Due to an error, none of the Masses were recorded.

Outside of Mass, Fr Wee recorded his Sunday night homily.

By Glenn CJ Byer, MA SLD

Advent is an interesting time, a time between that first Christmas and forever in Christ, and the prayers today are designed to help us grasp the reality of this time. The entrance antiphon and the opening collects focus our attention on the God who is to come. We will be filled with joy, we need to prepare, to cast out anything that is evil in order that we can welcome Christ at his coming. This focus on the second coming is one of the important aspects of the Christian advent. We hope and expect the Lord to come at any time. We live advent lives, waiting for that great and glorious day, when all will be set right. The preface for Advent I, which is the preface assigned to this day likewise keeps our eyes on the end times.

But what is interesting is that the prayer over the gifts and the prayer after Communion act as a corrective, lest we think that God is not here, that Christ is only coming at the end of time. God sustains our lives now, feeds us now, and if we stand on the ramparts as the Communion antiphon suggests, we can even make out the joyful procession of Christ's arrival.

An interesting way to bring greater balance to these two aspects would be to introduce the more earthly concerns in the penitential rite by using form A which focuses on our need for change, and to use Eucharistic prayer II with its reduced focus on the earthly reasons for praise. There is no reference to creation and only a limited attention to what we are doing now; we simply focus on God as the source of all holiness and the Spirit that comes upon the gifts and upon us.

© 2008, OCP. All rights reserved.

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The passage from Ezekiel portrays God as the shepherd par excellence who will guard the people of Israel and save them from being lost. God will be the good shepherd tending the sheep, rescuing the scattered of the flock, bringing them to rest in good pastures in their own land. All will be made right in Israel when God is accepted and acknowledged as the shepherd.

The famous passage from Matthew’s Gospel of the last judgment scene was painted spectacularly by Michelangelo in the Sistine Chapel. The “nations” will be divided into two groups: those who have done good deeds and those who have failed to do good deeds. The Christian tasks of feeding the hungry, offering hospitality to the homeless, clothing the naked, comforting the sick and visiting the imprisoned are listed, as is the reward for performing these actions. These activities are to be practiced by the Christians toward the poor and downtrodden of the world. If the “nations” fail to do these activities, they will go to eternal damnation, while the righteous will go off to eternal life.

The passage from First Corinthians offers a reflection on the power of Jesus’ victory over sin and death. It offers a step by step treatment of what will happen in the end times. At his coming, all the dead will be raised, then he will hand over all of the redeemed creation to his Father. During Christ’s reign, all enemies will be put down, while the righteous will be gathered up into communion with the Father.

© 2008, OCP. All rights reserved.

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By Glenn CJ Byer, MA SLD

Over the centuries since the first Pentecost, Christians have often felt that the end of the world was at hand. Whether it was the prediction of some false prophet, the plague or some other calamity, it always seems as if the time in which people are actually living shows the signs of the end of the world. But to be too concerned about figuring out the signs is to miss the point of the readings today, especially the Gospel.

Jesus makes it clear that no matter what trials come, no matter what is happening in the world, there is no need to be any more prepared than we always are. We are to live in such a way that when we are called to account, we can get out of the way and let the Holy Spirit inspire our words and our deeds. For literally at the end of The Day, this is what fear of the Lord as we see it in the first reading is all about. There is no other way to salvation except to be open to the healing work of the Holy Spirit.

And so as we turn next week to celebrate Christ as our King, and as we turn to celebrate the Advent and Christmas cycle of feasts, it is good to remind ourselves of what openness to the Holy Spirit can mean for our lives and for our destiny. It is no less than accepting and helping to build the kingdom of God.

© 2008, OCP. All rights reserved.

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The readings for this day are a marvelous mosaic of images. In the Gospel Jesus presents the paradox, first of cleansing the temple of its moneychangers, then of speaking of the destruction of the temple. The people did not really understand how to relate to God in the temple, worrying about how to pay the temple tax or exactly what sacrifice should be offered, and they did not know how to relate to God in the person of Jesus either. Ezekiel and the psalm made it clear - the temple of God is to be a source of life, sending out streams that will water the land, making it bear fruit always.

Saint Paul understood this, reminding us that the only way such fruit could be borne is by seeing the temple in the living, breathing people who were that temple. We celebrate today's feast in the same light. The basilica preaches in stone what we are to do with our lives.

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This episode is peculiar to the Lucan redaction as it reveals his Christology in three phases. First of all, the literary affinities of this passage can be traced to I Kings 17,17-24 and II Kings 4,18-27: the two raisings from the dead of the only son of a widow through the interventions of Elijah and Elisha. Clearly, Luke intends to place Jesus in the line of the ancient prophets as the crowds, enthusiastically, will proclaim him.

Secondly, this represents the first time that Jesus is called "Lord" within the Gospel narrative, the title which, formerly, had been reserved for Yahweh alone. Still, another, doctrinal-christological intention, on the part of Luke, emerges here as Jesus is presented as a true man who is moved by the sorrow of the widowed mother and shares her pain and loneliness; however, he is also true God who is about to manifest himself as the Lord of life who can restore life even to one who is dead.

Lastly, the crowd proclaims that, in Jesus, God has established his own salvific presence in the midst of his people: the visitation, words, and actions of Jesus are a sign of the salvific will of God. The Christ is the sacrament of God within human history. Hence, Luke's purposes are both didactic, i.e., to solicit authentic attitudes of faith and life within his readers, and doctrinal: to hand down to us, with fidelity and precision, the treasury of living and witnessed faith referred by the evangelical tradition.

© 2008, OCP. All rights reserved.

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