Fr. Rick Spicer

As we heard, Jesus invited four fishermen to follow him. “Come after me and I will make you fishers of men.” So Peter, Andrew, James and John left everything behind and did just that. This was the beginning of our Church.

 

I am not much of a fisherman. However, I vividly recall the movie, The Old Man and the Sea, in which Spencer Tracy played the role of an aging fisherman who struggles in the hot sun to haul in the great marlin he had caught. Too big to pull on board, he lashes the fish to the side of his skiff. As he rows back to shore, the old man struggles to fend off sharks biting at his catch. By the time he reaches shore, all that is left of the marlin is its backbone. The old man beaches his boat, shoulders the mast and slowly walks to his shack, muttering, “Man can be destroyed, but not defeated.”

That scene describes the spirit of the four fishermen who left their nets behind to follow Jesus. Like the old man, they were good men, down to earth, and not easily discouraged. They were often challenged, but never defeated.

Jesus began his ministry in the land of Zebulun and Naphtali for good reason. These territories were the furthest from Jerusalem. Many Gentiles lived in the area and the influence of their irreligious ways had significantly impacted these once faithful Jews. Isaiah described them as people living in darkness because they had grown distant from God. The people of Zebulun and Naphtali allowed the values of their Gentile neighbors to have a greater influence on them than the teachings of their own faith. Is Isaiah describing us?

He very well could be. Values derived from biblical morals that shaped our culture in the past are not so prevalent in this time and place. Like the people of Zebulun and Naphtali, are we replacing the values of our faith with those of our irreligious secular society? When we abandon the values, practices, and teachings of our Catholic faith, we risk finding ourselves walking in darkness instead of building the kingdom of heaven.

Jesus began his public ministry in the most unchurched region of ancient Israel proclaiming, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” Keep in mind that God’s kingdom is neither an earthly realm nor a distant place. The kingdom of heaven is made present by our response to Jesus. It emerges with our willingness to follow Jesus, turning from the darkness of sin to walk in his light.

Our world has yet to realize the kingdom of heaven and we won’t until we follow Jesus’ advice and repent, that is, change our ways. His plea comes with an urgency that is overlooked by many yet Jesus presents a life or death situation that should prompt us to reassess our values.

We might think that we don’t need to repent but if any of the choices we make or values we hold dear are unchristian, then we are not building the kingdom of heaven. Doing whatever we can to get whatever we want at the expense of someone else results in sin, not a better world. When we sin, the light of Christ dims and if we grow nonchalant about our sinfulness, we risk finding ourselves in the dark.

Our catechism lists seven capital sins. Do you know them? They are pride, envy, anger, lust, sloth, avarice (greed), and gluttony. So long as we allow these inclinations to shape who we are, we hinder our ability to build the kingdom of heaven in our midst. Virtues, such as generosity, gentleness, purity of heart, poverty of spirit, temperance, and fortitude help us to resist or overcome those capital sins.

We all want a life of peace, kindness, compassion and love. That is the kingdom of heaven on earth. We wish harmony existed among all peoples and that trust and tolerance were universally evident but the headlines tell us otherwise. We yearn for a time when there will be no more war or injustice, when civil strife will be history. We long for the kingdom that Jesus promises but instead of repenting, we are tempted to do things that are contrary to the values of our faith.

Recently Pope Francis cautioned political world leaders, “To trample upon the dignity of another person is in fact to weaken one’s self worth. Truly integral human development can only flourish when all members of the human family are included in, and contribute to pursuing the common good.”

If we care about the common good and really want to bring about the kingdom of heaven, then we must follow the example of the four fishermen. Like them, we are called to be “fishers of men,” for what we do can very well be a lifesaver for someone who has drifted away from Christ.

Just as Paul once did, we live in the scandal of a fractured society, not only in the form of many denominations but even within our Church. Such division allows evil forces to rule the present time but they cannot rule our lives when we strive to live the gospel message, which is to love, teach, pray and serve.

Like moths drawn to a light, we are drawn to the light of Christ. As his followers, we are asked to do our share in resisting the evils that terrorize our world. Hopefully what we say and do proclaims to others that God is indeed active among us. When we strive to live our faith, the evil one will never defeat us in our effort to build the kingdom of heaven for the light of Christ will never leave us in the dark.

“Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world.” I venture to say that is perhaps one of the most widely spoken lines of scripture since the celebrant of every Mass speaks that line moments before distributing communion. Actually, he says “sins” while John the Baptist said “sin.” The singular word is used to describe the broken state the world finds itself in: poverty, injustice, war, hatred, dishonesty, killings, greed, sexual perversions, humanity’s resistance to God, while sins in the plural are our personal wrongdoings and misdeeds.

The expression, Lamb of God, appears only in John’s gospel. For him, lamb meant not only a young sheep, but also a boy, a servant, or a son. It functioned much the same way that the word kid does today. When John the Baptist called his cousin the “Lamb of God,” he is calling him something like “God’s kid.” Since Jesus often called God, “Abba, father,” that makes sense. In one brief statement, John the Baptist is telling anyone who would listen, that here is the one, the only one sent by God who can transform our broken world.

Keep in mind that God originally made the world in a state of grace, seeing that it was good, but through Adam and Eve, that world fell into sin. By dying on the cross, Jesus took away sin yet the results of sin still remain. Picture a broken crystal vase. It can be repaired but it will never look the same. God knew the world needed someone to take away the sin of the world if it was to survive, so he sent his “kid,” his beloved son, to share with us the good news and offer us the means, the antidote to take away the sins of the world.

Sadly, in his selfishness and self-centeredness, man has done a poor job ever since in taking care of God’s creation. Instead of glorifying God, man has used creation to satisfy his own selfish needs. Even we at times have been more concerned with our selfishness than seeing our world as a means of glorifying God. As long as we are selfish and self-centered, true love cannot exist. For true love to exist, sin must go. Sin and love cannot coexist. Jesus gives only one commandment in John’s gospel. “As I have loved you, so you also should love one another.” He illustrated that commandment in countless ways, serving others from healing the sick to washing his apostles’ feet.

Sadly, Jesus’ advice has fallen on deaf ears. A Catholic priest teaching a history course at Columbia University was recently stunned to discover that none of his students were even familiar with the parable of the Good Samaritan.

He observed, “They have no knowledge, no practice, no anything. It’s not that they’re antagonistic to religion…often times it just has no meaning to them.” He noted that many of the younger generation, known as “Nones,” do not have a religious affiliation. They don’t actively question or reject God; rather they are apathetic. If they are asked, “Is religion an important part of your identity?” only slightly more than a third would say so.

When people become indifferent toward religion, it is no wonder that they downplay or deny the reality of sin. By doing that, they then downplay or deny their own need for Jesus Christ. After all, we assume that if we have no sins that need forgiving, we have no need for Jesus Christ.  Fr. Kilian McDonnell, one of my seminary professors, years ago wrote, “Many people do not recognize Christ because they do not recognize themselves as sinners. No man will celebrate the mystery of Christ in joy if he does not first recognize in sorrow that he is a sinner who needs a savior.”

Our focus, he notes, needs to be on Christ.

All of us are fragile human beings. All of us fall victim to temptations and sin at various stages of our lives. All of us stand in need in Christ’s forgiveness. All of us stand in need of Christ’s salvation.

Instead of downplaying our sinfulness or denying that we are sinners, we should admit it and seek out Jesus, “the Lamb of God,” who takes away the sin of the world. Not only that, Christ is counting on us to share that good news with others. Hopefully, today’s psalm speaks for you. “Here I am Lord, I come to do your will.” Sadly, our culture demonstrates often that many don’t do God’s will. Silence is tacit acceptance of the sin in our midst. In its final line we heard, “Now you know that I will not be silent, I’ll always sing your praise.” Will you?

Like the Church in Corinth, we are called to be holy. That is the Lord’s will and the first step toward being holy is never forgetting that the Lamb of God is showing us the way to holiness by taking away our sins, leading us to salvation.

As possessors of the same Spirit, we need to speak as Jesus taught us. As they brought this message to the world around them, early Christians saw themselves as the fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecy, “I will make you a light to the nations, that my salvation will reach to the ends of the earth.” This remains our mission today.

John the Baptist was an extraordinary man. Our lives can also be extraordinary if we dare to speak as he did, sharing the Good News that Jesus comes to takes away the sin of the world, offering us the antidote for addressing the ills of God’s creation. As we venture into ordinary time, may we have the courage, like John the Baptist, to reveal Christ to the world, proclaiming by what we say and do, “Look, there is the Lamb of God, who takes away our sin.”

Unlike most Sunday readings, which we hear only every three years, the beautiful message of Epiphany is repeated every year on this feast. The passage from Isaiah envisions the nations streaming toward a restored Jerusalem, bearing gifts and proclaiming God’s praises; the psalm heralds God’s choice of a king who will manifest justice and peace to all nations and is concerned about the poor. The gospel relates the wonderful story of wise men, sages, from the east who are led by a star to come and worship this newborn king. They were the first Gentiles to seek and recognize Jesus; in so doing, they foreshadow the way Gentiles would flock to Christian communities in the early Church, bearing their own gifts of time, treasure and talent.

We opened our liturgy with the beloved hymn, We Three Kings, but most likely these men were not kings, rather, they were stargazers. They had heard about the messiah of Israel and led by a star, they came looking for him on a journey that took years. However, the messiah they expected was not the messiah they encountered. The messiah they found was a toddler tucked away in a small house in Bethlehem, not a powerful warrior intent on politically liberating his people. Nonetheless, they saw this child as the king of Israel and did him homage, giving him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. Since only three gifts were mentioned, we assume there were only three wise men.

The good news of these readings, indeed of this feast, is that Jesus, the king of glory, has now been revealed to all the nations, not just to the chosen people of Israel. This Jewish child named Jesus has significance for all the peoples of the world, not just Jews. As we heard moments ago, “All kings shall pay him homage, all nations shall serve him.” Alas, after 2000 years, most of humanity has yet to hear, much less appreciate the good news of our newborn king. Consequently, many have yet to bring their gifts to him.

All the readings for today’s feast underscore the welcome God extends to all peoples. The psalm sings of how every nation on earth will adore God’s anointed one. The letter to the Ephesians emphasizes that “the Gentiles are members of the same body and copartners in the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel.” There are no second-class members in God’s community. All are equal.

While God’s will for universal salvation seems obvious to us, really embracing it, really integrating it into our hearts is as challenging as it gets. We may all believe that everyone is created in God’s image and loved and cherished by God. Still, we might check ourselves for any inclination to marginalize others. Who do we tend to dismiss or disregard? While we might easily say God loves everyone, is that really how we feel?

Paul’s insistence on equal status for the Gentiles reveals the struggles of the early Christian communities to make this a reality. While the challenge in welcoming Gentiles has long been overcome, others still face us today. What welcome is given to people of different races? Or to peoples from foreign countries or those with a different socio-economic status? Or to those of a different sexual orientation? This feast invites us to ponder the reality of prejudice in our lives. Facing our prejudices and working to dismantle them is a difficult task that is easier said than done. It takes a lifetime, but it is possible to do so with the help of the Spirit.

Every year, the week following Epiphany is designated by our conference of bishops as National Migration Week; our bishops invite us to reflect on the kind of welcome we provide to the many undocumented immigrants who live and work in our country, often doing service jobs that few others want to do and to the many refugees at our borders seeking a better and safer life for their families and an escape from the political turmoil in their native lands. Just as many Jewish Christians struggled to accept Gentiles into their community, many of us struggle to accept these “outsiders,” who like the magi bear gifts of immeasurable value for our communities.

Epiphany means the act of showing something. God used this moment to reveal his Son first to the Magi, then to the whole world. Are we likewise revealing Jesus to the world around us by what we say and do?

Today’s feast challenges us to be both seekers and guides, to be disciples who seek and find Christ, and then show others the way. The same child whose light brought such joy to the magi, now offers his mercy and love to every person. Through us, every day, Christ feeds multitudes; he heals, teaches and guides countless peoples. Through simple acts of kindness or international coordinated efforts, the world encounters through the Christian community the tangible presence of Christ in our midst.

To celebrate Epiphany is to celebrate the revelation of the star seen by the magi, the light of Christ, to the whole world. People of every race, culture and nation are called to follow that star. We are called to be one with each other in faith, hope and love, without suppressing our diversity or differences. We are called to rejoice that our church is Catholic, that is, universal; a composite of cultures and nations that despite their differences is led by the light of Christ. If we follow the magi, always seeking the Lord and his ways, then we will be wise women and wise men.

Days ago on Christmas, we celebrated the birth of Jesus, the Word of God, as a human being. He entered our world as part of a family, so now we celebrate something we have in common with him. All of us grew up in a family. Typically, that included parents and for most of us siblings. For some, however, parents and or siblings may be missing, yet they too grew up in some manner of a family setting, perhaps being raised by grandparents or other relatives.

Each of the readings today speaks to the importance of families, those units that shape us throughout our lives from infancy onward. Sirach provides a beautiful reflection on care and concern for one’s parents and Paul urges us to bear with one another, forgive one another, love one another, and to be thankful. Today’s gospel portrays Joseph as a model of a caring and watchful spouse and parent.

We know that family life is complicated. This isn’t just a modern reality. Throughout scripture, we can read much about heartache, lies, cheating, and the like as much as we read about love, fidelity, and steadfastness. No family is perfect and all families are made up of imperfect people.

Most of us think of the holy family of Joseph, Mary and Jesus as being the ideal one, clean and lovely with halos reflecting a sanctity no other family could possibly achieve. Not so, this family had its share of struggles and hard times, perhaps even more so than your family ever did. As we heard in the gospel, fearing for their safety, Joseph flees to Egypt to avoid the wrath of King Herod and provide a safe haven for Mary and Jesus. When Herod died, he returned to Israel, not to his hometown of Bethlehem, but to Nazareth.

Look in the dictionary and you will find that holy and ideal do not mean the same. While no family is likely to be ideal, that is perfect, every family has the potential to be holy. When the Bible says “holy,” it means “separate” or “different.” The word implies striving to be healthy and whole in a world where much is unhealthy and fragmented. The English phrase, ‘hale and hearty’ sums up true holiness.

“Holiness,” according to Catholic author, Mitch Finley, “includes such concepts as humor and laughter, compassion and understanding, and the capacity to forgive and be forgiven, to love and be loved. That’s holiness.

“Holy families are not free from conflict, nor do they never hurt one another. Holiness in families, rather, comes from learning to forgive and to be reconciled, and learning to face our problems and to do something about them.

“In family life, holy means striving to surrender to God’s light within us when the darkness around us seems overwhelming. It means struggling day after day to bring creative order…if only a bit of it…to the chaos of our lives. When we work at cultivating forgiveness, reconciliation and community, we embody God’s holy will in the context of family life. A family embodies holiness by striving to be ‘hale and hearty,’ not by trying to be ‘perfect’ according to a set of otherworldly standards.”

Celebrating this feast invites us to look at the holy family as a real family, an earthly family, not some pious, out of this world type of family. As a family, they understood the anxieties and sorrows, the ups and downs of family life. By real, I mean respecting, encouraging, affirming, and loving.

Think of any family as a garden and whatever is planted there will grow. Planting these four values in your family will bring forth a harvest of an abundant family life. Respect one another, encourage one another, affirm one another and love one another. As any gardener knows, there exists the law of the fallow field. If nothing positive is planted in the garden, it will revert to weeds. In other words, we have to continually plant each growing season exactly what it is we are expected to grow. Think of the qualities that Paul mentions in our second reading: compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience. If nothing of value is planted, then nothing of value will be harvested.

So I offer these suggestions for your family garden. A family needs time, attention, and cultivation; sunshine of laughter and affirmation; the rains of difficulties, tense moments of anxiety, and serious discussions on important matters; areas of hardness to be turned over like bitterness, envy, anger, and unforgiven hurts.

In your family garden, I urge you to plant seventeen rows. Five rows of Ps: perseverance, politeness, praise, prayer, and peacemaking.  Four rows of Let us: Let us be faithful in word and deed; let us be unselfish with our resources; let us be loyal; let us love one another. Three rows of squash: squash gossip, squash negative criticism, and squash indifference. And five rows of turn ups: turn up on time for school events, turn up for family gatherings, turn up with a better attitude, turn up with new ideas and the determination to carry them out, and turn up with a smile.

Plant and nurture these value seeds in your family garden in the coming year and you will bring to a bountiful harvest a real family as well as a holy family. You can imitate the holy family very nicely by tending to your family garden and raising your family uncommonly well.

The news lately has reported that the extreme cold in the east caused havoc for many travelers endeavoring to spend Christmas with loved ones. Despite the rain and chill, we have been rather blessed weather-wise. Perhaps some of you may be yearning for a white Christmas but I imagine many travelers back east would wish otherwise!

Every winter I am drawn to one of my favorite poems, Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening by Robert Frost. Drawn by the beauty of a gentle snow fall, much like we get nearly every winter here on Whidbey Island, the rider wants to sit still, watch and listen, even if his horse thinks it queer to stop without a farmhouse near…but he knows that he must move on. “The woods are lovely, dark and deep, but I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep, and miles to go before I sleep.”

Someone is relying on him to keep his word. We live in an age when promises in politics, business, even relationships evaporate as quickly as a snowflake hitting a warm window- pane. Christmas on the other hand reminds us of a promise God kept long ago to liberate us from the darkness of sin.

Two thousand years ago, like a great star, Jesus came down from heaven and lit up the darkness of our world. As John tells us in the opening verses of his gospel, “The light shines in the darkness and the darkness had not overcome it.” To this day, the darkness of sin has not managed to turn off the light of God’s love in our midst, despite the pervasiveness of evil, hate and cruelty and the high cost many followers have paid as martyrs sharing the light of Christ with others.

The Christmas image many of us have of Jesus is that of a light shining in the darkness, which is why festive lights of many colors decorate trees and our landscape. This image has meant a world of difference for some people when they are feeling very much alone in their world of darkness.

The image of light dispelling the darkness took on special meaning for Victor Frankl when he was incarcerated in a Nazi Concentration Camp. Early one morning, he and other prisoners were digging in the cold hard ground. In his book, Man’s Search for Meaning, he writes, “The dawn was gray around us; gray was the sky above; gray the snow in the pale light of dawn; gray the rags in which my fellow prisoners were clad, and gray their faces…I struggled to find a reason for my suffering, my slow dying.”

As he struggled in the miserable cold, Frankl became totally convinced that there was a reason, even when none made sense. Then he described what happened next, “At that moment a light was lit in a distant farmhouse, which stood on the horizon as if it were painted there, in the midst of the miserable gray.”

At that moment, a line, which we heard moments ago in the Gospel came to mind, “The light shines in the darkness and the darkness had never put it out.” That experience gave Frankl hope, changing his entire prison life, whereas before all he had experienced was despair.

When Jesus entered our darkened world, so did hope. Until he came, countless people found themselves struggling to find reason for their suffering, for their slow death. Once Jesus shared the Good news of God’s love, mercy and compassion, people could see that there was an antidote for their suffering, even if they could not still see why the world is filled with so much pain. They learned by his example that they could make a difference in an indifferent world.

Every Christmas we recall this moment in time but we also celebrate an ongoing reality that Jesus is born into the world through us for Christmas is God’s invitation for each one of us to be for our world what Jesus was for his world: a beam of light in the midst of darkness, a ray of hope in the midst of despair. God’s word takes on flesh through us: our love, our sharing, our forgiveness and caring for one another.

Like the woods on a snowy evening, Christmas is a time when we want to sit still, watch and listen for nothing is ordinary at this moment. But like the rider, we know that we must move on. Before long, our lives will be back to normal. With our usual busy schedules, we could easily forget what Christmas was all about.

However, if we want to rid our world of its darkness, then we have promises to keep ourselves, namely promises to bring the light of Christ to others in our midst yet promises that some of us are not inclined to keep, convinced that whatever we do wouldn’t make much difference anyway. But they do make a difference for someone. Another of Robert Frost’s lasting lines comes to mind here. In the Road Not Taken, he wrote, “Two roads diverge in a wood, and I, I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.”

Jesus comes at Christmas, inviting us to take the road less traveled by, the path paved by the convictions of countless Christians who have gone before us, doing what they could to dispel the darkness of our world with the light of Christ. To the extent that we heed the invitation of Christmas, to that extent will the world receive the gifts of Christmas: peace on earth and goodwill toward all. God is counting on us to make that real, not just today, but everyday of our lives.