Homilies of Father Earl Meyer: Year B

By Father Earl Meyer

Homilies of Father Earl R. Meyer, O.F.M. Cap., a priest of the Capuchin Franciscan Province of Mid-America. His homilies provide a down-to-earth view of divine teachings. This volume's homilies correspond with the Year B liturgy. He studied at St. Fidelis College in Herman, Pennsylvania, and at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. Father Earl taught at Thomas More Prep in Hays, Kansas, and was the pastor of various parishes in Kansas and Missouri. He currently resides at St. Fidelis Friary in Victoria, Kansas.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Dec 1, 2014
• ISBN: 9781631923807

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First Sunday of Advent

Watch and Wait

I made a resolution. For Advent.

This Advent I am not going to complain about the merchants rushing and ruining the season.

Each year I have been complaining earlier, about the merchants being early.

And I have been watching for others to do something wrong, instead of watching for the good that people do in this season.

So this Advent I will try not to complain about the greed of the merchants.

The Advent advice of the gospel seems quite simple: Be watchful, stay alert. I say to all, Watch.’

But watching is often complicated.

We watch in many different ways.

We watch OUT for danger, as in traffic.

We watch FOR opportunities, as in shopping.

We watch WITH amazement at athletic or artistic talent.

Consider the prepositions to help clarify our Advent watching.

We watch OUT; we watch FOR; and we watch WITH.

First, we watch OUT. There are dangers. We can make mistakes.

It is so easy to miss the spiritual richness of this season by investing in the wrong things.

So watch out for the distractions and the deceptions of modern culture.

Watch out for the excesses of decorating, shopping, celebrating.

Advent is found more in peaceful quiet than in busy activity.

Sometimes we are intentionally over-active in this season to avoid that silence where serious thoughts confront us.

We not only watch OUT for dangers, we also watch FOR blessings.

Shoppers watch for bargains.

Parents often watch for a popular toy for their child.

Then on Christmas Day the child is more intrigued by the box than by the toy, or by a trivial toy, that was an after thought.

Christians should watch for those unexpected moments when Christ comes in disguise.

Despite all your elaborate planning, Christ will come to you this Christmas in unexpected simple things.

Watch FOR such graces.

As we watch OUT for dangers, and we watch FOR blessings, we also watch WITH the church, in awe.

Watching with the church means watching with Mary, the model of Advent.

Mary waited during that first Advent for the birth of her divine son.

But she did not wait absorbed with her own concerns.

She went to help her cousin Elizabeth who was in need.

Mary was not preoccupied with her own situation, but found time for another.

She teaches us this Christian paradox: In helping another, we help ourselves; in making Christmas for others, we make Christmas for ourselves.

During Advent we watch with Mary, as Mary watched.

The gospel sense of Advent watching is a vigilance which focuses on a future event without missing the present moment.

St. Paul warned the early Christians not to watch for the final coming of Christ in such a way as to miss Him in daily life.

Athletic teams, looking ahead to the big game, can lose the present contest through inattention.

Advent is watching for the coming of Christ at Christmas in such a way as not to miss His coming to us each day of Advent, often in disguise.

A child’s Christmas carol sings, You better watch out . . . Santa Claus is coming to town So be good for goodness sake.

For goodness sake is important in our Advent waiting.

Good for the sake for goodness, is at the heart of this season.

Our holiday efforts are easily tainted with selfishness.

Whatever good you do this Advent; do it simply because it is good.

Give your gifts, for example, as a blessing, not as a barter; Decorate to give joy to others, not to seek compliments for yourself;

Worship to enrich your faith, not to satisfy your family.

Be watchful, be alert. I say to all, Watch.’

Watch OUT for dangers;

Watch FOR blessings;

Watch WITH Mary,

that you may do good . . . for goodness sake.

Second Sunday of Advent

Parallel Worlds

When the Titanic was cruising in the northern Atlantic on that fateful night in 1912 another ship, the Californian, was only a few miles away.

It had sighted icebergs, reversed its course, and was trying to signal the Titanic about the danger.

But the radio operator on the Titanic was too busy sending messages from passengers to their friends.

So the two vessels, in the immortal words of Longfellow, Passed as ships in the night.

Our secular Christmas and our spiritual Christmas are two parallel worlds, unknown to each other, and often pass as ships in the night.

They can be so different.

For example, the marketplace is now bustling with commercial activity.

Meanwhile the church is observing the quiet waiting of Advent.

The stores are blaring Christmas carols.

In church we sing sober Advent Hymns.

A jolly Santa Claus at the shopping malls tells us to be merry.

A severe John the Baptist at the Jordan tells us to repent.

In the marketplace Christmas ends on the 25th.

In church Christmas begins on the 25th and continues until the Epiphany.

Christians might feel a little schizophrenic during this season.

How are we to deal with these conflicting messages?

The tension ought not to be a surprise.

Christianity is essentially counter-cultural.

The dominant values of our society often conflict with the gospel.

That was true in the first century. It is true today.

A timely example would be how a culture of death is invading our society while the church proclaims a culture of life.

However, we are not meant to live in two isolated worlds: one in church on Sunday; another in the world the rest of the week.

The second Vatican Council taught us to embrace what is good in our society, just as we are to reject what is contrary to the faith in our culture.

The document on the modern world begins, The joy and hope, the grief and sorrow of our age are the joy and hope, the grief and the sorrow of the church.

Christians are not to separate themselves from the world but to animate it with their faith.

We are to find a way to mesh these two parallel worlds and not let them pass as ships in the night, unknown to each other.

In today’s gospel, John the Baptist speaks of baptism in the Holy Spirit.

Our church speaks of baptizing whatever is naturally good to make it a means of grace.

This a timely thought because that is how the early Christians chose December 25 to celebrate the birth of Christ.

We do not know on what day of the year Christ was born.

Christ might have been born on the fourth of July.

We have no way of knowing.

At the time of the early church the most joyful secular celebration was the festival of the winter solstice of the sun in late December.

The people rejoiced that the sun, which was fading a little each day, reversed its direction on the solstice, and the days again lengthened.

The Christians saw how this was a fitting symbol of the birth of Christ, the light of the world.

So they chose the time of the winter solstice to celebrate the birth of Christ.

That is why Christmas is celebrated on December 25.

Christians should not bemoan what is wrong with our secular Christmas, but baptize what is good in it so that it may enrich our spiritual Christmas.

There is natural goodness in many holiday customs: gatherings of family and friends, greeting cards, and generous gifts.

All of these can be Christian acts of faith, hope, and love.

Our challenge is to mesh these two worlds:

our secular Christmas and our spiritual Christmas

and not let them, unknown to each other,

pass as ships in the night.

Immaculate Conception

Beyond our Grasp, Not our Reach

You will not find the words Immaculate Conception in today’s Scripture readings. In fact you will not find them anywhere in the Bible.

But Christians have always believed that Mary was Immaculate, free from all sin. and that IS found in Scripture, implicitly. In two significant passages.

Hail Mary, full of Grace, which we recite in the Ave Maria; And in the words of Elizabeth, when Mary visited her, Who am I that the mother of my Lord should come to me?

Before explaining these two passages, it is important to understand what we celebrate on this feast of the Immaculate Conception.

The Immaculate Conception does NOT refer to the virginal conception of Jesus by Mary.

It refers rather to the sinlessness of Mary when she was conceived by her mother, St. Ann.

From the first moment of her existence Mary was free from all sin, including original sin.

The theological rationale is straightforward.

Since Mary was to be the mother of Jesus who was to free us from our sins, she herself would only rightly be free from sin.

The sinless Christ should have a sinless mother.

The first scriptural passage which illustrates that is, Hail Mary full of grace.

Since grace conquers sin, the fullness of grace expels all sin.

Mary, full of grace, is free of all sin, including original sin.

She is the Immaculate Conception.

The second scriptural passage is more subtle, but also more practical.

When Mary went to visit her cousin Elizabeth to assist her in the final months of her pregnancy, Elizabeth’s reaction to this unexpected kindness was, Who am I that the mother of my Lord should come to me?

Mary, chosen for a higher honor, and surely anxious about her own condition, takes the time to assist another.

Selfishness is the root of all sin.

In her visit to Elizabeth, Mary shows a remarkable freedom from selfishness.

Although naturally preoccupied with a far greater concern of her own, she takes time for the needs of another.

Her visitation is evidence of freedom from the root of sinfulness, selfishness.

The selfishness of valuing our own concerns above the needs of others is at the root of sin.

It also inflicts much harm on others.

When we are busy with our own personal concerns and others bother us with their petty business—petty to us— we often reject them or ignore them.

But Mary, the mother of the promised Messiah, gave her time and her assistance to Elizabeth, the mother of John the Baptist.

Here she exemplifies an exceptional freedom from selfishness, freedom from sin in a most practical manner.

Such total unselfishness, such freedom from sin, is so rare that the poet Wordsworth wrote of Mary, our tainted nature’s, solitary boast.

She is the only one truly free of all sin, the Immaculate Conception.

In Mary, Christians are given an ideal, an unattainable ideal, but an ideal none the less inspiring.

Though we are not and cannot be totally sinless we are inspired to a more unselfish life by the example of the sinless Virgin.

The poet Browning wrote, A man’s reach should exceed his grasp.

Ideals guide us and motivate us.

Our highest ideals are not fully attainable.

Mary is such a spiritual ideal.

A man’s reach should exceed his grasp.

The liturgical prayer for today’s feast reads:

Father, you prepared the Virgin Mary

to be the worthy mother of your Son.

You let her share beforehand

in the salvation Christ would bring by his death,

and kept her sinless from the first moment of her

conception.

Help us, by her prayers,

to live in your presence without sin.

Amen.

Third Sunday of Advent

Make Straight the Just Way of the Lord

Many court buildings display

Reviews for Homilies of Father Earl Meyer

[PioniusHendi · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Many thanks for your great refections. I like the freshness of you idea.