St. Anthony of Padua - Revere,MA

12/25/2014

Christmas - St. John's Christmas Sermon

Alleluia! Today we celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ, the Incarnate son of God.

We hear at Mass one of the most magnificent passages in the Scriptures, indeed one of the gems of the Western literary tradition: the prologue to the Gospel of John. In many ways, the essential meaning of Christmas is contained in these elegantly crafted lines.

John commences: "In the beginning was the Word..." No first century Jew would have missed the significance of that opening phrase, for the first word of the Hebrew Scriptures, beresh*t, means precisely "beginning." The evangelist is signaling that the story he will unfold is the tale of a new creation, a new beginning. The Word, he tells us, was not only with God from the beginning, but indeed was God.

The entire prologue then builds to its climax with the magnificent phrase, "the Word was made flesh and lived among us." The gnostic temptation has tugged at the Church, on and off, for nearly the past two thousand years. This is the suggestion, common to all forms of puritanism, that the spiritual is attained through a negation of the material. But authentic Christianity, inspired by this stunning claim of St. John, has consistently held off gnosticism, for it knows that the Word of God took to himself a human nature and thereby elevated all of matter and made it a sacrament of the divine presence.

The Greek phrase behind "lived among us" is literally translated as "tabernacled among us" or "pitched his tent among us." No Jew of John's time would have missed the wonderful connection implied between Jesus and the temple. According to the book of Exodus, the Ark of the Covenant - the embodiment of Yahweh's presence - was originally housed in a tent or tabernacle. The evangelist is telling us that now, in the flesh of Jesus, Yahweh has established his definitive tabernacle among us.

All of this sublime theology is John the Evangelist's great Christmas sermon. Throughout this holy season of Christmas, I would invite you to return to it often in prayer and meditation.

-Fr. Robert Barron

12/24/2014

12/24/2014

Christmas Eve - The True King

St. Luke's telling of the Christmas story, which is read at Midnight Masses all over the Catholic world, commences by invoking the first-century's most powerful man: "In those days Caesar Augustus published a decree ordering a census of the whole world."

Here the emperor is doing a paradigmatically powerful thing. If you can count your people more accurately, you can tax them more efficiently and you can draft them into the military more expeditiously. So far, this story begins like all other ancient epics, by praising the strong and powerful.

But then St. Luke makes a canny move. He shifts his attention away from Augustus Caesar and toward a poor couple of no notoriety whatsoever, making their way to a dusty hamlet on the fringes of the Roman Empire. In the nothing town of Bethlehem, Mary gives birth to a child, who is wrapped up in swaddling clothes and placed in the manger where the animals eat. The baby is visited, not by courtiers, but by shepherds, who had, at that time, something of the status that street people have today.

Then an angel appears and announces that this destitute infant, to whom Caesar Augustus in Rome would pay absolutely no heed, is in fact the true Emperor: "I come to proclaim good news to you - tidings of great joy to be shared by the whole people. This day in David's city a savior has been born to you, the Messiah and Lord."

To say "Messiah" and "Lord" was to imply that a new David had arrived, a new King of the Jews. But as any careful reader of the Psalms and Prophets would know, to say King of the Jews was to imply King of the world - which is precisely why the angel said his message was for "the whole people." This true king - simple, humble, vulnerable, and non-violent - would establish an order, a kingdom of God, which stands athwart the order of Rome.

Lest we have any doubt as to which of these kings is more powerful, Luke tells us, "Suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying, 'Glory to God in high heaven, peace on earth to those on whom his favor rests.'" We should not be sentimental in regard to angels, for the typical reaction to one in the Bible is fear. And we are dealing here with a stratia of these fearsome creatures. That Greek word, translated usually as "host" or "multitude," literally means army. The only reason that Caesar Augustus was able to dominate the world is that he had the biggest army. But Luke is saying that the baby king actually possesses a bigger army, though it is one that fights, not with the weapons (arma) of the world, but with those of heaven.

It is of these arms and of this man that Luke sings. His subversive Christmas tale continues posing a question: which narrative do you accept? Which king do you follow? Caesar or Jesus?

-Fr. Robert Barron

12/24/2014

Thank you!

Sincere thanks to all for the many cards, gifts and kindness to my family and I during my recent knee replacement surgery. It is truly an honor and privilege to serve Our Lord in my ministry as your parish Cantor and I am humbled and Blessed to have the opportunity to serve you as well. Please continue to join me in singing and praising God, keeping in mind - "When we sing - We pray twice"

-Ann Ciampa

12/24/2014

Today is Christmas Eve!!

We would like to remind and inform our parishioners and any who want to come for the celebration of Our Lord and Savior's birth, we will be conducting Mass today at 4:00pm which will include our Christmas pageant and choir AND also holding our Midnight Mass with our choir present. Christmas Carols will begin at 11:30pm tonight.

On Christmas Day, we will have an 8:00am and 10:00am Mass only. No afternoon or evening Masses.

Merry Christmas to all from the priests and staff of St. Anthony's!!

12/24/2014

From the Pastor's Desk...

In Bethlehem, Christmas hymns are sung the year round. It is a powerful reminder to every pilgrim visiting the place of Jesus' birth that the spirit of Christmas, the love it so tenderly reveals, must be lived year round.

There is no other season I enjoy more. The star in our children's eyes, the tears of gratitude in the eyes of parents and grandparents, the opportunity of being more thoughtful to others, the loving spirit that seems to pervade all, the smell of varied Christmas trees and packages surrounding them are all precious happenings. I always whisper a silent prayer of gratitude for having witness another Christmas.

Yet, I must admit to mixed emotions. I desire to capture the happy memories, but there is always creeping within me those sad memories too. I think of the young mother who lost her ten month old son to cancer, the senior citizen the was just diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease, the sixteen year old girl that suffers from mental and physical abuse, the young father of two just diagnosed with cancer, the poor family I visited this past week surrounded with Christmas packages containing food they enjoy but once a year of the day of Jesus' birth.

Such examples will mean very little unless I find a way to understand the misery, the hurt feelings, the suffering of those around me. These examples are a warning to me to challenge the evil that causes them. I will make every effort to assist people to accept what can not be changed. I will, at the same time, give of my time and energy to help people change what can be changed. The love revealed in the birth of Jesus, must continue to live in my day to day living experiences if it is to have any real meaning in my life and in the lives of those I serve in His Name.

Merry Christmas!

-Fr. George

12/24/2014

Hi everyone,
I wish you all and your families a Blessed Christmas and a Joy-filled New year. May the Babe to be born bless you and your families with His Joy and Peace now and throughout the New Year!

-Fr. Kumar

12/23/2014

Advent Day 24 - Taking On Human Flesh

Asking how God, the "sheer act of being" (ipsum esse), can take on human flesh is an interesting question because I think it is only ipsum esse that can accomplish this.

It's a commonplace of the Christian tradition that in Jesus, God has become a creature. We have to be careful about that language. We don't mean that God turned into a creature - that God stopped being God by turning into a creature. Nor do we say that a creature turned into God - that's mythological language. What we mean is that God took to himself a human nature to use for his iconic purposes. St. Paul talks about Jesus as "the icon of the invisible God." His humanity is the iconic representation of the invisible God.

Having made that clarification, it's only ipsum esse that can pull off this trick. If God were a being in this world, like one of the ancient gods or the deist god, then he would only relate to a human nature in a competitive way. To use an analogy, my two hands can't become one another - they repel each other. Likewise, I can't become a bookshelf, and a bookshelf can only become something else (like ash) by being burned and destroyed. That's the way it goes with finite natures.

But God can become a creature, without ceasing to be God or compromising the integrity of the creature he becomes, precisely because he's not a competitive nature in the world. He's not a being, but ipsum esse - the sheer act, or energy, of "to be" itself.

That's why the ideas of the Incarnation and God as ipsum esse are correlated and mutually implicative.

-Fr. Robert Barron

12/22/2014

Advent Day 23 - God Joins Our Dysfunctional Family

The opening lines of Matthew's Gospel-and hence the first words that one reads in the New Testament-are a listing of the genealogy of Jesus, the 42 generations that stretch from Abraham to Christ. If the Word truly became flesh, then God had, not only a mother, but also a grandmother, cousins, great-aunts, and weird uncles. If the Word truly dwelt among us, then he was part of a family that, like most, was fairly dysfunctional, a mix of the good and bad, the saintly and the sinful, the glorious and the not so glorious. And this is such good news for us.

Let me highlight just a few figures from Jesus' family tree. Matthew tells us that the Messiah was descended from Jacob, a great patriarch and hero of Israel, and also a man who wrestled with God. In a lyrical passage from the 32nd chapter of the book of Genesis, we hear that Jacob struggled all night with the Lord and was wounded permanently in the process. I imagine that there are some reading these words who have wrestled all their lives with God, questioning, doubting, wondering, struggling mightily with the Lord, perhaps even bearing spiritual wounds as a consequence. Well, the Messiah came forth from Jacob and was pleased to be a relative of this fighter.

Matthew's genealogy informs us that Ruth was an ancestor of the Lord. Ruth was not an Israelite, but rather a Moabite, a foreigner. I would be willing to bet that there are some reading this who have felt all their lives like outsiders, not part of the "in" crowd, perhaps looked at askance by others. Well, the Messiah came forth from Ruth the foreigner and was pleased to be her relative.

And then there is Rahab. As you recall from the book of Joshua, Rahab was a pr******te living and working in Jericho at the time of the Israelite conquest of the promised land. Are there people reading these words who feel like Rahab? Who think that their whole lives have been sunk in sin, who have become unrecognizable to themselves? Well, the Messiah came forth from Rahab the pr******te, and he was pleased to be her relative.

The good news of Christmas is that God himself pushed into the dysfunctional and ambiguous family of man. And he continues to join us, even though we, like so many of his Israelite ancestors, are unworthy of him. Like them, we are flawed, compromised, half-finished. But he becomes our brother anyway. That's the amazing grace of the Incarnation.

-Fr. Robert Barron

12/21/2014

Advent Day 22 - The New Eve

In our Gospel for this fourth Sunday of Advent, we turn to the beautiful and familiar story of the Annunciation. The angel Gabriel comes to a virgin named Mary to announce she will give birth to a son. Although undoubtedly shocked, Mary responds, "I am the maidservant of the Lord. Let it be done to me according to your word." Mary abandoned her own plans and acquiesced to what God wanted her to do.

The Church Fathers were fond of describing Mary as the new Eve, the new mother of all the living. In fact, some say the angel's "ave" ("hail") reversed "Eva."

What was Eve's problem? Eve grasped at the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, claiming along with Adam that she would be the criterion of right and wrong, that her will would determine the nature of the good. Every one of our spiritual and moral problems flows from this primordial sin. But when Mary says, "Let it be done to me according to your word," this spiritual momentum is stopped and then reversed. It is this reversal that allows Christ to be born into the world.

Meister Eckhart noted that every Christian has the vocation of Mary, to bring Christ to birth. We each do this in our own ways and styles, according to the exigencies of our unique vocations. But we do this, Eckhart saw, the same way Mary did: by abandoning our projects and plans, our sense of the good life, and acquiescing to God's purpose working through us.

-Fr. Robert Barron

12/20/2014

Advent Day 21 - Expanding Our Heart

Sometimes we are made to wait because we are not yet adequately prepared to receive what God wants to give us. In his remarkable letter to Proba, Saint Augustine argued that the purpose of unanswered prayer is to force expansion of the heart. When we don't get what we want, we begin to want it more and more, with ever greater insistency, until our souls are on fire with the desire for it. Sometimes it is only a sufficiently expanded and inflamed heart that can take in what God intends to give.

What would happen to us if we received, immediately and on our own terms, everything we wanted? We might be satisfied in a superficial way, but we wouldn't begin to appreciate the preciousness of the gifts. After all, the Israelites had to wait thousands of years before they were ready to receive God's greatest gift.

Even if we are on the right track and even if we desire with sufficient intensity what God wants to give, we still might not be ready to integrate a particular grace into our lives or to handle the implications of it.

How badly do you want Christ this Advent?

Fr. Robert Barron

12/19/2014

Advent Day 20 - What Can We Learn from the Magi?

The Magi are great Advent figures because they spend their time surveying the night sky. We don't know exactly who they were, but we know there was a tradition of stargazing in certain lands east of the Holy Land.

The Magi were what we would call both astrologers and astronomers. They were looking patiently for signs of God's purpose. We might think the way they're looking is funny, by searching for signs in the sky, but, nevertheless, they were looking, in a very patient and intentional way. That makes them Advent figures.

How many of us have become indifferent to the signs of God? How many of us stop wondering what God is up to? How much time do we spend searching out those questions? Prayer is the response to such questions, for that's what prayer involves: seeking the purpose and intentions of God.

By searching for signs of God, the Magi are captivating Advent figures.

-Fr. Robert Barron