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The latest issue of Case Western Reserve University’s alumni magazine featured an article titled “A Mindset Reboot: Grappling with the prospect of a finite human future.” That title isn’t surprising, coming from a secular university. The title of the author profiled in it is though. He’s described as a “religion scholar.” Nothing in his official title reflects expertise in divinity, though. He’s listed as a distinguished university professor with a Ph.D. from the college of arts and sciences.

The article discusses a how-to book he just wrote about “finding our way in the Anthropocene.” That ten-dollar word describes a new geologic epoch “defined by humanity’s damaging footprint.” The author suggests we acknowledge that our time on earth is short. He embraces a Hebrew biblical tradition steeped in nature, telling us we’re from dust, and to dust we return.

We Catholics used to acknowledge the same thing as we marked each new Lenten season by receiving an ashen cross on our foreheads.  But it’s a new day and age, and instead of acknowledging our future as dust, today our Lenten ash distributor quotes one of Jesus’ first pieces of advice, straight out of the beginning of Mark’s gospel: “Repent and Believe in the Gospel.”

What we need to reject as we exit the Anthropocene, the author suggests, is the notion that humans are exceptional animals ordained by God to hold dominion over nature, and instead, adopt a mindset of “earth creatureliness.”

“Life comes from death, depends on death, even feeds on it,” he advises. “Accepting this will help us break our denial of human finitude.”

Indeed, Jesus seems to concur, based on what he teaches through John’s gospel:

“Unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains just a grain of wheat, but if it dies, it produces much fruit.” (JOHN 12:24)

Unlike what this professor tells us, though, that fruit represents the hope of what comes next. Mark’s gospel tells us what Ph.D. scholars of the Anthropocene don’t:

“Whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and that of the gospel will save it.” (MARK 8:35)

Ph.D. scholars use their titles to promote the work they’ve done for humanity, and this particular one’s work seems to suggest we abandon the hope of going on forever and work instead at enjoying the limited time we have left.

But as Paul teaches the Ephesians in this Sunday’s second reading (Eph 2:4-10), hope can’t be found in our work, but in God’s gift of faith that allows us to inhabit HIS work—as accomplished through us.

For we are his handiwork, created in Christ Jesus for the good works that God has prepared in advance, that we should live in them.

By not believing in our role in the eternal arts and sciences of God, we condemn ourselves to the darkness of the Anthropocene’s dustbin. But John’s gospel tells us we were made to be reflectors of God’s eternal light:

Whoever lives the truth comes to the light, so that his works may be clearly seen as done in God. (Jn 3:14-21)

That light is our life, and it’s magnified by each other’s faith. It’s the cure for anyone contracting a terminal case of academia.

–Tom Andel

(For the audio version of this blog, please visit: https://brothersinchristcmf.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/Mass-Blog-for-the-Second-Sunday-of-Lent-2024.mp3)

If you believe that bit of wisdom in our headline, people of faith are lucky. It came from the mind of Lucius Annaeus Seneca, an ancient Roman philosopher. And although he was a pagan, he was also a pen pal of Paul—Christianity’s strongest defender. Centuries after Seneca wrote this pithy remark, it’s become the inspiration for modern-day CEOs hosting crucial business meetings.

One of Christianity’s most inspiring meetings is commemorated in this Sunday’s gospel reading: Christ’s transfiguration (Mk 9:2-10). This is where Moses and Elijah appeared with Jesus as he literally blinded disciples Peter, James and John with his brilliance. Moses and Elijah represented God’s law and the prophets, respectively, and as such, were to be humanity’s preparation for salvation. Jesus became our opportunity for enjoying that outcome.

But luck had nothing to do with this meeting. It was God’s gift to us—and therefore represents our hope for salvation’s success in us.

The word “success” is often substituted for “luck” in Seneca’s quote. But if success is the opportunity God offers us, it still requires action on our part—just as giving a gift requires a giver’s preparation. The giver discerns the recipient’s passions and contemplates their needs. Then that gift is wrapped, so beauty encompasses it as it is given. But choosing the right opportunity for gift-giving is key to hitting the recipient at the right time. Because God is love, these things come naturally to The Giver. Or supernaturally.

So in the transfiguration, the law (designed to direct human action), and prophecy (intended to give us insight into the consequence of our actions) meet love: the desire for someone’s good. God is I AM, and BEING that love, God comes to us through the gift of His Son.

Where ancient humanity failed to find that love in this world via words written in stone and spoken by flesh, Jesus points the way to the otherworldly Promised Land of his Father’s irrational love—which is the bridge between this world and that one.

After the disciples witnessed their Master’s transfiguration, God added sound to their hearts’ vision:

“This is my beloved Son. Listen to him.”

As they were coming down from the mountain, Jesus charged them not to relate their vision to anyone until the Son of Man rose from the dead. They kept it in their hearts, but their minds still questioned what rising from the dead meant.

The answer comes as Christ’s gift to us, unwrapped in John’s gospel: whoever keeps God’s word in their heart will never taste death, as people who live by laws carved in stone and spoken by flesh do. Jesus told this to people who were ready to stone him for blasphemy (John 8:52-59). Harboring God’s word means entering the landless and timeless realm of being that existed before Moses and Elijah—even before Abraham, the father of faith on earth.

“Abraham your father rejoiced to see my day,” Jesus told the stoners. “He saw it and was glad. … “[And] before Abraham came to be, I AM.”

The spirit that gave Abraham the courage to sacrifice his son based on faith in the irrational love of I AM (Gn 22:1-2, 9a, 10-13, 15-18) is the same spirit that gave us Jesus. Christ’s love was manifested in the sacrifice of his flesh—showing us that God lives beyond the flesh.

It is that spirit of love that gave Paul the guts to share with us the key to his courage:

“If God is for us, who can be against us?” (Rom 8:31b-34)

LOVE is what happens when preparation meets opportunity. Luck has an expiration date. True Love doesn’t.

–Tom Andel

(For the audio version of this blog, please visit: https://brothersinchristcmf.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/Mass-Blog-for-the-First-Sunday-of-Lent-2024.mp3)

You don’t realize how much you love someone until you almost lose them. Married people of a certain age can experience that feeling as we grow older and our loved one spends more and more time away from us in a hospital or nursing home. Spending time inside and outside these places makes one realize that while decades together can go by in a flash, one 24-hour block on the calendar without that loved one can seem like an eternity in solitary confinement. For both of you.

But such eternities can also help remind us how God’s love manifests itself in this time-dependent world.

That’s what this Sunday’s scripture readings can teach us, too. God is depicted as a lover made vulnerable to the prospect of losing us. The story of Noah dramatizes not only how passion can separate lovers, but how being without that love prefigured the coming of a new covenant that would reunite us with God (Gn 9:8-15):

“I will recall the covenant I have made between me and you and all living beings, so that the waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all mortal beings,” God vowed.

But what of the thousands who were swept away by the flood waters in Noah’s time? Peter tells us that Jesus—God’s human connection to us—visited the victims of that disaster as a loved one visits a relative held captive in prison or by a hospital bed. Maybe God missed these souls as much as we miss our own loved ones during their agonizing days and nights lost in a variety of institutional deserts, not knowing if they’ll return. In Sunday’s second reading, Peter tells us:

[Christ] also went to preach to the spirits in prison, who had once been disobedient while God patiently waited in the days of Noah during the building of the ark, in which a few persons, eight in all, were saved through water. (1 Pt 3:18-22)

Our gospel reading tells us Jesus submitted himself to imprisonment in his own desert, in preparation for his public ministry to save others isolated by theirs.

He remained in the desert for forty days, tempted by Satan. He was among wild beasts, and the angels ministered to him. (Mk 1:12-15)

Those who can’t relate to this meditation might see it as an exercise in vanity, but these readings are designed to help us all relate to Jesus as he used his desert captivity for humanity’s sake. It’s easy relating to the personalized poetry of the gospels as much as to that of David’s psalms.

Psalm 25, from which we read this first Sunday of Lent, really is about each of us as we seek the way out of our captivity and back home to a significant Other (Ps 25:4-5, 6-7, 8-9.):

Make known to me your ways, LORD; teach me your paths. Guide me by your fidelity and teach me, for you are God my savior, for you I wait all the day long.

In any human institution, one day can seem like 40. There’s no time like the present to pray that God’s angels minister to us while we and our families seek the way out of our own healthcare deserts. Sometimes those ministers wear medical scrubs instead of wings.

–Tom Andel

(For the audio version of this blog, please visit: https://brothersinchristcmf.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/Mass-Blog-for-the-Sixth-Sunday-in-Ordinary-Time-2024.mp3)

Many Christians working in the medical community know how lepers felt in Biblical times. Some employers in that field see faith as an infection that could cause harm to a person being treated for something life-threatening. That’s why some of them shun candidates whose resumes indicate they’ve used their scientific education to benefit humanity while on Christian mission trips. This prejudice has caused candidates trying to enter that field to conceal their Christian identity.

They’re not much different from the lepers of Biblical times. They WANTED to conceal their condition for fear of cancellation, but, as Moses and Aaron were instructed, they were expected to warn others of it as they approached.

“The one who bears the sore of leprosy shall keep his garments rent and his head bare, and shall muffle his beard; he shall cry out, ‘Unclean, unclean!,” says Sunday’s reading from Leviticus (Lv 13:1-2, 44-46).  

Jesus himself experienced the same reluctance to make his identity as the Christ widely known. He specifically told the leper he cures in Sunday’s gospel reading (Mk 1:40-45) NOT to tell anyone. Why?

Maybe because he knew the word-of-mouth about the success of his healing mission would cause an unmanageable swarm of similarly diseased followers and impede the success of his teaching mission. Or maybe because he knew his mastery in both missions would be seen as dangerous to those with worldly power. They would eventually pursue and capture him so his Godly mission could no longer threaten their illusion of power.

Britannica online states that fear of leprosy’s contagion in ancient times, and fear of what those in power could do to the infected, made this malady particularly torturous to victims.

“Leprosy came to be referred to as the ‘living death,’ and often its victims were treated as if they had already died,” it states. Not much different from Christianity’s contribution to career death in the sciences.

A study titled Christianity as a Concealable Stigmatized Identity (CSI) among Biology Graduate Students cites the experience of one subject who intentionally omitted notation of his Christian mission trip from the personal statement he submitted to the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program (NSF GRFP). He also kept to himself the importance of his religion in general.

Keeping such secrets was not without good reason, this report concluded. Faith-based mission trips can not only make participants less desirable candidates for graduate school, but even mark them as good as dead to some profession gatekeepers—dead as those ancient lepers were to societies that conducted funeral services for them while they were still alive.

We Christians would do well to imitate Paul, who considered himself dead to this world—and wished to save others from its mortality by his example. In the letter to the Corinthians we read this Sunday (1 Cor 10:31—11:1), he teaches us to be diplomats to the dying world so as not to scare them away from the cure God offers:

Avoid giving offense, whether to the Jews or Greeks or the church of God, just as I try to please everyone in every way, not seeking my own benefit but that of the many, that they may be saved. Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ.

The report concludes on a positive note, as Paul does. It foresees a time when Christians could become boundary spanners, helping other stigmatized groups surmount barriers raised by race, gender or other identity markers.

If believers in something greater than themselves are to be stigmatized, it might as well be for the wounds Christ bore to save us from the world that inflicted them, out of both fear and ignorance. Now THOSE two human characteristics are mortal wounds.

–Tom Andel

(For the audio version of this blog, please visit: https://brothersinchristcmf.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/Mass-Blog-for-the-Fifth-Sunday-in-Ordinary-Time-2024.mp3)

Sunday’s reading from Job is a real downer (Jb 7:1-4, 6-7). He speaks of drudgery and restlessness. He seems to have lost hope in the God he thought was his friend. Paul, too, writes to us of God’s word—slavishly, though. (1 Cor 9:16-19, 22-23) He seems desperate to make a home for God’s spirit in as many of us as possible. Even Jesus, in Sunday’s gospel reading, seems like a one-armed paper hanger, trying to keep up with the relentless pace of saving souls before his earthly mission ends. “Everyone is looking for you,” his disciples tell him as he tries to find some rest before continuing.

“Let us go on to the nearby villages that I may preach there also,” Jesus responds. “For this purpose have I come.” (Mk 1:29-39)

He inflamed the hearts of many adherents to God’s first covenant when he said, “Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up.” (John 2:19). Mark’s gospel tells us people used this teaching of his against him, setting in motion the fulfillment of the second covenant—Christ’s death, resurrection and spirit-sending.

“We heard him say, ‘I will destroy this temple made with hands and within three days I will build another not made with hands.” (Mark 14:58)

Of course we all now know Jesus was talking about the temple of his body, and his mission taught us we are ALL called to be the temple of the Holy Spirit.

The prophet Jeremiah foresaw the second covenant long before Jesus arrived for its fulfillment. But in many ways he was as much God’s slave as Job, Paul and Jesus are in Sunday’s readings. In bringing freedom to others, Jeremiah felt isolated: (Jeremiah 15: 16-18)

When I found your words, I devoured them; your words were my joy, the happiness of my heart, because I bear your name, LORD, God of hosts. I did not sit celebrating in the circle of merrymakers. Under the weight of your hand I sat alone because you filled me with rage. Why is my pain continuous, my wound incurable, refusing to be healed?

Although his account ends with the dismantling of Jerusalem, and the destruction of the physical infrastructure that housed the printed word of God, Jeremiah was inspired to add to God’s words:

“See, days are coming when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. … I will place my law within them, and write it upon their hearts; I will be their God, and they shall be my people. They will no longer teach their friends and relatives, “Know the LORD!” Everyone, from least to greatest, shall know me for I will forgive their iniquity and no longer remember their sin.” (Jeremiah 31:31).

God’s incarnate love hit home with my family last year—in my wife’s childhood home.

We were selling the house my wife’s parents lived in for almost a half century. With their passing, it had been empty of spirit for the last few years. We sifted through the earthly goods they both held dear, and once their home was completely empty, it was a house—ready for sale to a family to make it a home again.

We took our nephew, who hadn’t spent much time in it since his childhood, to have a last look. We invited him to take a memento from among the items we saved before this place was no longer ours. He said no, the legacy of his grandparents is written on his heart.

As the Easter season approaches, Jeremiah’s prophecy, and the legacy of the glorious slaveries of Job, Paul and Jesus, can all live on in the hearts of anyone willing to give a home to the Holy Spirit Christ died to send us.

–Tom Andel

(For the audio version of this blog, please visit: https://brothersinchristcmf.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/Mass-Blog-for-the-Fourth-Sunday-in-Ordinary-Time-2024.mp3)

Leave it to a demon to understand the purity of Jesus—and to fear it.

“What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth?,” the possessor of a human victim asks in Sunday’s gospel passage from Mark. “Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are—the Holy One of God!” (Mk 1:21-28)

This is an intimate knowledge—the kind only a friend would have. Or maybe a former friend—a friend whose love for God was both intimate and fragile. In Satan’s case, that friendship with God was lost forever through this angel’s own fall from grace. His love shattered on contact with the hard ground of this world. It splintered and created an army of fallen angels whose identity and fate are hinted at in Jude 1:6—

The angels too, who did not keep to their own domain but deserted their proper dwelling, he has kept in eternal chains, in gloom, for the judgment of the great day.

Isaiah mentions Satan (a.k.a., Lucifer, the Morning Star) in particular:

How you have fallen from the heavens, O Morning Star, son of the dawn! How you have been cut down to the earth, you who conquered nations! In your heart you said: “I will scale the heavens; above the stars of God.” (IS 14:12)

That spirit of evil also infiltrated the protective shell of friendship surrounding Jesus—in the form of his disciples. Of those, only John is described as the one Jesus loved—most memorably in Chapter 19 of John’s gospel, when, while hanging on the cross and referring to Mary his mother, Jesus says to John: “Behold, your mother.”

And from that hour the disciple took her into his home, John’s account concludes.

Then in Chapter 21, John depicts his friendship with Jesus through Peter’s eyes:

“Peter turned and saw the disciple following whom Jesus loved, the one who had also reclined upon his chest during the supper and had said, ‘Master, who is the one who will betray you?’”

We know that the betrayer was Judas, whose friendship with Jesus, and therefore God, was stolen by Satan. All the gospels tell us that, and all the gospels were written to preserve OUR friendship with God AND each other.

The opening of Luke’s gospelis addressed to Theophilus, a name we are all called to live up to (“Friend of God.”).  How we spend our lives getting to know and befriend God is both an education in friendship and our tuition for it. Recently, the movies offered an intriguing take on how that friendship with humanity is under attack by the fallen angel whose love for God was shattered. The premise of the film rings true: Satan wants to use us in revenge for his lost love.

“The Shift” is about a man who, like Job of the Old Testament, keeps undergoing trials by Satan (self-named, “The Benefactor,” in the film) to test his friendship with God. These Job-like tests are depicted in a sicence-fictiony way—via shifts through various versions of this man’s existence.

At the outset, Satan offers him stability from his life’s chaos—if he would only come over to the dark, selfish side of the friendship divide. But when this man starts praying for God’s help—right in front of “The Benefactor”—the fallen angel’s pain, anger and jealousy explode and he disappears from the man’s sight. That doesn’t prevent this man from entering a series of wormholes extending through various versions of his own existence.

The one common denominator this man seeks through all these shifting timeline tests is the loving relationship he screwed up after his own fall from grace with his wife. Their love seemed to end with the accidental death of their child. That event is linked through these dystopian godless realms to the fragments of God’s word that still remain in this guy’s head.

He writes them down as best he can throughout his adventure and spreads the gospels around as he goes. Satan has banished scripture from all of these alternate realities. This man has been away from the friendship of God’s word for a long time, too, and relies on his childhood memories of scripture to grasp and preserve them for others shifting through their own life’s godless wormholes. 

What ultimately saves him and us from sharing in the chaos of Satan’s existence is the spirit of truth, as Jesus tells us through the gospel of the disciple he loved:

“You know it, because it remains with you, and will be in you.”

–Tom Andel

(For the audio version of this blog, please visit: https://brothersinchristcmf.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/Mass-Blog-for-the-Third-Sunday-in-Ordinary-Time-2024.mp3)

The Western mind is rarely awestruck anymore. Even if Jesus were to appear and say something good and true and beautiful to someone on the street corner, that person might instinctively reach into his pocket and stuff a dollar-bill into Jesus’ belt—then rush away in fear. When it comes to faith, many people of the 21^st century still share the philosophy of the 60s-era Frank Sinatra.

“To me religion is a deeply personal thing in which man and God go it alone together, without the witch doctor in the middle,” Sinatra told an interviewer for a national magazine at that time. “The witch doctor tries to convince us that we have to ask God for help, to spell out to him what we need, even to bribe him with prayer or cash on the line. Well, I believe that God knows what each of us wants and needs. It’s not necessary for us to make it to church on Sunday to reach Him. You can find Him anyplace. And if that sounds heretical, my source is pretty good: Matthew, Five to Seven.”

The average reader of that magazine might still think that’s a pretty hip take on organized religion. But would they like the way gospel writers Matthew and Mark say Jesus recruited disciples? Mark’s account of that process, which we read this Sunday (Mk 1:14-20), is almost verbatim what Matthew tells us in his:

As he was walking by the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon who is called Peter, and his brother Andrew, casting a net into the sea; they were fishermen. He said to them, “Come after me, and I will make you fishers of men.” At once they left their nets and followed him. (Matthew 4:18-22)

Like many of us, Sinatra seemed to cherry-pick what he liked of faith in general and scripture in particular. He loved what Jesus taught through those chapters of Matthew, but he, and often we, conveniently skip over some teachings—the ones that warn us about our weaknesses like anger, adultery, divorce, lying and revenge. Boiled down, the following admonition from Jesus STILL seems impossible for us to follow, and when we find it practiced by someone among us, it is cause for shock and awe:

“Love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you.”

And …

“Be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect.”

But Matthew’s gospel raised the stakes of the perfection to which we’re called. He wrote what Mark’s gospel originally didn’t conclude with: that the disciples believed Jesus rose! Mark’s gospel originally ended this way:

Then they went out and fled from the tomb, seized with trembling and bewilderment. They said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid. (Mk 16:8)

Compare this to Matthew’s take:

Then they went away quickly from the tomb, fearful yet overjoyed, and ran to announce this to his disciples. (Mt 28:8)

But Matthew doesn’t end there. He concludes his gospel offering an image of Jesus similar to how we imagined Jesus at the start of this post: appearing on our turf, seemingly out of nowhere, instructing potential disciples to carry on the work he started:

“Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.” (Mt 28:19)

Sinatra and many of us 21^st Centurions have run out of the building we call church in fear that it might house the truth about the risen Christ—forcing us to live up to God’s standard of perfection. But Church is not just a building. It’s what Jesus and the original disciples built, believer by believer. Religion’s most important way to belief starts with how we treat each other—spouse AND neighbor. Trying to bring that aspect of God’s perfection to each other is what life’s all about. When we come close to doing so, that’s something both real and awe-inspiring—not the stuff of witch doctors.

–Tom Andel

(For the audio version of this blog, please visit: https://brothersinchristcmf.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/Mass-Blog-for-the-Second-Sunday-in-Ordinary-Time-2024.mp3)

We are born with a vacancy to fill. We can’t bear its emptiness. God sends us helpers throughout our life to find the right tenant, but our adolescent spirits start out wanting to fill this space by ourselves.  Eventually we realize we’re not big enough for such an occupation, and it’s too costly to be a do-it-yourselfer while maintaining this void. Problem is, we don’t know who or what we’re looking for to accomplish the needed fulfillment. We need help.

What we often don’t realize is, God is also looking for a home for His Spirit, as Eli taught Samuel.

Then Eli understood that the LORD was calling the youth. So he said to Samuel, “Go to sleep, and if you are called, reply, Speak, LORD, for your servant is listening.” (1 Sm 3:3b-10, 19)

The space within us has already been purchased—and at a high price. But we are often afraid to invest a comparable sum to maintain it. Too much renovation work must be done. I can’t afford it—even if it’s built on solid rock and is above invasion by flood waters, we tell ourselves. We may grow to hate the wallpaper and dated layout we’ve struggled to live with, but eventually we get tired. We’ve let too many ghosts try filling and decorating our soul’s space for us. Nevertheless, we’re still haunted by our emptiness. We have lots of excuses to lock our door to the one Spirit who can comfortably fill it beyond capacity.

Paul helps us grow up and recognize opportunity knocking.

Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own? For you have been purchased at a price. (1 Cor 6:13c-15a, 17-20)

We’re born to answer Paul’s question, but the world’s homeless ghosts keep fighting each other to fill our vacancy. Christ’s disciples started their search for fulfillment in earnest with John the Baptist, and thought they came close to finding their answer in him. But even John knew the solution to their emptiness had just arrived, and like a good realtor, he pointed the way to a win/win answer to their question.

“Behold, the Lamb of God.” The two disciples heard what he said and followed Jesus. Jesus turned and saw them following him and said to them, “What are you looking for?” (Jn 1:35-42)

Like them, we know the answer to that question when we see it. Let’s unlock our door to him while we’re here.

–Tom Andel

(For the audio version of this blog, please visit: https://brothersinchristcmf.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/Mass-Blog-for-the-Feast-of-the-Epiphany-2023.mp3)

During its long history, Jerusalem has been destroyed twice, besieged 23 times, attacked 52 times, and captured and recaptured 44 times—according to online sources. Today it is again the center of conflict between new generations of warring factions, each claiming it as its capital.

Quite a difference from Isaiah’s vision of reverence for this region (Is 60:1-6):

Rise up in splendor, Jerusalem!  Your light has come,
the glory of the Lord shines upon you.
See, darkness covers the earth,
and thick clouds cover the peoples;
but upon you the LORD shines,
and over you appears his glory. Nations shall walk by your light,
and kings by your shining radiance.

Today we remember when the three magi journeyed to Jerusalem so they could share in, NOT claim, the radiance that put Jerusalem on our spiritual map:

They were overjoyed at seeing the star, and on entering the house they saw the child with Mary his mother. They prostrated themselves and did him homage. Then they opened their treasures and offered him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. And having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they departed for their country by another way. (Mt 2:1-12)

Today Jerusalem is still coveted, more as a matter of territorial pride than for its spiritual significance as the site of our Savior’s birth. At the time of that birth, it was King Herod’s murderous territorial pride that caused the Holy Family to find another home. He was ready to eliminate any rival to his territorial and titular claims.

Jesus’ parents knew their child was his target, and Mary was reminded constantly throughout her Holy Family’s journey together of the danger her son posed to such evil forces. Of particular significance is what Simeon told her at their son’s presentation:

“This child is destined for the fall and rise of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be contradicted (and you yourself a sword will pierce), so that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed.” (LUKE 2:34-38)

Judging by the gifts they journeyed to bring the baby Jesus, the magi seemed to understand better than anyone the significance of HIS journey:

—gold representing the precious gift his life represented to humanity,

—myrrh the purified oil that would anoint him for his death to this world,

—frankincense, symbolizing how his liberated spirit would rise up to meet his Father but leave a fragrant aura that would linger among us.

That spiritual essence continues seeking a home in the heart of anyone adopting Isaiah’s vision for Jerusalem as a beacon of world peace rather than as a graveyard for enemies.

–Tom Andel

(For the audio version of this blog, please visit: https://brothersinchristcmf.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/Mass-Blog-for-the-Feast-of-the-Holy-Family-2023.mp3)

Families can be SO annoying. Mutual agitation seems so embedded in human DNA that even ancient sages like Sirach had to pull back on our leashes as we started snapping at something our old man or old lady might do—or say.

My son, take care of your father when he is old; grieve him not as long as he lives. Even if his mind fail, be considerate of him; revile him not all the days of his life; kindness to a father will not be forgotten. (Sir 3:2-6, 12-14)

In the history of humanity, only Jesus was free of that temptation to disrespect his parents. Or WAS he?

Sunday’s gospel reading about Jesus’ parents presenting their little baby before Simeon concludes with:

“The child grew and became strong, filled with wisdom; and the favor of God was upon him.” (LK 2:22-40)

But the rest of this gospel account gives us an insight into that Holy Family’s growing pains. Simeon had just told Mary, “Behold, this child is destined for the fall and rise of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be contradicted —and you yourself a sword will pierce.”

This told her this little boy would have powerful enemies for the rest of his life, so, naturally, Mary’s radar would always be on. The next scene in Luke’s account of the Holy Family takes us to when Jesus was 12 and the three of them went to Jerusalem for Passover. On their way back home, Mary and Joseph discover their boy is missing. Returning to the scene of their Passover, they find their son schmoozing with the temple intelligentsia. Mary gently chastises him:

“Son, why have you done this to us? Your father and I have been looking for you with great anxiety.”

His curt answer might have merited a smack from less enlightened parents:

“Why were you looking for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?”

But Luke simply states that while his parents didn’t understand this, Mary would always remember it. And so, evidently, did little Jesus. Luke tells us that after this, Jesus was obedient to them, and the boy “advanced [in] wisdom and age and favor before God and man.”

The wisdom a holy family learns from their tougher times together includes empathy and concern for each-others’ feelings. We would be wise to imagine that Jesus kept this incident in his heart too, and that it was instrumental in strengthening his empathic powers for later application in his public ministry—including via his teachings.

As Sunday’s second reading indicates (Col 3:12-21 or 3:12-17), Paul learned empathy the hard way—after his Master’s earthly ministry concluded and as Paul carried on with it. What did he learn about holy family behavior from the Son who, from childhood, was so concerned about prospering the work of his Father’s house?

Wives, be subordinate to your husbands, as is proper in the Lord. Husbands, love your wives, and avoid any bitterness toward them. Children, obey your parents in everything, for this is pleasing to the Lord. Fathers, do not provoke your children, so they may not become discouraged.

Bitterness, disobedience and provocation were Paul’s specialties before Jesus offered him the shelter of his Father’s house. If there’s room in that space for someone as annoying as Paul could be, there’s hope for all of us who are willing to welcome wisdom into our own holy families.

–Tom Andel