St. John the Baptist Catholic Church

Brothers and Sisters,

On this very last Sunday of our calendar year, we pause to thank God for our families. None of us come from perfect families. Even the Holy Family had enormous challenges. First of all, they were very poor and could not even find housing in a local inn, but Mary gave birth to Jesus in a cave or stable where animals were kept. Very soon after his birth, the Holy Family had to leave their own country and flee to Egypt – a long journey by foot – to escape death at the hands of Herod. They were poor migrants, even illegal refugees in a foreign land. They endured crises and never gave up. Most of us come from similar families that had to endure challenges and failures. Many of us come from dysfunctional families, and yet we learn how to cope and how to survive and how to grow.

This Sunday is a perfect time to thank God for our birth families and to ask God’s blessings on our present families. We cannot undo the past but we can change the future. We have a mind and a body and a soul to respond to love. In every family, we learn to forgive and to move on. It is a terrible mistake to hold in past failures. Our God is a loving and forgiving Father. Notwithstanding our personal sins and mistakes, we know that our God loves us unconditionally. All we have to do is to run to our Father, ask for forgiveness and be made whole once again. Isn’t it wonderful to belong to such a fabulous family of God?

Happy New Year,

Fr. John Maxwell

Christmas, 2008, Mass during the day

Homily

Scripture: Is. 52: 7 – 10, Ps 98, Heb. 1: 1 – 6, John 1: 1 – 5, 9 – 14

Call: The “Authorities” of God, Nature, and Community unite today in the child Jesus. Let our children show us the way into the future, and let us pass on to them the good Tradition about God’s love!

Summary: Prophet Isaiah announces salvation and the restoration of the sanctuary of God. The psalm proclaims victory and mighty works of God who comes to rule and guide his people. The letter to the Hebrews talks of communication from God through a mighty Word, a Unique Person who embodies the mind of God, the Son whom angels adore, “begotten today”. And the Gospel introduces us to the long expected Word who has been with God, divine Himself, now visible as “full of grace and truth”. Today, all these wonderful visions are realized in a baby. Just a baby, born in the cold night of Bethlehem:  It is Jesus, Christ, the Lord. We shall reflect on the revelation we find in a child, the saving truth manifest in a child and re-discover that faith is born and faith grows when we pay generous attention to God who gives meaning to events, and who gives us Jesus as “God-with-us”.

Question:  Have I ever learned a significant life-saving truth from my (biological or else) son or daughter? What is it that I have learned?

Christmas is the feast of simplicity, the feast of childhood. We already know that we do not have to return to our mother’s womb in order to be born again, as Jesus instructed Nicodemus, a wise elder of his time in Israel. Christmas speaks of a certain kind of truth, the truth of infancy, the truth of littleness. Since my initial question is a search for a life-saving truth learned from “a child of mine”, we may want to understand truth. What is truth? Our Gospel ends with the sentence, “we saw his glory, the glory as of the Father’s only Son, full of grace and truth.”

*Factual truth (objective facts than have evidence)

*Historical truth, truth of link and internal relations (It makes senses to link up this to that)

*Scientific truth, truth of causality (at a certain temperature water is ice, invariably)

*Logical truth, way-and-destination truth (If I take 101 South, I will surely cross all the cities along the way)

*Social truth, cultural truth, the way a people conceives or does things (“decency and respect introduce people to each other in our culture”)

*Sub-servient truth, ideological truth (“whatever will make me more popular for votes is true”)

*Spiritual truth or salvational truth (“In his smile, I saw the honesty of his soul” – all else being true of him…)

This last category of truth considers all the above-mentioned truths with respect, but it gives them their proper perspective; it perfects them with the Spirit of God. To the truth of facts, it gives interpretation: this is what happened, and this is what is meant. To the historical truth, it provides quality: this tie is godly, and this other is detrimental. To the scientific truth, it provides the frame of the primary Causality and indicates potential dangers in the usage of knowledge. To the logical truth, it adds the logic of love whose ultimate destination cannot be calculated mathematically. To social truth, it brings in the power of dynamic growth that becomes a critical principle. And to mere ideological truth, it opposes the truth of God, the only One to be served, worshipped and loved above all.

Spiritual truth is a knowing that has more unknowing to it, a fantasy that is more real than ourselves experiencing reality, a dream that is more tangible than the ground on which we walk, a logic that is clearer than scientific logic yet inapplicable in identical sameness to two different realities, because it is excessively creative and constantly renewed. Spiritual truth is beautiful, yet a consuming fire of re-creation.

Spiritual truth is like a puzzle. We are told for instance that a student once asked her teacher:

S. “What is love?”

T. “The total absence of fear”

S. “What is it we fear?”

T. “Love”

Spiritual truth can also be traced in this personal experience of mine:  in 1996, I was teaching a catechism class to students of the seventh grade level, about Creation. One student asked how we knew about these original things since nobody was there. I answered that it was inspiration, and that this truth is different from the factual truth like: a man named George Washington actually existed in eyewitnesses’, testimony. He then said to me: “All these things are then just stories!?” He taught me a tremendous lesson that is obvious today. What is that lesson? Truth is not only a matter of eyewitness factual event. And, stories are vehicles of a truth deeper than the superficial comprehension of human reason. I began to appreciate more the power of narratives, the power of the story. I pray for blessings upon this boy (now grown up) who strengthened my understanding of story; that God will give him a future of happiness into eternal life! I have more stories of learning from “children”. This is just an example, to invite all to give thanks for the gift of parenthood, adoption and mentorship.

Today we have the story of Christmas, a story of a baby, a baby newly born to a humble family; the family of Mary and Joseph from Nazareth in Galilee. This is the story of Christmas. What has that to do with us here in El Cerrito, 2008 years later?

A baby is the pure truth of who we are. Jesus is the pure truth of who we are for God. I will abstain from explaining the riddle of our lives, which we all know too well for someone to add on anything new: “A baby is the pure truth of who we are!” Let us then listen to the baby cry and sing. Let us see it smile and sleep; let us see it enjoy being fed, bathed, clothed, taken care of and played with. Let us remember that we are here because someone took care of us too, and God is taking care of us in similar ways beyond our physical seeing. Let us see the wonders of loving care and allow our heart to express a deep gratitude to God and to the world of creatures that take care of us, teach us, and nurture us. Let us propagate the same music of loving care from our thoughts, and our kind words and our acts of outreach beyond family to the whole human family. Let us wish the good of all. Let us see baby Jesus in the eyes of our minds and allow Jesus to teach us about loving care. This is the message of Christmas. May we find life and salvation in this Word of truth, “God so loved the world that He gives his only Son, born of a woman,” today.

Concluding story (from Joan Chittister, O.S.B – on the importance of paying attention to our gifts, and on our theme of awareness increased thanks to little ones).

“Mother,” the little girl camel asked, “why do we have these big three-toed feet?”

And mother camel answered, “So we can walk through the desert without sinking into the sand, love.”

The little girl camel thought about that for a minute and then said, “Mother, why do we have these long, thick eyelashes?”

And mother camel answered, “So we can go through desert sandstorms without hurting our eyes, dear.”

The little girl camel thought a little more and asked again, “Mother, why do we have these humps on our back?”

And mother camel answered, “So we can walk all the way across the desert without being thirsty, sweetheart.”

And the little girl camel said, “Let me get this straight. Our feet are for the desert, our eyelashes are for the desert, and our humps are for the desert. Then will you please tell me what the devil we are doing in the San Diego Zoo?”

Each one should draw for himself or herself the lesson this girl-camel taught her mother in the zoo. Since Jesus’ birth brings around animals as well in the single act that reconciles the whole world to God and creatures to one another, let us pray for peace. Peace is the condition for a future for our children, as we celebrate our gratitude for having received from them a renewed grace of innocence and a light for the future in God’s kingdom. Let our communion today be a real pledge of our reconciliation in God to all other people whom God loves to the point of becoming one among them, just as he is with us in this Eucharist.

Friends,

The theme of today, the fourth and last Sunday of Advent, could use the words of one of our hymns: “Soon and Very Soon, We Are Going to See the King.” The Gospel tells the story of the Annunciation of the Angel Gabriel to Mary and the real beginning of the birth narrative of Jesus. The first three weeks have come and gone, and we have only a few more days to prepare the way of the Lord. Some people say that the last two days before Christmas are very busy days to do last-minute shopping. It is not too late to DO SOMETHING … especially something for the poor or something for one of our alienated relatives or to reach out to some lonely neighbor. The secret is to really DO SOMETHING.

Christmas is a relational celebration. Jesus becomes one of us. That is relational. We give presents, and that is relational. We gather to praise and worship our Savior, and that is relational. We reach out to family and others, and that is relational. We join with our sisters and brothers in St. John’s at one of our Christmas Masses, and that too is relational.

May the Christ Child and Mary and Joseph smile on us and bless us during these last few days before Christmas.

Peace,

Fr. John Maxwell

Friends,

In the Gospel today, we hear the voice of St. John the Baptist: “I am the voice of one crying out in the desert, make straight the way of the Lord.”

Since we as a parish take the name of St. John as our patron, then we too must “make straight the way of the Lord.” How do we do that??? Here are a couple suggestions…

1. We can make straight the way of the Lord by reaching out to some of our alienated family. It only takes a Christmas card or a phone call or a visit. Christmas is a time for healing and reconciliation, and that fits in perfectly with cry of St. John the Baptist.

2. We could adopt a poor family, perhaps in the GRIP shelter. How would you feel to have to observe Christmas in a small cubicle in a homeless shelter? Of course, Mary and Joseph had no home in which to bring the Christ Child into this world. However, the shepherds and wise men came and brought comfort and gifts. Perhaps you can do the same. The number of the GRIP Shelter 233-2141.

3. Our sister parish in Haiti will celebrate Christmas by going to church, but for many there will be little food to celebrate the birth of the Lord. Food for Haiti would be another way to prepare the way of the Lord. I have already sent some money to Haiti for Christmas from our charity account. Make your check out to St. John (Haiti).

4. There are lots of charities that appeal to us for support at Christmas. I am sure you get countless appeals, just like I do. I have a few choice charities that I support.

The key to all of this is TO DO SOMETHING. We simply cannot just hear the Gospel and not respond. “Make straight the way of the Lord.”

Peace,

Fr. John Maxwell

Friends,

We hear the clear voice of our patron, St. John the Baptist, to “prepare the way of the Lord” and to “repent and change our lives.” His message is still appropriate for us today in 2008. Each one of us has a mission to reach out to others, and that is how we prepare the way of the Lord. We all know people and even family members who have drifted away from church and from the Lord. Advent is a time of welcoming them back home. Advent is a time of invitation and re-connection. Think about someone who needs an invitation to come to church, and bring them with you to Mass. Don’t put it off. Do not be afraid of rejection. Do not hesitate. Just do it and prepare the way of the Lord.

In our church, we are updating our sound system, and we are aiming to have all of the components of our audio in place and functioning for Christmas. You generously contributed to make this a reality, and the Technology Committee is working fast and furiously to have a new sound system in place for the Birth of our Savior. That is another way we are “preparing the way of the Lord.”

In the vestibule of our main church entrance on San Pablo Avenue, you will see a newly decorated prayer chapel with some of our statues and candles. We did not have the energy or resources to complete this chapel when we redecorated our church. Now it is a reality, except for some new lighting. Drop by this chapel and say a prayer.

Peace on earth,
Fr. John Maxwell