The Life of Virtue

This is the final reflection for our Advent retreat.  It is the culmination of everything that has come before it, just as the birth of Jesus Christ is the culmination of God’s history and work among humankind.  I do hope that these reflections have helped you during this season of waiting, watching, and preparing. This week of Advent reveals that God intends to do amazing things in the world and for individuals and for His chosen people.  However, the ways that He chooses to accomplish those things are far from usual or expected.  So, these final days of Advent offer an opportunity for us view reality from a new perspective, and to change the ways that we respond to God’s graces in our lives. In the Sunday readings, and during the next six days, one specific type of miracle stands out clearly above the rest.  Throughout the week, we hear four different stories of God placing life within the wombs of women who were not supposed to conceive.  An...

Advent is a great time for a retreat.  Many folks, however, aren’t able to steal away for three whole days at a time.  So these four weekly reflections, made available on each Sunday of Advent, are meant to be a miniature retreat for readers.  This four-part retreat (yes, even on paper or on the screen) is intended to help readers awaken, or reawaken, faith in Jesus Christ.  In the midst of this “Most Wonderful Time of the Year,” it is right to stop for a few moments and remember exactly why we have a reason for Wonder. The readings for the first Sunday of the Church’s liturgical year may seem odd to some.  Isn’t Advent supposed to lead to Christmas, the season when we worship the baby in the manger scene?  Why, then, do we hear admonitions against “the works of darkness,” and Jesus speaking to His disciples of the last days?  This is supposed to be a season filled with joy and hope and visions of sugar plums and all that, right? The simpl...

When we look around at the world, the culture, and human beings, there is little room for doubt that something needs to be fixed.  Our daily experience proves to us that relationships and the rhythm of life are fractured and broken.  Yet, we fool ourselves if we think that we can create the solution to the problem.  More efficient and effective legal justice, along with more technichal and governmental oversight, will probably only serve to illuminate more and deeper troubles. Something else is needed to save individuals, social groups, and the collective culture from its clear and present woes.  And, that something must come from outside of the same individuals, groups, and culture.  That something must come from the Divine Source of all created life.  That something is mercy. The Catechism of the Catholic Church provides a simple definition of mercy: "the loving kindness, compassion, or forbearance shown to one who offends" (Glossary of the 2nd Editi...

The Gospel reading for the Fourth Sunday of Easter presents Jesus as a shepherd whose voice is recognized by His sheep.  During the ensuing days, Monday and Tuesday , the Church has read and heard subsequent passages from that tenth chapter of John's gospel.  By these Scriptures, and by the readings from Acts of the Apostles and the Psalms, Christians gain a deeper understanding of the purpose and the dynamics of the Shepherd-sheep relationship.  These three days of liturgical proclamation help one to realize that she must listen to the voice of the Good Shepherd, which echoes in the voice of the Church, for guidance toward her appointed end. Early in John 10, Jesus portrays Himself as the one true voice among the voices of strangers that sheep do not recognize.  Just a few verses later, the Lord announces that He is the source of salvation and abundant life in peaceful pastures.   His role as the supreme and divine pastor stands in stark contras...

Today, the Church celebrates the Solemnity of the Annunciation of the Lord.  There is a clear connection between this high liturgical feast day and the theological virtue of faith.  By the virtue of faith, this story is brought out of the past and made applicable in the lives of the Christian faithful in this age.  In this momentous celebration, God's people receive a beautiful revelation about the way that He meets us in order to bring us into deep communion with Him, even if we would be skeptical by natural, worldly standards. The Gospel reading for the daily liturgy is a perfect place to begin.  There, St. Luke records Mary's reception of the perplexing message of the angel, first with doubt, and then with freedom and fearlessness.  When Gabriel greeted Mary as the "favored one," she was troubled (Lk 1:28-29).  His only response was to tell her, "Don't worry, Mary, you're going to have a son out of wed-lock" (loose paraphrase of Lk 1:30-31).  S...

There are two, and only two, things that must increase within each of us throughout our lives.  Those two things are knowledge of truth and charity.  Knowledge and love are the most powerful faculties of every human person.  Without growing in one or both, any individual person will not develop fully as he is intended to do so.  Nothing is more important than these and, in fact, all good things in our lives flow directly from one or both of them. As I prayed over Scripture last week, and prepared for a lecture on truth and charity, an amazing connection occurred to me.  In John 8:32, while speaking to an audience of Jews, Jesus remarks, "and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free."  Whatever is found to be truth (not just truthful, but truth itself) clearly effects liberation of the person who seeks it.  So, finding truth leads to freedom. Later, Jesus clarifies the object of the search for truth, the reality that seekers must...

While I am not always able to do so (because of my own inner distractions as well as a few squirmy children), I do my very best to listen to every prayer that is said at Mass.  I was blessed during yesterday's Mass to struggle and strain to hear the words of the Preface, which is said before the Sanctus and the Eucharistic Prayer.  The prescribed preface for the First Sunday of Advent is as follows: For he assumed at his first coming the lowliness of human flesh, and so fulfilled the design you formed long ago, and opened for us the way to eternal salvation, that, when he comes again in glory and majesty and all is at last made manifest, we who watch for that day may inherit the great promise in which now we dare to hope. That prayer reminded me why I so thoroughly enjoy the Advent season, and why I am so attracted to the virtue of hope.  The extraordinary seasonal joy that I experience, as well as the attraction to preparing now for what is to come, hap...