Reflection for the Solemnity of the Humble Shepherds 2024

So they went with haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the child lying in the manger.

Welcome! We are already a few days into the forty-day celebration of Christmas. As Charles Dickens wrote, and I paraphrase, I hope we are all keeping it well. Better than any man ever has.

Today we celebrate another of those special Solemnities established by the people of the Church. 

It was at the First Special Synod of the Church in 1906 that the people set aside two special days, the Solemnity of Brotherly Love, and this day, the Solemnity of the Humble Shepherds.

In 1914, at the Third General Synod, the people would set aside the other special days we honor, the Solemnity of the Institution of the Church and the Solemnity of the Christian Family.

Let’s place ourselves in the environment of those days. 

In 1906 the Church had been organized for only nine years and was facing significant resistance and persecution. In the face of those struggles what did the people of the Church focus on? What did they do? The placed their focus and emphasis on, and called each other to work at and live, love and humility.

Those people saw the story of the Good Samaritan and the action of the shepherds who were called upon to visit the infant Jesus as their model.

This was no mistake, rather it was the outpouring of the Holy Spirit which brought about this conviction to love and humility.

The 1906 Synod speaks of us as being drawn to the Church and to the Lord’s table as the true source of life. We are called to draw close just as those shepherds were called to draw close to the long-awaited Messiah in a stable. We are called to partake of the Bread of Life, and we need those who will bring it to us. They are called to act as those first shepherds – hearing, going in haste, believing and declaring. 

Throughout subsequent Synods the needs of the Church for humble shepherds, priests who take after the Lord’s love and humility was regularly discussed. How do we train and support them? There is desperate need for that. Thus, we take up a special collection today and pray for that very purpose, to train priests who are humble and loving – not lords and rulers – not princes – but servant shepherds.

If there is cause for hope it is this – many are stepping up to serve, to enter those three years of training needed. They are sacrificing much and will be called upon to sacrifice still more. They willingly are laying their lives on the line in absolute self-sacrifice and effacement to stand in the breech ushering us to meet the newborn King. Let us love and support them.

Reflection for Sunday in the Octave of Corpus Christi 2022

Eat, Drink, Be Mine.

For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the death of the Lord until he comes.

I am so thankful you have chosen to worship with us this Sunday as we reflect, in this Octave of Corpus Christi, on Jesus’ command to eat His body and drink His blood. We rejoice in the very reality of His self-giving that makes us His.

The Rabbi of Jerusalem once visited the pope in Rome…

My dear brothers and sisters, the funny tale about the Rabbi and the Bishop of Rome is related to place and nearness. 

God had once set His singular dwelling in the midst of Israel. In fact, He was so close to His people that we dwelt in a tent alongside them. It was not until the time of King David that it was determined Israel would build a Temple for God, a more permanent dwelling. It took around 400 years to get to that point. That work was completed by King Solomon.

What did not happen though was the thing God really wanted, which was not a physical building in which to dwell. He did not need that. David’s predecessor Saul learned that lesson by his own disobedience and that of his soldiers. In 1 Samuel 15:22 we hear: Obedience is better than sacrifice, to listen, better than the fat of rams. The prophet is telling Saul that the attitude of the heart (the whole self) in relation to God is more important than external things like sacrifices and buildings.

King David himself writes in Psalm 40 and 51 respectively: Sacrifice and offering You did not desire, and You do not delight in sacrifice, or I would bring it; You take no pleasure in burnt offerings.

Israel knew that God desired to live completely within them, but they kept it external.

Jesus came among them, the God-man, to reveal the presence of God completely, to make His Father known, and to call people into the Kingdom. He repeats His Father’s earlier call to Israel in full reality of presence – I want to be among you, within you, and I want you to be part of me.

As St. Paul tells us, I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you, that the Lord Jesus, on the night he was handed over… He repeats the key words of Jesus repeated by the Church all through history – This is My body, This is My blood. 

Jesus not only left us His words, His gospel way of living, but in His example, instruction, and command His very presence – the totality of His being body, blood, soul, and divinity – so that His singular dwelling would be in the Church – that is – in us.

We fulfill what Israel did not, having Jesus – God Himself – dwelling within us. He is no longer in a tent in the camp, or in one special building. We are His place, we are His. Let us celebrate that now and always rejoicing in Jesus’ precious gift of self, bearing and sharing Him with joy before all.