Christmas Vigil

Isaiah 9:1–6
Titus 2:11–14
Luke 2:1–14

It all begins with light. “The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; upon those who dwelt in a land of gloom a light has shone.” Welcoming that light, believing in that light, is where Christmas begins. It is a feast primarily of light. Yes, more candles in the chapel, special candles on the table and of course lights on the trees and for some on every corner of the roof! Christmas begins with light because that is where God begins his creative work. The light that opens Christmas is the light that opened the story of our world and thus the story of humanity on that first day. Light brings us back to the creative word and hand of God, the first day. But we are at that first day for as Isaiah says, a child is born. Birth is the beginning of a new life.

The people of Isaiah’s day experienced darkness. It was a heavy yoke of a foreign power; it was the rod that beat them into submission. It was the darkness of injustice, the gloom of corrupt leadership in the community. Today it might be the darkness of a pandemic that spreads gloom and uncertainty. But there is the darkness of our own choices, the choices of whom to let in and whom to keep out, the choices of who benefits from economic success. Or perhaps the gloom that comes simply by our choice of words. It is in the midst of this darkness that we are asked tonight to see not a simple light but a great light, a light that we cannot control, a light that is shining even when our eyes and feet are grooping to find a place to put our steps.

Today light simply shines as pure gift. And it is as the prophet says a relief, a release from heaviness. It comes as a victory over anything that breathes of darkness and night. Yes, we gather in the night because there is news of a light shining in the midst of the darkness. And the news is the darkness cannot overcome this light. This light will win in the end.

After Isaiah’s description of new light as a conquering light, as victory over the power of darkness comes the shocking revelation that the hero of this new world is a child. Into the midst of human frailty, of our wounds that seem incurable, of so many roadblocks to goodness and mutuality, there is the most vulnerable representative of humanity, a child. But our God is a God who finds power and strength and yes light in what perhaps we would normally scoff at or call foolishness.

When an angel comes in the night, as the gospel tells it, he comes to the only ones awake, shepherds, a lowly group, living out in the countryside, overlooked like that shepherd from Bethlehem long ago. The angel comes to those who in the midst of darkness are looking after others, to those who are defying night by caring, nurturing, by protecting the vulnerable, those susceptible to wandering off. In the midst of the night, God’s glory shines around them. Light surrounds the shepherds, embraces them as it were and from that light comes the news of joy: there is a child born. Yes, something new is about to begin in the world. Something that God will have a direct hand in. That good news shines around the shepherds and their night watch suddenly holds news of joy and a creative moment. The child in David’s city sets off a new beginning for the relationship between God in heaven and human beings on earth: Glory to God in the highest and on earth (where you and I are) peace to those who are open to this gift of new birth. Peace–a new possibility of living together, a healing and binding up of wounds, a way toward forgiveness that lets go of old wrongs. Peace means reconciliation, a coming together in a new way. This says the angel is what this infant is all about.

For a moment, the shepherds find themselves surrounded by a glory and light that holds the meeting between heaven and earth, between God and humanity. But Christmas is the feast of God marrying, as it were, himself to our human flesh. It is the beginning of the final bonding of our God with his image in human beings. It may be easy to believe in God and to accept humanity—but hold them apart. Yet the light that shines today is a light that shines on the two coming together here on earth, here in a Middle Eastern animal stall and feeding trough. Yes, heaven and earth meet in a newborn child wrapped up like all babies in their first human clothes.

The center of our celebration this night is the Child. Isaiah famously proclaims a child is born; the angel tells the watchful shepherds there is a child newly wrapped, lying in manger-it is the sign you have been waiting for. Go and see! How often we pray in the Psalms “It is your face, O Lord, I seek; hide not your face.”  How long do we say God is absent but I am looking for him. Where is he? Where is he when things are dark and go wrong? I want to see his face? Tonight God answers our longing to see his face. We will find it in his child. This may seem so innocent at first, but is it? What is in the face of the Child, what presence? The American novelist Marilynne Robinson in her novel Gilead, has the old Congregationalist pastor John Ames say: “Any human face has a claim on you, because you can’t help but understand the singularity of it, the courage and loneliness of it. But this is truest of the face of an infant.” Today God gives us his face in the face of his infant son. Isaiah gives something of the grand singularity of this face: Wonder-Counselor, God-Hero, Father-Forever, Prince of Peace! And the angel outside Bethlehem adds on: Savior, Christ and Lord.

Every human face has a claim on you. Today God’s human face is seen for the first time. Filled with uniqueness, we are invited to look upon it. Once we do, we submit ourselves to what it asks of us. It will hold us—just think of how we look at an infant and talk about his or her face! But to celebrate the birth of God’s only child and to say yes to that is also to be captured by it. We cannot then look at any other human face or even other faces and not be changed. The face of God has appeared, his gift to us, and looking upon his face in Christ our lives begin their process of transformation. A transformation that leads to lives of justice, awareness of others and God; lives that see in the face of others a marvelous wonder; lives that are eager to do good. Lives that are willing, like the shepherds, to be embraced and held by the glory of love that shown this night in the fields of Bethlehem. A love that comes from God on high: Glory to him and on earth peace.

~Prior, Fr. Joel Macul, OSB

3rd Sunday of Advent - Gaudete Sunday

Third Sunday of Advent
Gaudete Sunday

Isaiah 61:1–2a, 10–11
1 Thessalonians 5:16–24
John 1:6–8, 19–28

The well-known English author G.K. Chesterton wrote in his book Orthodoxy, “Joy is the gigantic secret of the Christian.” It is indeed the distinguishing atmosphere of Christian life. It is the very heart of our vocation as a child of God. The root of joy is in our relationship with God. Joy is the expression of one who is loved by God and lives in God. It is not accidental to the relationship with God; it is fundamental. Joy flows out of one who knows they are loved by God. In a deeply real and personal way they have known that God delights in them. And that delight of God in them spills over, as it were, into joy.

Joy is a gift. It is a gift that is ours because we believe that God has reconciled everything and everyone to himself in and through Christ. God creating and reconciling means that God has restored everything and then lays it at our feet because he delights in sharing this gift he has wrought with us. Who is it that cannot rejoice when they become aware of this gift of wholeness and shalom that has been poured into their lap–given out of love?

Paul commands us today to rejoice, not once, not for a while but always. We as Christians, as those who have been incorporated into Christ are to live in joy and to communicate joy. Paul shares his joy with his community and wants them to live in it and to communicate it. We are to communicate the joy of being one in the Body of Christ, joy in believing, joy in the midst of suffering, joy in spite of suffering. Joy always. Joy is to illuminate the circumstances of life. For the Christian the shear happiness of being in relationship with God forever makes it possible to stand in every situation that would seem to separate us from the love of God. But as Paul says nothing can separate us from God’s love. Believing in that finds its expression in joy.

The contemporary spiritual writer Henri Nouwen described joy as “the experience of knowing that you are unconditionally loved and that nothing–sickness, failure, emotional distress, oppression, war and even death–can take that love away.” This joy is the fruit of the Spirit. It frees us from anything related to fear. It holds before us our identity as people who are created good, redeemed from ourselves, called by name and then made holy.

This Sunday has traditionally been called Gaudete Sunday. The word Gaudete means ‘rejoice’. It is the first word in Latin for the antiphon sung at the entrance of the liturgy for this second Sunday before Christmas. Its grammatical form is imperative!It is not a polite request; it is a command, just as Paul puts it to the Thessalonians and later to the Philippians. And it is one that we must also take to heart.

How can we have joy, you might ask, when we are surrounded and threatened by a pandemic, with economic hardships, fires, hurricanes and a very divisive and polarized political system. How can I have joy when sickness and death threaten or take the environmental crisis seriously or find the world I grew used to falling apart and slipping away? Fair enough questions. And those circumstances and questions will remain. The Christian has never said that life is without pain or the cross. But the Christian has always had God and Christ before him or her. God and Christ have always been within, poured there by love in the Spirit. The Christian knows the “always” of these relationships. The promise of Jesus echoes in our ears: When you walk through the pain, the joy you will have no one can take from you. Jesus did not mount the cross out of fear, he climbed the tree of the cross for the joy that lay before him. For the Christian affliction and joy seem to together. If we don’t hold them together, then we have lost the secret.

Here we are these days, perhaps, in the midst of what sometimes looks like loss after loss, death after death, change after change in a directionless movement. And yet the command this Sunday is “rejoice, always.” We do that precisely because Christ is coming; Israel did it because God was up front moving toward the community. We rejoice this Sunday because what we hope for is near. We do not look behind to see what is lost or how much ground we have covered, but look ahead to what is coming.

Two people in Scripture share and speak to us today about their experience of God and what calls them to rejoice and be joyful. The Spirit-filled prophet rejoices heartily in my God. Why? Because he sees that God is about embracing the poor and marginalized; he is about healing the broken hearted; he is about release from the past and from every injustice. Release, healing, seeing grace in the days ahead, trust and simplicity. The prophet sees all that coming and in it sees God’s faithful love.

Mary sings to us today her Magnificat: “My soul rejoices in my God.” For Mary and the prophet their joy is rooted in their relationship with God, “my God” they say. Mary experiences in God’s choice of her his favor, his personal love, which she will personalize by carrying the child in her womb. And she sees that love as transforming society: filling the hungry, emptying the pockets of the rich, helping his beloved community and above all showering mercy or put simply, loving. The prophet and Mary are joyful because they see God and Christ coming and continuing his creating and redeeming work. Not as something apart from them but as an expression of his love in which they are gifted to share. They are joyful because, as Paul says, the one who called them is faithful. When you know someone is there, simply there for you and with you, you, too, can be joyful.

“Rejoice always,” Paul says. But he goes on: “pray without ceasing” and “give thanks in all circumstances.” This is the triad of activity. This is the Advent ethic, what must be done. It is all command because it is all God’s will. It is want he wants. This behavior is what he loves and if you stand in it, you will be delighting in his love and the Father will be delighting in you as one of his own. Rejoice, pray and give thanks, not once or sometimes or when it is opportune, but “always, without ceasing and in all circumstances.” Doing this would be a real profession of faith that Jesus has come and that he is coming; that God has done great things and he is doing great things even now. Rejoice, pray and give thanks—do this and each of us will be a John the Baptist giving witness that light has come into the world and that humanity and God are at home with one another. And that is Christianity’s “gigantic secret.”

~Prior, Fr. Joel Macul, OSB


Second Sunday of Advent

Mk 1:1-8
Is 40:1-5,9-11
2 Pet 3:8-14

Focus: God cares for us.
Function: We are called upon to acknowledge our sinfulness and our failing, to recognize God’s ways and to make room for God in our lives.

Dear sisters and brothers in the Lord, My youngest cousin, Christine, and her husband Joseph raise 4 boys, currently ages 10 – 6 months. The second one in particular, Maximilian, when he was about 2 – 3 years old, used to have temper tantrums every now and then: crying, kicking and screaming, stomping his feet. Usually such a temper tantrum happens when children don’t get their own way.

Adults though can display less pleasant behavior, too, when they don’t get their own way. They might not lie on the floor and kick and scream, but they may well pout, get angry, or walk out after slamming a door. Getting our own way seems to be something we struggle with all our lives. It easily obstructs “conducting [our]selves in holiness and devotion,” as St. Peter in our second reading puts it. Our own way must make room for God’s ways.

Today’s Scripture texts speak to us about the ways of God. Our first reading is taken from the book of Isaiah, the second part, which was written at a time when the people of Israel had been deported to Babylon, into exile, and lived far away from home. The prophet has good news for them. He is telling them, in the name of God: You’ve experienced enough sorrow, and lived in a foreign land for too long. God will lead you into freedom and back home.

This message is given in the form of a dialogue between God and heavenly beings, one of whom summons the others to prepare the way and so to make it possible for the people of Israel to return, led by God, to the promised land and to the home of their ancestors. God cares for his people, Isaiah says, God guides them as a shepherd guides his flock. He gathers the lambs in his arms. God will make sure that his people are well.

“In the desert prepare a way for the Lord!” This call was originally meant quite physically and politically: The Persian King Cyrus, inspired by God, had given permission; now the people can go back home and will do so, in a new Exodus, from captivity into freedom, like at the time of Moses.

Over five hundred years later, John the Baptist considers it his task to prepare the way. Preaching in the desert, he calls his contemporaries to an inner journey of repentance and conversion, to a journey of aligning their own wills and ways with the will and the ways of God, to a journey of becoming ready for the mightier one than himself, the Messiah, who will come after him.

In today’s second reading, St. Peter calls upon his early Christian community in Rome to come to repentance, in order for them to be ready for the day of the Lord, the second coming of Jesus,
the new heaven and the new earth, in which righteousness dwells.

All three readings point us to what the season of Advent is about. Our word advent is derived from the Latin adventus, which means arrival. We await and prepare for God’s arrival in Jesus as the infant of Bethlehem, for his arrival in glory at the end of time, but also for God’s arrival today in our own hearts.

Dear sisters and brothers in the Lord, God cares for us. We are called upon to acknowledge our sinfulness and our failing to recognize God’s ways and to make room for God in our lives.

Isaiah’s, John the Baptist’s and Peter’s words are directed also to us today. The God who cares for us is at the side of those who feel imprisoned in difficult life situations, in a depression may be, perhaps in part caused by this time of pandemic which never seems to want to end, or in an addiction perhaps. God guides and leads out those who want to be set free!

A good illustration of this for the world in which we live today is the GPS. The GPS tells us where to go and when to turn. If we haven’t followed its direction, it will tell us: Take the next right turn or: turn around! That’s what the advent prophets do for us, too: they show the way,
they tell us to turn around where and when it is necessary.

Yes, God calls upon us to turn around, to convert, to change our minds—that’s what the Greek word for repentance, metanoia, literally means. If we do so in prayer and in the sacrament of reconciliation during Advent and strive to correct our weaknesses, God’s ways will become our ways more and more and we will become ready for God’s arrival in our hearts and in our lives. AMEN.

~Fr. Thomas Leitner, OSB


Solemnity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe

Ezekiel 34:11–12, 15–17
1 Corinthians 15:20–26, 28
Matthew 25:31–46

In Pope Francis’ encyclical Fratelli Tutti, there is a subtitle for several paragraphs that reads “beginning with the least.” At first it may not sound like much, but given the context of the parable we just heard, it is everything. Where the parable ends with recognition of the “least,” Francis says we must begin. The people behind the faces of the hungry, thirsty, stranger, naked, sick and imprisoned are the people that Jesus identifies with. You and I can easily extend that list today. If we are to begin to look for the face of Jesus, then we must begin with them.

Pope Francis often speaks of a ‘culture of encounter’ and how essential this is if humanity is to have a future worthy of it. And is that not what we find in the parable today? We hear of righteous men and women who engaged in an encounter with what we might not at first glance even call culture. But in fact, those who are hungry, thirsty, homeless, a foreigner and a prisoner are part even of our culture. And to leave them out, would mean that we have a lopsided view of our culture. The demand on us Christians to include them is high. Why? Because if we stand in the world of the parable, then we find that such folks are part of Christ’s Body as much as you and I. To refuse to recognize the poor and vulnerable would dehumanize them even more and leave us as the judge taking the place of the Son of Man. If we fail to engage in encounter with them as Christians, we are in fact refusing to gaze upon Christ himself. And the end result of that stance towards encounter is that we find ourselves cut off from belonging to Christ as much as the devil. But this would be our doing.

The scene today is a final encounter of the Shepherd King with his flock of sheep and herd of goats. In this encounter he is looking for those who belong to his Kingdom. Those who belong, it seems, are not those who cry out “Lord, Lord,” holding up placards at rallies to honor him. Jesus has made it clear that his honor guard does not lie with those chanting his name. Calling out, “Lord, Lord,” does not seem to be the entrance ticket into the Kingdom. We hear that in the Sermon on the Mount; we heard it a few weeks ago in another end time parable when five women were foolish enough not to bring oil. When they finally got some found themselves outside the wedding feast. What counts for this King is where you recognized him out there in his country. Did you and I recognize him among the broken, among the needy, among the neglected and down trodden? Did we recognize him in suffering humanity? It is among these that his royal image appears.

The crown on our King his is dignity and worth seen in the faces of those from humanity might just walk away. Those who recognize this face and take time to encounter it, meet with it and bring forth the dignity in these faces, these are the Kingdom people. They know who else belongs to the Kingdom and they are willing to encounter them and call forth their own royal dignity.

The surprise in today’s parable is that those who encountered the sick, the foreigner, the hungry and so forth and responded to them with dignity did not even know that their King was there. They engaged in an encounter with broken humanity and offered something of their own humanity in return. They were simply themselves. They were grounded in the culture of the Kingdom so well that acting as a citizen of the Kingdom flowed from their hearts without question. They were true children of the Father who makes the rain fall on good and bad alike. They were children of the Father for whom mercy is the first commandment. Their right hand did not know what their left hand was doing. They were simply children of their Father in heaven encountering other children of the same Father. So of course, they were also serving the Father’s Son, the Son of Man, The Son of humanity.

For doing what their humanity called for, namely, encountering the weak, suffering and forgotten, they were being true to humanity. They were engaging their own humanity in such a way that it was generating more humanity as it were. It is no real surprise then that they enter a kingdom prepared for them from the foundation of the world. They have been in touch with true humanity as it was from the foundation of the world. They did not reject part of humanity because it was experiencing a lack, because it was least. No, they embraced it as part of themselves and cared for it.

Christ is the King who has a face in all that is human, even the least of humanity. It is his resurrection that has allowed him to touch all humanity. He is the new Adam of which Paul speaks, the new humanity, risen from the grave. His risen self is universal; it is no longer limited or time bound. He is the first fruits of a new humanity working now to transform all that is human. All now belong to him; the least are his brothers and sisters, he says. He identifies not only with my personal brokenness, my isolation, my abuse. He identifies with all of humanity’s woundedness.

Our King’s kingdom includes all the nations, all the richness of cultures and diversity. He, the risen Lord, holds it together. We who believe in this Kingdom and are graced with living in it are graced also with the mission to encounter in his name all who live in it, the least and the great. To encounter the great may seem easy, but discipleship and the accountability of discipleship will always be based on seeing and meeting the least. Our task, while there is still time, is to take note of what we see….When Lord did we see you hungry….We can only encounter and engage with what we see.

This feast of Christ the King calls us to see with the same comprehensive vision that Christ now has, as vision that encompasses all of humanity. And seeing, to go forth and meet it not as other, as different, but as a part of myself, a part of ourselves. For this so-called stranger may need our care, our thoughtfulness, our kindness and our generosity. Christ was raised to restore a solidarity and communion within humanity. For that he was wounded and gave his life. When we begin to become part of the process of nurturing human dignity, community and freedom, then we are cultivating the fruits of the Kingdom culture that Jesus will one day come and hand over to God the Father who is all in all.

~Prior, Fr. Joel Macul, OSB

32nd Sunday in Ordinary Time

Wisdom 6:12–16
1 Thessalonians 4:13–18
Matthew 25:1–13

At the end of the liturgy of baptism, a candle is lit from the paschal candle and presented to the newly baptized with these words:

Your have been enlightened by Christ. Walk always as a child of light. Keep this flame of faith alive in your heart. When the Lord comes, may you go out to meet him with all the saints in the heavenly kingdom.

Behind this short presentation of the baptismal candle lies the parable we hear today of the Wise and Foolish young women. Intrinsic to baptism is light and enlightenment. With baptism comes the mission to keep the light burning until the Lord comes. No sooner are we plunged into this new life in Christ then we hear of his coming again.

As we come to the end of our liturgical year, we are drawn to the Lord’s coming. We are reminded that we know not the day or the hour only that he is coming. The very first generation of Christians thought they would see that coming in their lifetime. He did not come and that delay is reflected in both Paul’s letter and in Matthew’s Gospel. Paul assures the community that it does not matter whether you are dead or alive when the Lord comes; he will come for all. Matthew shifts the focus from anxiety about the delay (they can’t be anxious because all fall asleep!) to rather how prepared are you for the coming. The stress lies on what are we to do now so that when the time comes, the bridegroom can truly be met appropriately.

The words about Jesus’ second coming don’t strike a loud cord for most of us. Only those few who make predictions about it are concerned, but then they seem to have missed the Lord’s word about not knowing day or hour. That belongs to the Father. Perhaps what is more urgent is that of our own personal end. In drifting from consciousness about Jesus’ coming and some end time, we might also drift from remembering there is the personal end of our biological life. This may have awakened somewhat in the face of covid-19 when our end can be closer than we thought. It can draw closer to us each day as we hear about the number of deaths rising. Of course, we can always say, well that is someone else surely, not me.

The parable of Jesus offers us an image of what the end will look like, or better what Jesus’ coming will look like. It is in the images of the parable that we can find some way to approach the need for preparedness.

What the ten women are about is a meeting. This is the focus in the first sentence of the parabe. The midnight cry awakening to action is: “Behold the bridegroom, come out to meet him!” And when he comes, they meet him and with him enter the wedding feast. What the women are waiting for is to meet the Lord so they can join him in the wedding banquet. The end, the goal is the wedding banquet. This is the image of our end, of our next life as some like to say. And entrance into that wedding feast is meeting the Lord. The waiting and the excitement are about a meeting with the Lord. The wedding feast provides the occasion; it is the climax to the preparation. At the heart of it all is meeting the Lord and being with him. This is our goal. And life now is living and acting in a way that exhibits the meeting that is to come.

At the beginning of his Gospel, Matthew introduces Jesus to us as Emmanuel, God with us. He is God’s commitment to us; he is God’s presence with us. God wants to be with us. Baptism puts us in the direction of transforming our longing into being with the Lord. Our discipleship is really about shaping our lives to respond to the Lord’s wanting to be with us. Our thirsting, our longing, as we sang, is to be with the Lord. In the parable Jesus affirms that longing as our real identity.…Some of us may find ourselves locked out from the great banquet. How did that happen? The bridegroom did not see his face in us. He did not see that our lives were shaped by wanting to be with him. We said the words, but our actions did not match a heart that truly mirrored him in this world. Our longing went awry.

In the parable the crisis comes just when the call to meet goes out. Some women realized they had no more oil. They were not prepared for the meeting. They appealed for help but no one could offer more oil. The oil is not just a thing; the oil is what keeps the flame going. The oil is my life of longing. I can’t give you that inner life that directs me in ways that nurture my longing. What keeps my longing, what keeps my light burning brightly is doing the Father’s will. The person doing the Father’s will is wise, Jesus says. And it is precisely keeping the Father’s word, his desire, his plan for us alive in our hearts that we pray for in the prayer Jesus taught us. And that longing and desire, you and I cannot buy and you cannot get at the last minute before the meeting. Preparation for the meeting is something you and I grow with and into until the day of meeting. We carry that wanting to be with the Lord within our very being. The words of Jesus when he came as Emmanuel awakened that longing within the human heart. The longing had died or was misdirected. Acting on the word of God is keeping oil in the lamp. That is what Jesus will see on the day he comes to meet us: someone who acted on his word. It is too late on that day to clothe him in the naked or welcome him in the stranger; it is too late at midnight to reconcile with enemy or friend; it is too late on that night to go around asking for forgiveness and going the extra mile. The parable makes it clear: the meeting at midnight really happened in the daylight over many years and in all those opportunities for a kind word or a gesture of healing and peace an admittance of wrong.

Women are central to our Word today. Notice that the ten virgins or young women are not the only women offered us today. There is God’s wisdom personified as Lady Wisdom. She is looking for us, desiring to be with us, sitting outside our door, right there in the morning. She is there in our daily rounds and flow of life. She is God’s gift to us to help us in our seeking, or desiring and longing. She is there so that we stay focused. In a real way, she prepares us for our great meeting. But even here, we must want her, be looking for her. She is always there. Even in these times of uncertainty and confusion, a time of seeming lack of focus on what is basically human, she has not left us. She is ready when we are. And her presence too is imagined as one of meeting. She wants to meet with us “in all solicitude.” Hers is a way of caring, of reminding us of the word that gives life. She is present graciously; she is a gift. She is the gift the wise virgins accepted and so had oil till the end of their days. She is the gift that provides entry to be with the Lord forever.

Our Eucharist, too, is preparation for the wedding feast of the Kingdom. From it we take the oil of the Word and sacrament. These will help us to keep that baptismal candle burning so that whether awake or asleep, when the cry comes, we will be with the Lord at last. We are waiting now for that final meeting, one that is gracious, filled with solicitude and with the joy that comes with a wedding. Let us accept the gift of wisdom’s oil so that we will be ready to meet him when He comes. For he will come.

~Prior, Fr. Joel Macul, OSB

All Souls Day - 2020

Wisdom 3:1–9
Romans 5:5–11
John 6:37–40

The Wisdom writer sets the tone for the commemoration today. The tone is one of hope and love: “The faithful shall abide with him in love; grace and mercy are with his holy ones; his care is with his elect.”

Today’s remembrance must be set in the background and foreground of mercy. Those we remember today are the beneficiaries of God’s love, his outreach, his creating arm. Paul continues the theme when he presents Jesus as the proof of God’s love. And that proof is that Christ enters into the reality of sin on our behalf, sin’s greatest face being death. God’s love for us is manifest in his Son’s willingness to take on our humanity to its depths. God’s mission is bringing us back into the fold of his embrace. The remembrance today of those whom we knew and those whom we do not know, we are about all the dead today, is fundamentally to recall how God’s mercy wins in the end. Death is not the end even if it looks like it. What is the end is God’s fidelity to our flesh.

Jesus makes the point very clear: I came to do the Father’s will. And his will is that nothing belonging to him be lost. The Father is about saving not losing. So, if there is any hint of judgment that we would like to bring to anyone whom we may have known or heard about, today it is taken away from us. Instead, Jesus takes over and says, it is life that I am about. The love the Father has poured into my heart, I have poured into yours in the Spirit. And that love means life.

Today we are given the opportunity to profess faith in our solidarity with the human race— Our solidarity with humanity as it experiences death. No doubt each of us will bring to mind parents, relatives, friends…all those we lost and can name. But, in reality today is about all who have passed from this world and to see them connected with the Lord of the living. We understand ourselves as one with the masses of those gone before us. Yet at the same time, we understand that they belong to the Father just as we belong to the Father. And we understand that we too will join them in solidarity in dying.

We believe that when God created he saw that everything was good, very good when it came to us human beings. It is easy for us to affirm that in what is alive. We might hesitate to say that death is part of that good. But today we also say that even in death God has seen it and transformed it into a good. Jesus in the flesh takes our death and transforms it into a means and entrance into eternal life.

We remember all who have died, those who died in Christ through baptism and those whose faith is known to the Father alone. Today we remember them in mercy, as chosen and loved. And in this Eucharist we will touch Jesus’ communion with us in his death so that we can have a share in the life and love he promises to those who are faithful.

~ Prior, Fr. Joel Macul, OSB


Holy Mass - 27th Sunday in Ordinary Time-2020

Isaiah 5:1–7
Philippians 4:6–9
Matthew 21:33–43

Vineyards are in the news these days. But the news is not good. The wildfires have approached and burned down and out some of the well-known vineyard areas of our country in Napa and Sonoma Valleys, California. It is a loss for the vineyard owners who had restaurants and guest houses on these vineyards and a loss for those of us who enjoyed drinking the vintage from these vineyards.

And vineyards are in the news we hear from the Scriptures today as well. And for both vineyards we are asked to visit in the parables given us, the news seems not always to be so cheerful as the drink that comes from these vineyards implies. But, if vineyards are not part of our immediate experience here today, then look closely at the stories. Harvest is very much a part of our stories today. And harvest we know firsthand these days. It features in household conversation. And there is harvest language in abundance in our stories: for these stories are about yield, produce, fruit. Two vineyards are offered us today. They are both parables inviting us to be part of the experience. But upon an attentive listening the stories have their own nuances.

Isaiah offers us a poem a friend of God sings of God’s vineyard. It starts out as a love poem but ends up on a very discordant note, a sour note we might say, literally and figuratively. We first hear about the love God has for his vineyard. God has shown tender love for his vineyard, a vineyard we know is an image for his own people. He spaded it, cleared it and planted it with choicest vines. God has invested himself in this vineyard, he has shown tender love for his people. He has spared nothing in time and labor. He did not hire anyone else to do the work; he did it himself. He protected his people so that others would do it no harm. He got everything ready for the harvest, even building a special wine press. We could ask ourselves if we even notice God’s loving care in our lives. God is nurturing us the chosen and choicest vine and giving us opportunities to bear fruit—for us as individuals and also for us as a believing community, the church. So what have I or we done with God’s nurturing care, with his opportunities for doing good?

When the time came for the harvest, the narrator says, the vintner found only sour grapes. The tone of his love song changes. We hear a cry from the heart: What more could I have done for my vineyard? What more could I do? How many a parent has not uttered the same when after years of nurturing, educating and coaxing, a child goes in a very different direction. How often have we heard that lament from a parent: Where did I go wrong, what did I forget to do? This lament is born of love. The same for our God over his community.

For Isaiah it is clear in the parable: it is the vineyard itself that has gone wrong, not the vintner, not the God of his people. The poem ends up saying that the community in some way resisted what God was cultivating it to be. It produced wild grapes. It did not take to the love and care that had been shown it. The community was under the care of God but in the end it distorted that care. In the poem God makes it very clear where the failure lies. For when God came looking for the yield of his vineyard what did he expect to find: judgment and justice he says. This is fruit that the God of Israel expected to find in a people that were his very own.

Justice for Isaiah, justice in God’s covenantal relationship means fair and equitable relationships in the community. God is about justice and those who belong to God are also to be about his justice. This justice looks like honest dealings among members. Justice is lacking, then, when one group of people take advantage of a weaker group; justice is lacking when no space is given for a word from those who are down and out; justice is failing when labor is reduced to profit and not the enhancement of a worker’s dignity and self worth. And justice is gone when the poor and vulnerable of any kind are no longer even seen but rather passed over or passed by or worse, kept out; and justice is not about tearing down my name, my honor to make you look strong for injustice is found in words as much as in action.

All that says the poet is nothing but a vineyard of wild grapes, sour grapes. Over that, God laments. The justice he has come looking for in the community he nurtured, he sees and hears has turned into bloodshed and shouts of violence. Isaiah, like his fellow prophets knows what that means; it means collapse of the community. A community belonging to God that does not reflect God’s justice is not a community in the truth.

Isaiah’s parable about the vineyard gone wild and sour puts us on notice. If we are serious about being the people of God, then we need to heed the spading, the clearing and the planting of the best that our God is doing with us. No matter how you read Isaiah’s parable or Jesus’ parable, the end is a judgment on our life now. And the judgement is whether we are true to our identity as the people who belong to God. The judgement is one we actually determine by our remaining within the framework of the covenant Jesus has renewed in his death and resurrection. And that covenant will always have at is heart a care for the other, a concern for the one who has lost their voice and their place in the human family. You were a slave and I freed you. You were dead and I brought you to life. That is our God’s clearing and spading. He cannot force us to accept what he has done for us; that is our part of the work of bearing fruit. But he has given us a word and example how it is to be done and that it can be done. The Father has given us the Son, rejected and scorned, to be the foundation of the community of the new covenant.

Between our vineyard parables, we hear Paul offering a word of encouragement to his favorite and beloved community at Philippi. He is speaking of the kind of fruit that will mark their community. In truth, he is perhaps giving us a view as to what our fruit can look like. He offers it to us to taste: “Whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is gracious, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise..think about these things…then the God of peace will be with you” (Phil 4:8–9).

This is the kind of fruitful community we long for—for ourselves, our church and our country. Let us recognize this fruit the Father of the vineyard is nurturing in us and make it our own…then there will be shalom, peace—then the Father’s love will have borne fruit.

~ Prior, Fr. Joel Macul, OSB


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