Our Darkest Day

And he hath broken my teeth one by one, he hath fed me with ashes. And my soul is removed far off from peace, I have forgotten good things. And I said: My end and my hope is perished from the Lord. Remember my poverty, and transgression, the wormwood, and the gall. I will be mindful and remember, and my soul shall languish within me.

These things I shall think over in my heart, therefore will I hope. The mercies of the Lord that we are not consumed: because his commiserations have not failed. They are new every morning, great is thy faithfulness. The Lord is my portion, said my soul: therefore will I wait for him. (Lam 3:16-24)

Don't worry about the world coming to an end today. It's already tomorrow in Australia. (Charles Schultz)

This image of the Rising Dawn, Orient, Dayspring, or Sun of Justice (depending on the verse or translation), is one of the most used of the coming Christ. There seems to be something in our human programming that attracts us to this as it seems universal among various pagan religions. What images hope like the rising sun? It’s often used in analogies for certainty, as in, “As sure as the sun rises in the east…” And as this rising sun, an image of the our Lord’s Advent, Nativity, Resurrection, and Return, a hope we can believe in with certainty, comes up over the snow (the picture is the view from my doorstep), today in Vespers, we address our Savior as “Oriens”, the Rising Dawn.

I’m sure the ancient mystagogues figured this out years ago, but the dawn of this day is special, since it's our shortest day, making “Oriens” a fitting placement on the calendar.

This brings to mind an interesting documentary I saw last year, The Star of Bethlehem. It’s impressive. That’s assuming the self-produced film isn’t a hoax, and not being much of a star gazer myself I’m not in a place to pass judgment. The filmmaker and star, Frederick Larson, details his personal faith journey, his research and his amazing findings, showing what he believes is the real star. However, I was uncomfortable with part of what he stated.

According to the film, as I can recollect, he found these amazing messages in the stars around the time of Jesus’ birth that seem to correlate with the biblical account. However, Christian Tradition was ignored, and without a good reason in my opinion.

According to his figuring, the magi arrived somewhere around December 25th. I assume he’s using the Gregorian Calendar, but he didn’t specify. After showing these results, he goes on to say, “I’m not saying that Jesus was born on December 25th. I don’t think anyone believes that.” [My recollection of the quote]

Well, I hate to break it to him, but I do. His findings actually might suggest it if he would take another look at them and the biblical Nativity. I’m a year removed from watching it, so I can’t document it completely, but I don’t think he took into account two facts:

1. Zachariah was incensing the Holiest of Holies roughly six months before the annunciation. Such a ritual could only take place on one day in the year – Yom Kippur. This would have occurred between mid-September and mid-October, Gregorian (it would be interesting to see the actual dates of Yom Kippur from 2 and 3 BC). From a theological perspective, this makes perfect sense – to announce the forerunner, the one who will provide a baptism of repentance, on the Jewish Day of Atonement. This, quite conceivably, could have taken place on the Autumn Equinox. So, with some rough reckoning (Annunciation six months later, and our Lord’s Nativity nine months later) we can see, with the Bible as our guide, that Jesus must have been born sometime near December 25th.

2. Under the Julian calendar, June 24th was the Summer Solstice, and December 25th was the Winter Solstice. Of course, June 24th is the Nativity of John the Baptist, the one who said, “He must increase, and I must decrease.” And, on the old calendar, the sun in fact did decrease daily, until the darkest day of the year, December 25th. God could pick no better day than this one to bring to us the Light of the World, when the world was most in need of light.


The date of December 25th fits biblically and uses the natural rhythms of nature to tell us something theologically. Frederick Larson, for all his interesting work on the biblical star, missed that. I still highly recommend this video – it is extremely impressive despite my quibbles. But it’s too bad, because even if he doesn’t give the date of Christmas credence, his research still points to it. His findings also gives the magi longer than twelve days to arrive at Bethlehem, something they would definitely need if they in fact launched from Susa, Babylon, Nineveh, or some other place of Zoroastrian-Persian origin. An arrival on January 6th (Julian) certainly wouldn’t seem out of the question with his findings.

I guess the point is, Catholic Tradition is reliable, as sure as the sun rises in the east. In fact, more sure, because even the atheists know that the day will come when the day won’t come.

And although I will keep in line with the Church and celebrate Christmas on December 25th, it is still not lost on me that Jesus was born on the old December 25th, the Winter Solstice, which is in fact today. Happy Birthday, my Lord!

O Rising Sun, splendour of light eternal and sun of righteousness: Come and enlighten those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death. (Vespers Antiphon, Divine Office for Dec 21)

The Sky is Falling!!!

This unresting anxiety is the greatest evil which can happen to the soul, sin only excepted. Just as internal commotions and seditions ruin a commonwealth, and make it incapable of resisting its foreign enemies, so if our heart be disturbed and anxious, it loses power to retain such graces as it has, as well as strength to resist the temptations of the Evil One, who is all the more ready to fish (according to an old proverb) in troubled waters.

Anxiety arises from an unregulated desire to be delivered from any pressing evil, or to obtain some hoped-for good. Nevertheless nothing tends so greatly to enchance the one or retard the other as over-eagerness and anxiety.  - St Francis de Sales, Doctor of the Church, Introduction to a Devote Life, Part IV

Light blogging this week.  Well, make that no blogging until now.  Why?  I have to admit that my attitude this week would have been something very wrong to share.  Anxiety has been hard at work on me.  Work has been about as stressful as I can remember.  And the news lately?  I know it can get worse, but this steady drip of death news is sucking the atmosphere dry of hope.

Let’s see, where to begin?  Everything Obama has been bad news.  Thanks to the chance discovery of uncounted ballots in Minnesota (and those chance discoveries always seem to favor the party of death) and the betrayal of a pro-death Republican in Pennsylvania, the president now has the rest of this congress to alter the fabric of America for generations.  And not just our country.  He also wants to export modern American family values to countries that just aren’t aborting their kids fast enough.  Kathleen Sebelius gets in without a wimper thanks to a potential swine flu epidemic.  And now we have a vacancy on the Supreme Court that will be filled by someone even more radical than Obama, not that Justice Souter was any picnic (thanks a lot HW). 

And what’s to turn the tide?  Obama is in the oval office thanks to a growing electorate of the unmarried.  In 2007, 40% of the births in the United States were illegitimate.  Courts are dictating gay marriage, and no one revolts?  This nation has forgotten that the primary purpose of marriage is for the procreation, support, and education of children.  Now marriage is all about self.  So even though the people still instinctively know something is wrong with gay marriage, they can’t argue why without sounding like a bigot.  In two generations, who will be left to explain the purpose of marriage?  Two generations ago, people instinctively knew abortion was wrong.  Four generations ago, people instinctively knew contraception was wrong.  Slowly, sometimes not so slowly, this Culture of Death is claiming our country, a nation that was once portrayed as that “shining city on the hill.”

What’s to turn the tide?  The institutions that saturate our secular culture and influence minds and behaviors are all on the side of this brave, new America.  Entertainment media, news media, corporations, education at all levels – how is one to avoid the groupthink that sex, materialism, and uber self-esteem is the key to happiness?

So I think you get the gist of my anxiety this week.  Bleak prospects at work, bleak prospects for the future of this country (not to mention all the other countries unfortunate enough to follow our lead) and, not mentioned previously, an inordinate number of friends, family and co-workers are going through tough times with employment, sickness, and other tragic circumstances.  Anxiety.  That doesn’t make for an interesting blog post.  Nor a beneficial one.

The Blessed Mother’s Immaculate Heart will prevail.  I know that, with all my heart I know that.  Christ is the victor, and I’m on His side most of the time.  But it is such a challenge to see the decline of goodness in our time and have faith that God will bring about a greater good.  My faith is weak, therefore, I fear.

But the Lord’s mercy is never exhausted, even for those of weak faith.  Today, I have a reprieve.  I failed to pray for it.  In fact, my prayer life slipped mightily during the last week.  Nevertheless, He’s granted a reprieve, and it came though my marriage and the fruit of that marriage.  It came from a child.

I usually say a rosary or chaplet in my car or listen to talk radio on the way home.  I really didn’t feel like praying today (**Alert – I am aware that this is the best time to pray.  Thanks for thinking that anyway**), nor did I want to increase my anxiety by listing to other people complain about what’s going on.  That might alert me to something I didn’t know, and ignorance is preferable in my situation.

I’m weak, so I turned to a source designed for people in my state.  Pop music.  While commuting home from work, to take my mind off the misery of this week, I turned to the music that has made a considerable contribution to the Culture of Death.  To my credit, I dialed away from most of the songs that were too ME ME ME ME ME focused, but a few of them slipped through, like Jesse’s Girl, and Tonight and the Rest of MY Life (I only know the chorus to that song, and listening to the rest, I got the impression that Nina is signing about being a demon.  How’s that for the soul!).  I got to sing along to one of the great sap songs in history, “Honey you!  Are my shining star.  Don't you go away.”  (Don’t worry, that song ain’t going away from any of the heads of you blessed readers.  He he.)  You just have to sway along with that one.  And I got to chill to a Counting Crows song I’d never hear before, but yet I had, if you know what I mean.

And then I had to gasp as I’m sort of singing along to Man on the Moon (“sort of”, meaning my ears cannot discern what Michael Stipe is singing most of the time) and discovered, for the first time, that the song takes silly cheap-shots at organized religion, modeled no doubt by the Catholic Church.

Well, at least it ended on a high note.  A song about anxiety came on the radio.  It’s a song called Overkill, one I used to sing along to in my adolescent years.  This was a version I’d never heard before.  This was Collin Hay solo, just him and his guitar.  Very nice, and very apropos for the mood.  I sat in the driveway until it ended.

Then I entered the house singing.  Don’t worry, my family is used to it.  “Day after day, it reappears.  Night after night, my heartbeat shows the fear.  Ghosts appear and fade away.”  My daughter, bless her, hugged me as I walked in, and listened to me sing as I made my way to the kitchen toward my wife. 

“Daddy, what song is that you're singing?”

“It’s an old song called Overkill.  It’s by a group called Men At Work.”

“Are we going to sing that at Mass?”

My wife and I just about died laughing.  Anxiety gone!  And it hasn’t returned.  Thank you Lord! You truly stoop to conquer. 

(For those of you who don’t get the irony of a five-year old asking if we will be singing a pop song called Overkill at the mass, you obviously aren’t on the All Are Welcome-Gather Us In-City of God-Canticle of the Sun-We Are Called five-week cycle.  You didn’t get it, but that’s okay, because you already have so much)

In your mercy keep us free from sin and protect us from all anxiety as we wait in joyful hope for the coming of our Savior, Jesus Christ. – Roman Missal

The Catholic Mass: The Love of Jesus for You

In the body of Christ today, especially in those who are separated from the Church (Protestants), I hear a lot of negativity surrounding the use of the word "religion". They like to emphasize "relationship" in contrast with "religion". They say things like, "Jesus did not come to give us religion; He came to give us a relationship."

But this is a fallacy. Jesus came to give us both a religion and a relationship.  Part of it stems from the fact that the Protestant faith isn't a religion at all - they are separated from the true religion. Protestant denominations seem to implement a set of rules because a set of rules is what they believe religion is supposed to be: thou shalt not drink wine, thou shalt not dance, thou shalt not do this, that or the other thing that their denomination 'says' is wrong.

In truth, many Catholics see our faith in much the same way: a bunch of rules and restrictions. Why does the Catholic Church force me to go to church on Sunday? Why do they force me to go to confession when I am in mortal sin before I receive the Eucharist? Why does the Catholic Church force me to confess my sins to a priest "rather than" just confessing them to God himself?  The "questions" are actually statements; the asker doesn't really want to know the answer to them. Rather they are a means for them to vent discontent toward a religion that they feel "bound" to practice.

I understand this sentiment. If we look at religion as a set of restrictions, then religion appears to "put a damper on our life". We play-act faith by going to mass, going through the ritual, but not letting anything really penetrate our lives.

But that is not what Jesus intended when he founded the Catholic Church. What Jesus intended for us was to experience the mystical reality of him through the physical world that we can experience - through the seven sacraments and the body of Christ, which is the Church, starting at the visible head on Earth (the Pope) and within all consecrated and lay people.

Each of the sacraments that Jesus gave to us are an expression of his love for us. We experience his love when we are renewed and justified at baptism, as we feel the water poured over us. We experience him physically in the Eucharist and the liturgy of the mass, when we ponder and remember the redeeming sacrifice he made for us, how he gave himself up for us and our sins - and we taste his very flesh. We experience continuing renewal through the sacrament of penance (or confession) as we experience the forgiving action and hear the words from the priest - they let us know in a very real way that our sins are forgiven. In confirmation we are sealed with the holy spirit with oil, a feel and a smell. Similar with the annointing of the sick, we hear the prayers, are annointed with oil and taste viaticum, food for the journey to heaven. Consecrated persons experience what must be a profound laying on of hands that imputes an indelible mark upon their soul, and their marriage to the Lord starts not when they reach heaven but on that very day of consecration/ordination.

In that same way, the liturgy is full of signs of Jesus' love for us, but yet so few of us know the spiritual realities that are happening in the mass because they take place in the invisible spiritual realm.  So the liturgy is designed to make those realities known to us.  One can really learn to understand God's love for us by becoming knowledgeable about the liturgy and what is behind the rubrics of the mass.  

That is what we hope to give to you in this blog - a respect for the dignity and beauty of the Catholic mass, a realization of just how important it is to have good liturgy, and a deep understanding of the fullness of truth in the Catholic faith.  

The mass is the perfect prayer, an eternal offering of thanks for the love that he has given us.  Let us rejoice to have been given such a gift, and return the love that Jesus has shown with our whole selves, and live the true faith!

"Jesus also suffered outside the gate, to consecrate the people by his own blood.  Let us then go to him outside the camp, bearing the reproach that he bore. For here we have no lasting city, but we seek the one that is to come. Through him [then] let us continually offer God a sacrifice of praise, that is, the fruit of lips that confess his name." - Hebrews 13:12-15