December 2002

Homily for December 8, 2002 - Second Sunday of Advent
Isaiah 40:1-5, 9-11     2 Peter 3:8-14 Mark 1: 1-8
What a week this has been!
I’d like to address some of what has happened in the past week, but I know that many parents are concerned, justly so, about the issues I address publicly in my preaching within their children’s hearing.
So! I’m going to speak to the boys and girls here this morning and invite the grown-ups to read between the lines.
Boys and girls, I want to tell you about a wonderful bishop who lived a long time ago. In fact, he was born in the 280. Now, this is the year 2002, so you can see how long ago this bishop lived. He was born on the Mediterranean coast and he was the bishop of Myra.    This great bishop’s name came from two Greek words: laos and nike (pronounced nee-kay). You may not know what laos means but if I pronounced nike as an English word, it would sound like nigh-kee. So, how many of you are wearing Nike shoes? Do you know what the name of your sneakers means? It means, in Greek: victory! And laos means, in Greek: people! Nike-laos: victory for the people! And those two words come together and make this bishop’s name: Nicholas! So Bishop Nicholas name means, one who is victorious with and for the people.
     Bishop Nicholas is a patron saint of sailors because on a voyage at sea once a terrible storm threatened the lives of all aboard the boat.    In the middle of the story times, the crew, very much afraid, came to Bishop Nicholas and asked for his help. So Bishop Nicholas prayed with them right through the storm, until the sea grew calm. His prayer had rescued the sailors from their time of danger.
            Bishop Nicholas is also the saint from whom we trace the origins of Santa Claus. Our name, Santa Claus, is a contraction Saint Nicholas! If you say Saint Nicholas one hundred times, really fast, by the time you get to 100, Saint Nicholas will sound like Santa Claus.
            Bishop Nicholas was, himself, an orphan who had a special love for children, and a very special love for poor children. The story is told of a very poor family who had no money at all. The parents were so poor they were considering selling one of their children to get some money so that they could feed their other children. Bishop Nicholas heard about this and he feared, rightly so, that the child would be sold into the abuse of prostitution. So, in the middle of the night he went to the house of this family and threw a bag of gold coins through the window. In fact, he did this three times to be sure that the family had enough money and would not have to sell their children
            On the third night, the father heard the coins spill on the floor and he ran out to see who was helping his family. He saw Bishop Nicholas but the bishop asked the father not to tell anyone where the money he came from - he was only interested in keeping the children safe. Caring for the poor, all of the time, was something Bishop Nicholas was known for.
            Sometimes I wish that Bishop Nicholas would still come and throw bags of gold coins in our windows! But every year at Christmas, in the middle of the night - (here, I held up a large, stuffed, red and white Christmas stocking) someone comes and fills our stockings with gifts, reminding us of that good bishop who wanted to keep his good deeds secret, under the cover of night.
            Perhaps you’ve never seen a bishop. Well, a bishop wears a funny hat!    (Here, I held up a bishop’s miter, white with read trim and decoration.)   Now, it took a few hundred years I’m sure, but slowly and surely, the bishop’s miter morphed into - (Here, I held up, next to the miter, the traditional Santa’s cap, also conical in shape, red and white in color)   - Santa’s hat!
            A bishop carries a shepherd’s staff which is called a crosier. Now Santa doesn’t carry a staff, but shepherds do, and good bishops are like shepherds, who guide and protect their people through stormy times, and who rescue them from danger. Remember today’s first scripture? Isaiah the prophet wrote of the Lord coming like a shepherd who feeds his flock, who gathers the lambs in his arms, carrying them and leading them with great care. The good bishop, like Bishop Nicholas, is the shepherd who wins victory for his people so that they can find comfort and forgiveness and peace.
            We have a custom in our parish, that on the Sunday nearest St. Nicholas Day, December 6, we give out candy canes. The candy cane can remind us of the shepherd’s crook, with which the shepherd leads and guides his sheep to comfort and to victory.
      Of course, the real shepherd of us all is not any particular bishop but it is Jesus! And if you turn the cane upside down, it becomes a J which is Jesus initial. Someone even told me after the 7:30 Mass that if you turn the cane on its side, it looks like the runner on a sleigh - and we know who arrives in a sleigh!
            I hope all of the boys and girls here today, from 6 to 60, will take a candy cane home with you today to remind you of good Bishop Nicholas, and of Jesus who is our shepherd and whose birthday we are preparing to celebrate.
            We go to our shepherd’s table now, the table of Jesus, where he not only invites us to be close to him - he truly gives himself to us in the sacrament of his body and blood. Like a shepherd Jesus feeds us and guides us. He stays with us through the stormy times. He ransoms us when we need to be rescued, and he gathers us into the pure love of his arms, into the sweet tenderness of his embrace.
Rev. Austin Fleming

Homily for Third Sunday of Advent - December 15, 2002
Isaiah 61:1-2a, 10-11    1 Thessalonians 5:16-24    John 1:6-8, 19-28
Rejoice always!
So writes St. Paul.
Always?
Well, that’s what Paul counsels us.
How about this week just past -
    should we rejoice over the resignation of Cardinal Law?
I, for one, do not take any joy in his resignation.
I do find some measure of relief in his leaving, and the events of the past week do give me       some hope that we have taken an important step down a long path of healing, reconciliation, justice, compassion, and much needed change.
But I do not rejoice in the cardinal’s resignation. In fact, I know that I need to be careful in these  angry times not to nourish bitterness or resentment in my heart - something that tempts me often  these days.Rather, I need to look at myself, at my own life as a Christian and as a minister of the gospel,
and, as St. Paul also counsels us,
        “to test everything:
            retaining what is good,
            and refraining from what is not.
If we are learning anything from the current events in church life it is this:
        that in preaching the gospel there must be:
        no tolerance of arrogance; no appetite for control;
        no thirst for power; and no secrets kept
        to hide from the larger church what is very much the business of the larger church.
Rather, there must be a fostering of humility; a surrender of control that tries to manage the people of God rather than minister to them;
a relinquishing of power that it might be shared with the powerless;
and a transparency that strips away anything that covers what must be held up to the light of      the gospel message.
I say all of this as much of myself and the ministry of our own parish as I say it of Cardinal      Law and, now, Bishop Lennon and the Archdiocese of Boston, as I say it of the Pope and       of the whole Roman Catholic Church.
Isaiah the prophet was delighted simply to have good news to bring to the poor,
    to have healing to bring to the brokenhearted,
    to be able to proclaim liberty to those who were held captive,
    release to those who where shackled,
    and the promise of God’s favor in the lives of the whole people.
John the Baptist was thought by many to be one more crack pot announcing the coming of the Messiah. Only those who understood his call for repentance took him seriously;
only those who understood that in their own hearts there needed to be cleared a road,
a path along which the Messiah might make his way into their lives.
The joy in Isaiah’s heart and the rejoicing that Paul tells we should do - always -
is a joy which does not depend on yesterday’s news or today’s stock market,                             or tomorrow’s weather.
Rather, it is a joy that survives the worst of times and lifts us up in the best of times.
Joseph Campbell, of public television fame, spent his life studying the world’s religions.
He summarized the goal of all faiths and mythologies in these words:
    “to participate joyfully in the sorrows of the world.”
To participate joyfully in the sorrows of the world...
That is, to confront and reach out in healing to the sorrows around us
    confident that sorrow will not have the final word, that despair will not win out,
    that the deepest of wounds can be healed.
As we approach Christmas this year we do so mindful of much sorrow,
of damage done to souls, and of faith shaken and rocked.
We must look and pray for that deeper joy, the joy that helps us wade into the waters             of the world’s sorrows trusting that we will not drown in them and that, indeed, we can       reach out in rescue to those who have lost the joy that saves us from despair.
Our church, like all faiths, is meant to help us participate joyfully in the sorrows of                       the world. And in these days, we need God’s grace to help us reach out to the sorrows of the abused, and to participate joyfully in a faith shaken by the sorrows of its own story.
Isaiah promised the people of Israel a healing and liberty they thought to good to be true.
St. Paul calls us to a kind of joy which many may think has passed them by.
John the Baptist calls us to a repentance that roots out what inhibits the deepest joy
and clears a path for the joy that only God can give us.
Each time we celebrate the eucharist we participate joyfully in the suffering and death of     Jesus, and through Jesus, we participate joyfully in the sorrows of the world.
May the healing and favor he offers us in the sacrament of this altar nourish in us a deep joy and a healing peace we can offer to those whose sorrows have become our own.
Rev. Austin Fleming

Homily for Fourth Sunday of Advent - B                           December 22, 2002
About a month ago, in my letter in the bulletin,
    I invited you to respond to this question:
        “What continues to draw you to Mass at Our Lady Parish
        at a time when many Catholics have decided
        not to worship with the church on the Lord’s Day?”
I have received nearly 100 replies to that question,
    the greatest response I’ve received to anything in the last 8 years.
In the responses I received there was the recurring theme
    that people are faithful to Sunday worship in our parish
    because they find here a family, a community,
    in which the scriptures are preached in a compelling fashion,
    in which outreach to the poor enjoys a high priority,
    in which the praise of God is offered up in beautiful music,
    in which the company of other believers
        offers support and encouragement,
    and in which the table of the Lord offers the gift of the eucharist.
The family, the community people find in our parish
    is like the house or the household of faith
    in today’s first scripture.
To the people of Israel God promised a household of faith
    to which he would be faithful
    and in which he would fulfill his promises.
In Jesus, the doors of that household are opened even wider,
    inviting in all who would answer the call of faith.
In the gospel today, we read how Jesus took up residence
    in the “house of Mary’s womb.”
It is either fascinating or predictable - or both! -
    that God should choose to enter our lives
    by confining himself,
        the One to whom all power and might belong,
    by confining himself to the intimacy of a woman’s womb,
    and by nestling himself against the nourishing warmth of her breasts
        once he was born of her body.
We read that
Mary, the mother of Jesus,
    was startled and frightened by this prospect
but we, perhaps, have come to take it for granted,
as we sometimes take Jesus for granted.
The danger in our God’s coming among us as a poor child is that,
    like so many other poor children throughout history,
        he might get lost in the shuffle,
            forgotten and abandoned, taken for granted.
The image of “house” is not only in the scriptures.
In one of our favorite seasonal classics we read,
    “T’was the night before Christmas and all through the   -   house -
        not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse...”
We all hope that Saint Nicholas will visit our house...
In fact, we are willing to reform our lives
    in preparation for his coming:
“He sees you when you’re sleeping, he knows when you’re awake,
He knows if you’ve been bad or good, so be good for goodness’ sake...”
In anticipation of the gifts St. Nicholas might bring to our households,
    we are willing to work at being “good for the sake of being good...”
Not just on Christmas, but every day of the year,
    Jesus wants to visit our house:
        the house of our parish,
        the household of faith,
        the house of our family,
        and the house of our own hearts.
Every day of the year,
    Jesus wants to confine himself to the womb of our hearts
    and to nestle himself warmly and close to us
    in an intimacy that may at first startle and frighten us
    but an intimacy which is meant only to bring us peace,
    and to nurture in us a deeper hunger for his presence.
Over the next few days we will be making our homes ready
    to celebrate the birth of Jesus.
Bethlehem means “house of bread”
    and we are gathered in the house of God’s people right now
    to share in the bread of his house, and the cup of his table,
    with which he nourishes us, his household, his family of faith.
May the food we share at this table
    open our hearts to his being born within us, and from us.
Rev. Austin Fleming

Homily for Christmas 2002
There was a certain danger about the birth of Jesus,
    in God’s venturing into time as we know it,
a danger that the One who is beyond all time, who is eternal,
    for whom yesterday and now and tomorrow are all one
a danger that God, in becoming one like us long ago,
    might one day in the future be forgotten,
        or remembered only as an historical curiosity.
Indeed, there are people in our lives
    whom we only remember on their birthday or at Christmas,
and of course there are those who only remember Jesus
    on Christmas which is his birthday.
The was a danger in God’s coming among us as a poor child,
a danger that Jesus, like other poor children,
        might be taken for granted,
            get lost in the shuffle, or be abandoned.
And how tragically we have learned in this past year
    how easily children can be taken for granted...
There was a danger in the pure unity of humanity and divinity in Jesus,
    a danger that we would prefer his divinity to his humanity
        and place him, like a statue, on a pedestal
and somehow miss the whole point
    that it   is   in his humanity
    and in our relationships with one another
        that we will most easily discover his presence among us.
We bow to what has been cast in plaster
    and are numb to his shoulder pressed tight against our own
        in a crowded church or in the press of crowds at the mall.
There was a danger in Jesus being born
    in obscurity, in poverty, in confusion, in fear, in homelessness -
a danger that we would sanitize all of that,
    make it warm and glowing,
        and not come to understand that in all ages, including our own,
    Jesus continues to reveal himself especially
        among the marginalized, the poor,
            the frightened and the homeless.
There was a danger in Jesus’ being born
    in a time when the world was at peace,
a danger that we might come to think that peace is his work,
    and not understand that the crafting, the making
        and the keeping of peace is our work
            entrusted, especially, to us who believe in him,
            who follow him, and who celebrate his birth.
There was a danger in God becoming one like us in Jesus,
    a danger that we would not “get it,”
    that we would misunderstand, that we would turn it inside out,
    that the season of celebrating his birth would become,
        as Dickens wrote,
        “a time of want felt keenly by the poor
            and a time of rejoicing for those with plenty...”

..all upside down, backwards and inside out...

Listening to a radio talk show early this morning
I heard one caller, an atheist,
complain about all the Christmas hoopla
through which he was expected to live at this time of year.
A subsequent caller took the atheist to task
reminding him of how important Christmas is for the retail economy
and that without it we would be in danger
of even deeper fiscal trouble.
Nonsense!
Take away Christmas
and we will find another reason for the season of spending,
another reason for spending too much money
on things that are passing, things that do not last,
and very often on things that do not matter at all.

So much of our Christmas celebration does not depend on Jesus at all
and, in fact, has little to do with Jesus.

And therein lies the blessing in all the danger.

If we are willing to contemplate seriously and prayerfully and honestly
the danger of how God chose to come among us
we will find a well spring of grace in what is left
when pare away all that we have done
to hide the dangerous beauty of our God taking flesh
and choosing to live among us, and even within us.

This past year our own faith tradition,
especially in the archdiocese of Boston,
has had cause to examine carefully how dangerously careless
how tragically thoughtless we can be
in living with, touching, the incarnate presence of God among us.

I hope, I pray that we have learned that in the mind and heart of God
the offer of grace is always in the now, and just ahead of us,
and is offered to free us any ways in the past
when we have put the institution before people,
prestige before honesty,
and favor before law.

How much we need, this Christmas,
to contemplate the innocence,
the purity, the vulnerability of the Christ child
and to know that every time we care for a child
we care for Christ himself,
and every time we care for Christ,
we care for our very God.

We need, this Christmas, to ponder the blend of humanity and divinity
in Jesus, born of Mary, born of the Spirit, born for us.
And we need to remember that his divinity touches our humanity
but still leaves us as servants of his truth and gospel.
Though the church is the body of Christ,
it’s humanity is ever in need of Christ’s divinity
to guide us, to shape us, to mold us into the body
he has created and called us to be.
Our own creations are plaster models,
what Jesus calls to be within us and among us
is the very life of Emmanuel: God with us.

And we need to ponder this Christmas morning
that Jesus continues to be born among us
and that there is still no room at the inn for him,
there is too often no place at the table for him,
and his welfare is continually shadowed
by the history and threat of violence, abuse and war.

The blessing in the danger of how God chose to come among us
will be discovered by those ponder the story of his birth
as prayerfully and honestly as they know how.
Otherwise, we are left with Christmas card versions
of what it meant for God to visit us, his people,
and to make his home among us, and within us.

Jesus was born in a cave or a stable where animals were kept
and he was laid in a manger, a feed box.
Those who speak French don’t miss the play on words here:
when you say manger with a French accent, it is “manger”
which means, “to eat.”

Come then, this morning and live dangerously!
Live on the edge of the truth of the gospel story
of the birth of Jesus.
Come to the table, the feedbox,
of the one who invites us to lay down our lives
for our neighbors, especially for the poor,
as he laid down his life for us.

Come and eat at the table of blessing, and raise the cup of rejoicing
for our God has been born among us
and in the danger of his coming there is blessing for all.

Rev. Austin Fleming

Homily for Holy Family Sunday, December 29, 2002 - Year B
There are, of course, all kinds of families:
    families of origin, nuclear families, extended families,
    the church family, troubled families, happy families.
    adoptive families, families of different faiths, struggling famil   single parent families, families with gay parents,
    growing families, parish families, close families, distant families...
    “his” family, “her” family...
And you can be sure of this:
the families you THINK are perfect, are pretty much just as crazy as yours.
What all this means is:
    - all families have problems
    - all families need healing
    - and all families need God’s help
One of the greatest joys of my ministry in this parish has been the conversations I’ve                 had with a number of families, old and young, but younger ones in particular,             conversations in which parents have told me what a real and significant difference faith             and relationship to our faith community has made in their individual and family life at home.
In fact, I received a number of Christmas cards, acknowledging gratitude
for what Our Lady Help of Christians parish has meant in the lives of our families
        - ..all upside down, backwards and inside out...

So much of our Christmas celebration does not depend on Jesus at all
and, in fact, has little to do with Jesus.

And therein lies the blessing in all the danger.

Come and eat at the table of blessing, and raise the cup of rejoicing
for our God has been born among us
and in the danger of his coming there is blessing for all.

Rev. Austin Fleming

especially in this past troubled year.
Faith makes a difference. Worship makes a difference.
Faithfulness to worship makes a big difference!
Praying with the parish family offers support and hope
for individual families and individual family members.
In many real ways,   the parish IS family to some of our older parishioners
who find their community and friendships within the larger parish circle.
In a very real and important way, you are MY family, and you ARE my home.
The parish family is meant to be a place of safety, compassion, community, nourishment, prayer and worship.
The parish family is meant to be a haven, a harbor, a place where one feels at home              with God and with other believers.
And just as the parish families nourish individual families, so do individual families nourish           the parish family by their presence, their involvement, their work,   their prayer,                    and their charity.
The security of parish family life has been shaken to its core by the news of this past year
and the revealing of stories about our church family which have hurt us deeply.
Our church family is very much in need of prayer and healing as we learn from the past
and make new paths into our faith family’s future.
The altar is our family table.
We go there because our brother, Jesus, invites us there to sit down with him                          and to share the family supper which the eucharist is.
Let us pray at the Lord’s table this day
    that the parish family will will continue to grow
    and to welcome and nourish its individual families
    as Christ welcomes and feeds each of us at this table.
- Rev. Austin Fleming