HORRIBLE PARTIES
You’ve attended bad, even horrible parties—in your home or someone else’s, or in the workplace or some social venue. Perhaps you’ve attended tasteless or vulgar weddings or funerals. If you haven’t, the likelihood is that you will. And perhaps on some minimal level this is better than no celebrations at all (although I don’t think it is humanly possible to suppress festivity altogether). The definition of the word party may surprise you.
“Party” means to divide, to separate, to be apart. Ironically, this is what happens so often at parties. (I’m not referring to genuinely innocent and enjoyable festivities, but rather to markedly prevalent abuses of festivity.) It seems to be a law that the bigger a party is, the worse it gets. A common theme of parties is vulgarity and excess. All too often the excitement at parties is ramped up by the humiliation of one or more in attendance.
MADE TO CELEBRATE
You may be intuiting at this moment that “party” and “celebration” are not the same thing. They aren’t. The old contrast applies. We may not be able to explain what makes a genuinely meaningful celebration, but we know one when we see one. Human beings are made to celebrate. This is integral to our human personhood.
The Catholic Church, perhaps more than any other, knows what it means to celebrate and celebrate well. If you look at the Advent wreath now, you’ll notice that the decorative band for the third candle is a rose or pink color. Its color refers to the meaning of our celebration. This morning, we celebrate Gaudete Sunday. Gaudete is Latin for “rejoice”.
PILGRIM PEOPLE
God’s time, as we know, encompasses past, present and future. In God, they are one and eternal. The Advent season helps us to understand this. As a pilgrim people, living in the present, we are the Body of Christ. We are journeying with the living Christ as our head. Simultaneously and mysteriously, we are awaiting his future return when he comes in glory to make all things right and to rule the world.
I’ve talked about courage these past two Sundays of Advent—the courage of personal, spiritual integrity and the courage to witness it publicly. But I don’t propose to say this morning that one must courageously endure crummy parties and the like, although many Catholics throughout our nation continue to suffer many abuses inflicted on them in name of liturgical celebrations. In such circumstances, a courageous response is necessary.
FOR THE GOOD OF MANY
I want to talk about the nature of celebration. This familiar word comes from the Latin celebratio which refers to the performance of a sacred function for the good of many. And I propose to speak about the celebration of the Mass. Keep in mind that certain truths to which I refer may and should be applied to festive gatherings in the home (even the family dinner!), or at work and in the community. We cannot fail to mention the authentic celebration of our national civil feast days—Thanksgiving Day and July 04, to name two.
We celebrate the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. The Mass is rightly called the “sacrament of love”. We say that we love Jesus Christ. We say that we love the Mass. And this certainly involves an effort, an affirmation on our part. One steps forward to say I love you or I love this. Yet this realization does reach the heart of the matter. One may only genuinely say I love you or I love this if he or she is confirming “something already accomplished”. [JOSEF PIEPER, AN ANTHOLOGY. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1989. 29. Print.]
MOMENT OF SELFISHNESS
The only way to love is to accept surrender, surrendering to someone and something greater than yourself. This is to say that one is attracted to a gift, to that which he has not made, to that which causes him to reach out in joyful anticipation. Moreover, such a person receives the gift that is freely offered. He cannot take it in the sense of appropriating it to himself.
The moment that selfishness enters the picture, any possible reference to gift disappears. Selfishness goes hand-in-hand with theft and aggression. One cannot properly love a person over whom he has complete power. Power and love are exclusive of each other, unless power is used justly and temperately to protect love that is innocent vulnerable. One has only to think about children to realize this truth.
ACT OF RECEIVING
It is God who accomplishes! We love the Mass given to us by Christ and safeguarded by the Church—a celebration of extraordinary beauty and mysteriously already accomplished each and every time we celebrate it. Already, we are becoming aware that “celebration” is intimately connected to the sacredness of the human person.
Yes the Mass is a gift. But we must remember that the act of receiving is also sacred. It is never passive. One must actively receive that which is valuable, especially that which is priceless, for example the gift of the Mass and the celebrations proper to families and friends.
EACH PERSON’S CONTRIBUTION
We must fully participate in celebrations—not remaining aloof, uninterested or absent—because the celebration is given life and meaning and made whole by the contribution of each and every person who should be there. There is a perfection, in the order of grace, that human beings are required to contribute. [cf ANTHOLOGY 30.] The Mass depends on it, and so do the important celebrations of community and family life.
Our comprehension of the Mass (and the meaningful occasions of family and community) is not possible unless our attention is directed to something greater even in the very moment of celebration. If genuine celebration occurs when we ourselves recognize the gifts that have not been accomplished by our own powers, then surely our thanksgiving must transcend the human order and be directed to our heavenly Creator. We should thank God for everything in life, for we have received everything from him:
IN THE beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God; all things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made. [Jn 1:1-3]
CONTEMPLATION OF GOD
Celebrations and the praise of God direct men and women of good will to something even more necessary for their human fulfillment—and that is the contemplation of God. The reality that the Mass is embracing of all meaningful human celebration in the community of man should cause us to look upward, so to speak, to contemplate God, the splendor of his gracious love, the beauty of his creation, and the sovereignty of his truth.
It seems unmistakable then that our human happiness is utterly dependent on encountering our loving God in the celebration of his astounding creation. Human beings love God that they may know the love of one another. The Indian leader Mahatma Gandhi surely understood this truth, for he observed, “You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is like an ocean; if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty.”
COMPLAINING ABOUT DUTIES
If our hearts are persistently troubled—even anguished—such that we know neither rest or peace, love becomes impaired. He injures his own and other’s souls. The heart of such a person grows cold and dark, unable to see clearly the gifts he is given and the God who bestows them. He does not praise God nor thank him. He turns away from contemplation. Without respect or selfless sacrifice, true love is defenseless, hope is extinguished and faith is betrayed.
The story of Martha and Mary in Bethany, as recorded in the Gospel of Luke [10:38-42], is instructive. Martha complains of being overwhelmed by the duties of hospitality. She insists that Jesus order her sister to help. Jesus, however, replies, "Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things; one thing is needful. Mary has chosen the good portion, which shall not be taken away from her." [Lk 10:41-42]
IMPORTANCE OF REST AND LEISURE
On the one hand, perhaps it would be too much to say that this story illustrates the difference between party and celebration. On the other, we cannot dismiss what Mary was doing as something other than celebration. She was living out and celebrating her relationship (communion) with Jesus of Nazareth.
The story suggests the importance of rest and leisure as a precondition for the sacred encounters that human beings are privileged to share with one another. Therefore, rest and leisure exist not merely as a relief and antidote to exhaustion, but rather as a necessary for being fully human human beings. And I suspect that a strong link exists between rest and leisure and the human imperative of humaneness.
“MANKIND’S HIGHEST ACTIVITY”
Rest and leisure set the scene for the human person’s capacity to love God, to receive all things in him, to praise him, to celebrate him and to contemplate him. Thus peaceful persons are spiritually and psychologically outward bound, capable of seeing the world as good and conferring their blessing upon it. [cf ANTHOLOGY 141, 142, 154-155, 156]
It is not for nothing that the Trappist monk and priest Thomas Merton said that "...mankind's highest activity is its rest." [THE ASCENT TO TRUTH New York: Viking Press, 1951. 24. Print.] All forms of genuine and meaningful rest—this is to say, inclusive of leisure—direct human beings to experience their own humanity in joyful and creative ways. The Mass encompasses rest and leisure as the peace which only Christ can give:
PEACE I leave with you; my peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid.” [Jn 14:27]
“APPROVING OF THE WORLD”
The philosopher Thomas Pieper, whose writings animate this reflection today, viewed leisure as essential for understanding and experiencing the “. . . eucharistic sacrifice (as) the source and the summit of the whole of the Church’s worship and of the Christian life” [VATICAN COUNCIL II, Eucharisticum Mysterium, no. 3. 1967.]:
IN OTHER words: Leisure depends on the precondition that we find the world and our own selves agreeable. And here follows the offensive but inevitable consequence: the highest conceivable form of approving of the world as such is found in the worship of God, in the praise of the Creator, in the liturgy. With this we have finally identified the deepest root of leisure. [ANTHOLOGY 142]
AWAY FROM THE ORDINARY
An obvious truth stands out that nevertheless needs illumination. We must recognize that in order to experience the fullness or wholeness of celebration, we must step away from the ordinary setting of life with its demands, distractions, conflicts and instabilities. This is the reason why we have monasteries, convents, chapels, churches, cathedrals and basilicas.
This is why, even in this unbelieving generation, Holy Mother Church calls her children together to celebrate great feasts and solemnities in honor of our Lord Jesus Christ, Mary the Mother of God and Church, the saints, the sacred events and places of faith and the great milestones of Christianity’s living Tradition. There is no more perfect expression of human life and love than to praise God in his sanctuary.
SANCTUARIUM
I use the word sanctuary for good reason. The word sanctuary comes the Latin sanctuarium (sanctus “holy” and arium “place”). The sanctuary of a Catholic Church is sacred and inviolable. It is a venerable place of refuge and protection for those who seek relief. The sanctuary is a place of rest, a haven, from turmoil and strife. Thus the sanctuary is a visible sign and reality of the peace which only Christ can give. He is truly present in the Church because he chooses to dwell here in the fullness of his Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity in the consecrated hosts of the tabernacle.
Thus we are confronted by a powerful truth: The fact that Christ is truly present in his temple means that the Christian sanctuary is a sacred place for God’s sacred creatures. It is a refuge for sinners, protection for those who are frightened, a haven for the exhausted. Therefore the Church’s celebration of Mass is nothing less than her members’ immersion into the abyss of supernatural hope! The Mass is the Church’s open door to the people of the world.
WE CAN’T TURN OUR EYES AWAY
And this hope is no ordinary hope. It is our ritual celebration of the Mass, the most perfect expression of humankind’s recognition and reception of God’s love, our hope in God for all that we “cannot achieve ourselves” [ANTHOLOGY 230], and our faith that God alone provides what we need each day.
But this is not all. We proceed as we glance backward to the marvelous events of Bethlehem. We behold the incarnation of the Christ, born in Bethlehem, a man like us in all things but sin. Moreover, we look backward to the passion, death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. Yes, we journey forward, but we can’t turn our eyes away from the God-man and these events.
GROUNDS FOR HOPE
After all, these events mark the birth of Christianity and the beginning of the great pilgrimage we know as the Church. Unless one is willing to look backward even as he or she walks forward in the communion of the Church, there are no grounds for hope. [cf ANTHOLOGY 218, 220-221] For the victory of Christ was won on a cross, once for all. Therefore we approve of God’s creation, we receive God’s great gifts, we celebrate God’s love, and we contemplate God’s infinite wisdom and mercy.
I WILL bless the Lord at all times;
his praise shall continually be in my mouth.
My soul makes its boast in the Lord;
let the afflicted hear and be glad.
O magnify the Lord with me,
and let us exalt his name together! [Psa 34:1-3]
+++
