Dec 23-28:
Dec 23 Monday: (St. John of Candy, priest) (The Nativity of St. John the Baptist): Lk 1:57-66
The context: Today’s Gospel describes the birth and
naming of St. John the Baptist, the last Old Testament prophet. He was given
the mission of heralding the promised Messiah and of preparing the Chosen
People to welcome that Messiah by preaching to them repentance and the renewal
of life. John was born to the priest, Zechariah and his wife, Elizabeth in
their old age. Today’s Gospel passage describes John’s birth, Circumcision, and
Naming ceremony.
A miraculous birth and an event of double joy: His elderly parents rejoiced in John’s birth, as he was a gift from God in their old age. Since the child was a boy, all their neighbors rejoiced with them, and the village musicians celebrated the birth by playing their joyful music. The Naming followed the baby’s Circumcision, and Elizabeth insisted that the child should be named John (which means “the Lord is gracious”), the name given him by the Archangel Gabriel when he spoke to Zechariah. Appealed to by the gathered people, the mute Zechariah approved that name by writing, “His name is John.” At that action of obedient surrender to the Lord God, the priest’s speech was restored, and he loudly proclaimed the praises of God for blessing him with a son and Israel with her Deliverer, Whose herald his son would be.ife messages: 1) We need to pray for our parents and be thankful to them for the gift of life, the training and the discipline they have given us, and the love and affection they have lavished on us. Let us ask God’s pardon if we are, or were, ungrateful to them, do/did not take proper care of them in their illness or old age or ever inflicted pain on them. 2) We need to remember and pray for our godparents who sponsored us in Baptism, which made us children of God, brothers and sisters of Jesus, heirs of Heaven, and members of Jesus’ Mystical Body, the Church. 3) We should have the courage of our Christian convictions as John the Baptist did, and we should become heralds of Christ as the Baptist was, by our transparent Christian lives.
(Fr. Tony) (https://frtonyshomilies.com/)
Dec 24 Tuesday: Lk 1:67-79:
The context: Today’s Gospel gives the prophetic
hymn which Zechariah, filled with Holy Spirit, sang on the eighth day after his
son John’s birth when all had assembled for his Circumcision and Naming
ceremony. Although the Jews generally believed that Elijah the prophet would
return to earth to prepare the way for the Messiah, Zechariah prophetically
sang here that it was his son, John, who was going to prepare the way for the
Messiah, Jesus.
Zechariah’s prophecy contains four steps of the Christian
way we are supposed to take. 1) Preparation: Our life must be a preparation,
leading us to our eternal salvation and enabling us to walk through/with/in
Christ, the only sure Way.
2) Correct knowledge of the only true God: Jesus Christ is
our Lord and Savior. He taught us that God His Father is a loving and forgiving
Father Who saved us through His son Jesus.
3) Forgiveness of sins: This is the restoration of our
broken relationship with God, accomplished through the suffering, death and
Resurrection of Jesus.
4) Walking in the way of peace: Peace is not the absence of
trouble. It is the fullness of everything needed for man’s highest good. Jesus
instituted in His Church all the means necessary for us to attain our highest
good. He gave us the Holy Spirit, the Holy Bible, the Sacraments, and the
centralized teaching authority of the Church, with Mary and the saints as role
models and praying companions for our journey.
Life message: 1) As happened to doubting Zechariah,
let us be filled with the Holy Spirit by asking for His daily anointing and
strengthening. 2) Let us prophesy as Zachariah did, by proclaiming to others
the reason for our Christmas celebration as rebirth of Jesus into our lives.
(Fr. Tony) (https://frtonyshomilies.com/)
Dec 26 Thursday (St. Stephen, the first Martyr) Mt
10:17-22:
The context: Matthew’s Judeo-Christian community
had experienced much persecution. Jesus’ words “You will be dragged before
governors and kings” and “brother will deliver up brother to
death, and the father his child, and children will rise against parents and
have them put to death,” were beginning to come true. James the
apostle had been martyred by King Herod and the lives of other apostles were
also in danger. Hence, in repeating Jesus’ warning to his apostles, Matthew
encouraged his Judeo-Christians to rely on Jesus’ promise of the protective
power of a providing God for themselves as they persevered in the Faith and its
practice.
Persecutions past and present: Jesus gave his frank warning
to the apostles that their lives and their future followers’ lives were not
going to be beds of thornless roses. Jesus foretold three sources of
persecution awaiting Christians: the Roman government, the local Jewish
synagogues and their Jewish or pagan family members. The main accusations
against the first-century Christians were that they were cannibals and
incendiaries practicing immorality during worship services, that they caused a
split in their families, and that they considered slaves as equals (in an
empire with 60 million slaves!).
Life messages: Although we have freedom to
practice the religion of our choice, the extreme interpretation of the “separation
of Church and state” policy eliminates the religious instruction and
moral training of children in public schools, allowing youngsters not given
this training at home to grow up as pagans. The secular media, run by atheists
and agnostics, ridicule all religious beliefs and practices, inflicting a type
of “white martyrdom” on believers. Hence, the duty of parents to see that their
children receive religious and moral instruction from their parishes and
families becomes more important daily. (Fr. Tony)
Dec 27 Friday: (St. John, Apostle, Evangelist): Jn
20:2-8:2 St. John, Apostle and Evangelist:
St. John the Evangelist was the son of Zebedee
the fisherman and Salome, a close relative of Jesus’ Mother, Mary. John and his
brother, James the Greater, were fishermen, partners of Peter and Andrew; they
were disciples of John the Baptist before they were called by Jesus as
Apostles. John’s name is mentioned always after his brother’s name in Matthew,
Mark, and the Acts of the Apostles. John was the Apostle who saw
his only value as being “the one whom Jesus loved.” With James
and Peter, Jesus’ inner circle of friends, John witnessed Jesus raise of the
daughter of Jairus from the dead, Jesus transfigured on the mountain and Jesus
suffering his agony in the garden of Gethsemane. After fleeing with the others
from Gethsemane, John returned. He remained faithful to Jesus at the palace of
the High Priest during Jesus’ trial by the Sanhedrin, and he had the courage to
be at the foot of the cross, supporting and consoling Mary. Jesus entrusted the
care of His mother to John, and, after the Resurrection, John was the one who
first recognized the risen Jesus on the shore of the Sea of Galilee.
Missionary activities: With Peter, John played a
prominent role in founding and guiding the Church. John was with Peter when the
latter healed the lame man (Acts 3:1), was in prison with him (Acts 4:3), and
was with him when Peter visited the new Christians in Samaria (Acts 8:14). John
left for Asia Minor and Ephesus when King Herod Agrippa I started persecuting
Christians. He returned to Jerusalem in AD 51 to attend the Jerusalem Council.
According to tradition, when the attempt of Emperor Domitian to execute John by
boiling him in oil failed, John was exiled to Patmos Island. As an Evangelist,
John wrote five books of the New Testament: The Gospel according to
John, three epistles and the Book of Revelation. He preached
always about God’s love in his old age. Returning to Ephesus, John lived there,
dying when he was one hundred years old. John reminds us of the greatest
commandment of love given by Jesus: “Love one another as I have loved
you.” (Fr. Tony) (https://frtonyshomilies.com/)
Dec 28 Saturday: (The Holy Innocents, Martyrs): Mt
2:13-18:13
The Holy Innocents whom this Mass commemorates
were the children slaughtered by the soldiers under the orders of Herod the
Great in his fruitless pursuit of the “newborn king of the Jews.” In
our times this Mass includes the untold numbers of innocent babies slaughtered
by abortion. The Feast also reminds us of Pharoah’s murder of the male children
of the Hebrews at the time of Moses’ birth.
The context: Herod the Great had been made the king
of Judea by the Roman Empire although he was not even a Jew: his father was an
Idumean, his mother an Arab. This cruel king was kept in power mainly by the
Roman army. He brutally executed all suspected rivals to his throne including
his wife, brother, and two brothers-in-law. No wonder he was terrified at the
news that a rival king, a descendant of King David, had been born somewhere in
Bethlehem; this child could someday claim to be the legitimate king of Israel and
Judea! Herod’s anger intensified when he realized that the Magi had not
returned to his royal palace to report the whereabouts of the Child Jesus.
Matthew says that the slaughter of the Innocents was in fulfillment of a
prophecy of the prophet Jeremiah: “A voice is heard in Ramah, lamenting and
weeping bitterly; it is Rachel weeping for her children, refusing to be
comforted for her children, because they are no more.”Ramah is a hill near
Bethlehem and the burial place of Rachel, the wife of the patriarch Jacob. The
Jews believed that she wept bitterly in her tomb when the Jews were taken as
slaves by the Assyrians and later when Herod massacred the babies. The most likely
scenario is that Jesus was born around 4 BC; the wise men (by their own account)
arrived in Jerusalem two years later in 2 B.C., and in that same year Joseph,
Mary, and Jesus fled to Egypt. When Herod died, they returned. So, the length
of their sojourn in Egypt was probably about a few months.
Life message: We need to raise our voice against
the 21st century massacre of the Innocents: As in other advanced countries, the
cruel massacre of the innocents, though now illegal in America since the
Supreme Court’s 2022 overturn of the Roe vs Wade Supreme
Court’s decision of 1973, continues elsewhere in the world, and in America, the
proponents of Abortion on demand are have shifted their fight their fight to
the mid-year elections for members of the Senate and the House of as well as to
the legislatures of the individual states. While Herod killed at the most a
hundred children, which was horrendous, nearly four thousand unborn babies are
slaughtered in the United States every day! They are killed
because, like the infants of Bethlehem, they are inconvenient. Children are
sacrificed also for the most powerful king of the twenty-first century,
Science. Children as embryos are “frozen” for future use. What will happen to
these children when those who have produced them lose interest or die? Then, in
the process of in vitro fertilization, attempts to
implant living children in the embryo state into the wombs of women who want
them (their own mothers or surrogate mother), the ”extras,” (babies), are
simply destroyed. Babies are also killed in their embryo stage to harvest their
“stem cells” for medical experiments intended to heal the illnesses of their
parents and grandparents. Along with prayer, let us do everything in our power
to stop this brutal murder of helpless babies.
(Fr. Tony) (https://frtonyshomilies.com/)
