our joy and our all.
This Tuesday evening we are going to have our penance service, our
advent penance service. And there is going to be eleven priests here for
confession so you don’t have to go to me, there’s all sort of other priests
you can go to, and I urge you, every one of you without exception to receive
the great Sacrament of Confession before Christmas day. If Christmas exists
for one reason, in order that Christ might come into our souls and hearts
and dwell there as he did in the arms of the Blessed Mother at Bethlehem,
we must prepare a royal road for Him, we must clean the house of our soul
by having them free from sin. In confession we sweep clean our souls and
so that they might be a beautiful dwelling place for Jesus so that He might
come and never leave us, and so that we never need to be afraid.
How beautiful will be if every parishioner of Saints Peter and Paul
can come to Christmas day and they come without sins, they come with their
sins having been forgiven, what a wonderful gift to give to Jesus on His
birthday, the birthday of His coming as a Savior of all mankind.
