December 28th - Feast of the Holy Innocents

Homily for the Feast of the Holy Innocents 2017

Fr Martin Browne OSB

Glenstal Abbey

Several times during the week after Christmas, we put away our bright white and golden vestments, and replace them with the blood-red colour of martyrs. As a medieval poet put it: ‘In the midst of life, behold Death has girt us round.’ The martyrdoms of St Stephen and St Thomas Beckett are both shocking in their way, but the massacre of the Holy Innocents whom we commemorate today is even more grotesque and monstrous: they were baby boys whose only ‘crime’ was to be born around the same time and in the same locality as the child Jesus.

When our community gathered here for Vespers on Christmas Eve, the very first antiphon we sang, ushering in the Christmas season, said: ‘The King of peace is magnified whose face all the world has desired’. The King of Peace…. Yet today, we are commemorating the murderous deeds of a ruler who was anything but peaceful. Fearful and jealous of the infant King of Peace, Herod ordered the extermination of all the male infants in Bethlehem. ‘In the midst of life, behold Death has girt us round.’

Today could be a good day….

- to pray for children and other non-combatants caught up in situations of war and conflict
- to pray for those whose lives are made to take second place to other people’s political agendas, sometimes even from the moment of conception
- to pray for those whose health, happiness, safety or welfare are made to take second place to the pride or whims of political rulers

‘In the midst of life, behold Death has girt us round.’ This is the stark reminder given to us by having such a gruesome commemoration in the middle of the Christmas Octave. Later in the poem, the poet asks a question: ‘Whom for help then shall we pray, Where shall grace be found?’ St John answers that question for us in today’s First Reading: ‘We have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous; and he is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world.’

Today’s feast reminds us of why we need a Saviour. It invites us not just to come and adore him, but to trust and believe that Jesus Christ is Lord and Saviour of the world. Our medieval poet concludes: ‘In the midst of hell would Sin drive us to despair; Whither shall we flee away? Where is refuge, where? With Thee, Lord Christ, alone! For Thou hast shed Thy precious blood, all our sins Thou makest good. Holy God! Holy and Strong! Holy and Immortal One, have mercy on us!

Being Sad at Christmastime

America Magazine - Jim McDermott

It was probably about six or seven years ago that I began to notice a strong undercurrent of sadness in myself around the holidays. I can’t say that I could pinpoint its origin; in fact, it had probably been there quite a while longer. 

The stranger thing was, I liked it.  It seemed right. 

As I started to pay more attention to that wellspring in subsequent holidays I noticed most of the Christmas songs or movies that I loved, if they were indeed “happy”, were only so in a wistful kind of way. (A notable exception: “Love Actually”, which I watch every year – though come to think of it the moment I relish most is probably Emma Thompson standing next to her bed listening to Joni Mitchell and fighting off tears as she realizes her marriage is not what she thought it was. I really am all in on a good Christmas sad, aren't I...)

Rather than the big and flashy candy colored productions I wanted as a kid, Christmas seems to me now more a time for solitude, a chance to acknowledge the losses or burdens of the year, the place and people that were now absent.

Now everything around us says that’s wrongheaded. Christmas is family. Christmas is light. Christmas is joy. And that’s true even, maybe especially, in the Church; what kind of maudlin sad sack of a priest preaches “Merry Christmas; might be time for a good cry, or a little time alone”?

But maybe the sadness that some of us feel at the holidays is not self-pity but invitation. There was a great Maryland province Jesuit named Horace McKenna who spent a good part of his life working with the poor and homeless in Washington, D.C. He once had this to say:

“When God lets me into Heaven, I think I’ll ask to go off in a corner somewhere for half an hour and sit down and cry because the strain is off, the work is done, and I haven’t been unfaithful or disloyal. All these needs that I have known are in the hands of Providence and I won’t have to worry any longer who’s at the door, whose breadbox is empty, whose baby is sick, whose house is shaken and discouraged, and whose children can’t read.”

At Christmas we celebrate the Incarnation, the presence of God in our midst. And while one impulse in that situation is to bring gifts, another I think is that of McKenna – we have the sense that we can lay our burdens down for a bit. We don’t have to be strong or put on a happy face. We can go off in a corner with the Lord somewhere, share our losses, our pain or our exhaustion, and just have a good cry.

“Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened," says Jesus, "and I will give you rest.”

December 26th - St Stephen the Proto-Martyr

Today is the second day in the octave of Christmas. The Church celebrates the Feast of St. Stephen, the first Christian martyr. Stoned outside Jerusalem, he died praying for his executioners. He was one of the seven deacons who helped the apostles; he was "filled with faith and with the Holy Spirit," and was "full of fortitude." The Church draws a comparison between the disciple and his Master, emphasizing the imitation of Christ even unto the complete gift of self. 

Catholic Culture - St Stephen
American Catholic - St Stephen
Fisheaters - St Stephen 
Catholic Culture - Catholic Activity: Day Two ~ Activities for the Feast of St. Stephen
St. Stephen, first martyr, pray for us in this age of blood and martyrdom - 2016 saw new martyrs being created worldwide. Perhaps include petitions to the first Christian martyr throughout the new year.

Pope Francis Angelus address of 26 December 2017

Dear brothers and sisters, buongiorno!

After celebrating the birth of Jesus on earth, today we celebrate the birth of Saint Stephen into heaven. Even if at first sight it could seem that there is no link between the two events, there is one, in fact, and it is very strong.

Yesterday, in the liturgy of Christmas, we heard proclaimed, “The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us” (Jn 1,14). Saint Stephen created a crisis for the leaders of his people because “filled with faith and the Holy Spirit” (Acts 6,5), he believed firmly and professed the new presence of God among men; he knew that the true temple of God was now Jesus, the eternal Word come to dwell among us, made like unto us in all things but sin. But Stephen was accused of preaching the destruction of the temple of Jerusalem. The accusation they make against him is of having said that “Jesus, this Nazorean, will destroy this place and subvert the customs that Moses handed down to us” (Acts 6,14).

In effect, the message of Jesus is discomforting, and discomforts us, because it challenges the worldly religious power and provokes consciences. After His coming, it is necessary for us to convert, to change our mentality, to reject thinking like before. Stephen remained anchored to the message of Jesus even to death. His final prayers — “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit,” and “Lord, do not hold this sin against them” (Acts 7,59-69) — are the faithful echo of those pronounced by Jesus on the Cross: “Father, into Your hands I commend My spirit” (Lk 23,46), and “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do” (v.34). Those words of Stephen were possible only because the Son of God had come upon the earth, and died, and rose for us; before these events, they were humanly unthinkable expressions.

Stephen prayed Jesus to receive his spirit. The risen Christ, in fact, is the Lord, and is the sole mediator between God and men, not only in the hour of our death, but also in every moment of life: without Him we can do nothing (cf. Jn 15,5). So we too, before the Baby Jesus in the manger, can say to Him, “Lord Jesus, we entrust our spirit to You; receive it,” so that our existence should truly be a good life according to the Gospel.

Jesus is our mediator, and He reconciles us not only with the Father, but also with one another. He is the fount of love, Who opens us to communion with our brothers, removing every conflict and resentment. Let us ask Jesus, born for us, to help us to take up this double attitude of confidence in the Father and of love for our neighbour; it is this attitude that transforms life and makes it more beautiful and fruitful.

To Mary, the Mother of the Redeemer and Queen of Martyrs, let us lift up our prayer with confidence, that she might help us to welcome Jesus as Lord of our life, and to become His courageous witnesses, ready to pay in person the price of fidelity to the Gospel.