Tag Archives: holy time

Holy Time: The Joy of the Incarnation and the Pietà

Posted on December 31, 2012 by Haley | 8 Comments

The Incarnation of Christ, celebrated in the liturgical season of Christmastide, takes on a richer significance for me with each passing year. The story of the Nativity is fuller, but undeniably more strange. It loses the saccharine quality of greeting cards and becomes complicated. Christmas becomes more intricately connected to Holy Week and I’m reminded that the miracle of the Incarnation isn’t merely that Our Lord was born as a human on the very earth I walk on, but that He came in order that he might die. The wooden manger foreshadows the wooden cross where his life will be extinguished. The joyful songs of angels at Our Lord’s birth precede the agony of the heavenly hosts at his death. The wise men bring myrrh, perfumed ointments for funeral preparations, to point to Our Lord’s true purpose in visiting this planet. The ecstasy the Blessed Virgin must have experienced when she first beheld him brings to mind her unrivaled suffering as she watched his torturous Passion. It is all one. It is all connected—God’s unfathomable love and sacrifice for humanity.

In some artistic renderings of the Nativity scene (I have Giuseppe Vermiglio’s Nativity and Adoration of the Shepherds in mind), there is a strange image included in the stable. It is a lamb, but not a cuddly creature adoring the precious Baby Jesus. It is a lamb with its legs bound, the sacrificial lamb that will be taken to slaughter, reminding us, as St. John the Baptist does, that when we see the Christ Child we are beholding the Lamb of God who will carry our sins to the cross.

I had a strange experience at the Christmas Mass this year. We sang this beautiful hymn:

What child is this, who, laid to rest,

On Mary’s lap is sleeping?

Whom angels greet with anthems sweet,

While shepherds watch are keeping?

This, this is Christ the King,

Whom shepherds guard and angels sing:

Haste, haste to bring him laud,

The babe, the son of Mary.

In the past this song has always conjured an idyllic image of the Infant Christ contentedly snoozing in his mother’s arm. But when I heard the words this year, I did not think of Bethlehem, I saw Golgotha. I saw a grieving Mother Mary cradling the dead body of Our Lord. I saw the Pietà, Michelangelo’s masterpiece that cries out in its sorrow and beauty, Behold, God’s love for you.

The Nativity isn’t cute. It isn’t clean. The God of the Universe is born among animal dung right in the thick of humanity’s filth. He comes to give up everything, including his very life. But it is an undeniably beautiful scene because it is an image of God’s unwavering love. His coming is the moment all creation has waited for with tears and groaning, like a woman in labor. Everything hinges upon it.

The school shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary is by no means the only tragedy that occurred during this holiday season. But it has made us grapple with the meaning of Christmas. I love what Ross Douthat said in his piece, “The Loss of the Innocents”:

“…the Christmas story isn’t just the manger and the shepherds and the baby Jesus, meek and mild. The rage of Herod is there as well, and the slaughtered innocents of Bethlehem, and the myrrh that prepares bodies for the grave. The cross looms behind the stable — the shadow of violence, agony and death. In the leafless hills of western Connecticut, this is the only Christmas spirit that could possibly matter now.”

Perhaps if we did not suffer, we could just see the Nativity as merely heart-warming and leave it at that. But, in this our exile, we grasp at the truth of the Incarnation as we cling to the Cross where our Savior’s arms are outstretched crying out, “Behold, God’s love for you.” And this most grotesque and most beautiful of all images, the Crucifixion, is what makes the Incarnation our source of hope. The true King has come to offer himself as a sacrifice for us. To heal what is broken. To set all things right. His sacrifice, his death becomes his triumph and our salvation. Take heart, I have overcome the world. And knowing that, we can sing “Joy to the World” with full hearts.

image source: saintpetersbasilica.org

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Posted in catholicism, Christian Year, Christmas

Tagged christian year, Christmas, holy time, nativity

Holy Time: Observing Advent Instead of Fighting Santa

Posted on November 17, 2012 by Haley | 22 Comments

Every year I hear folks bemoaning the secularization of Christmas and how commercialism has overtaken what used to be a Christian holiday. I read news stories about which retail stores are promoting “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas” and which groups and organizations are boycotting those stores for choosing to greet their customers in one way or another. People label it the “war on Christmas”—this battle between Santa and Jesus, a battle in which you can score points for your side by firmly replying “Merry CHRISTMAS” to the cashier who has been instructed to say “Happy Holidays” or vice versa.

I get it. Yes, I want to celebrate Christmas as a religious holiday, but I’m really not interested in “fighting” this war by shopping at this retailer instead of that retailer or by petitioning to ban the playing of “Santa Baby” in all public places. (Although someone should. Worst song ever, amirite?!)

The secularization of Christmas is not a new development. Even looking back decades at the portrayal of Christmas in It’s a Wonderful Life! (which, I admittedly adore), Christmas is more of a family and community holiday than a religious one. Go back further and we have A Christmas Carol. The message isn’t a bad one: having a spirit of giving, learning to love people over possessions, the tragic loneliness of greed, and a chance for redemption. I listen to Jim Dale read the audiobook every year and I cry like a baby. I can’t wait to share the Muppet Christmas Carol with my 3-year-old this year. So don’t peg me as a Dickens hater. I’m not. But, if I’m honest, it’s a lot of sentimental secular humanism and very little Christianity.

For most Americans, the holidays are a time to be with family, be thankful for all we have, and give whatever we can to those who need it. There’s certainly nothing wrong with that! And personally, I’m glad for a little distinction between our cultural celebration of holiday cheer and observing the Christmas season as a religious tradition.

I think there is such a simple solution if you really want Christmas to be a religious holiday for your family. Just observe the traditional seasons of the liturgical year. The Church has such a beautiful rhythm to celebrating the various seasons of the Christian story. The four weeks before Christmas (a little after Thanksgiving until December 25^th) is the season of Advent.

Advent (not New Years) is the beginning of the Christian year and it’s considered a ‘little Lent.’ It’s quiet. It’s somber. It’s full of waiting and hoping. Just as there can be no real celebration of the Resurrection without the pain of Good Friday, there can be no real Christmas without the expectation of Advent.

St. Charles Borromeo writes, “Each year, as the Church recalls this mystery, she urges us to renew the memory of the great love God has shown us. This holy season teaches us that Christ’s coming was not only for the benefit of his contemporaries; his power has still to be communicated to us all…The Church asks us to understand that Christ, who came once in the flesh, is prepared to come again. When we remove all obstacles to his presence he will come, at any hour and moment, to dwell spiritually in our hearts, bringing with him the riches of his grace.”

Isn’t that beautiful? But that kind of preparation doesn’t just happen as we snarf down red and green M&Ms. We have a part to play. We have to offer this time to ready our hearts for Our Lord. If you really commit to observing Advent, your December is going to look very different.

For most American families, by the evening of December 25^th, they have been eating, buying, Christmas music listening, gift-giving, gift-receiving, tree trimming, and cookie baking for over a month. They’re sick to death of it. Get the tree out by the road! Take the decorations down the day after Christmas! Turn that blasted music off!

If you observe Advent, before Christmas arrives you might not be tree trimming, you might not be holiday cheering. You’ll know every verse of “O Come, O Come Emmanuel” by heart and you’ll be itching to belt out “Joy to the World!” You’ll be reflecting, reading, praying, waiting. And it will be a sacrifice. What will it look like for your family? You might decide to forego all the Christmas parties that happen during Advent. You might avoid the malls blaring Christmas music starting in October. You might decide to keep gifts super simple so that you’re not doing any scrambling during the quiet of Advent and can focus on waiting for Jesus. The practicalities of how you decide to observe Advent will vary from family to family. But if you do set aside this time as a holy preparation, it’s a surefire thing that in comparison to the bustle around you will look quite odd. (Lucky for us, with Chinese Cabbages growing all over our front yard and 21 chickens running about our urban homestead, we’re already the neighborhood weirdos.)

I’m really selling this Advent thing, aren’t I?! Before you label me as the modern Ebenezer Scrooge, let me tell you a secret. I LOVE Christmas. I love cutting down the tree and stringing the lights (Ok, fine, watching my husband string the lights). I get all teary-eyed and heart-warmy when I unwrap our ornaments and tell my kids stories about how we got each one. I giggle with glee when I get to play Sufjan’s Christmas tunes. I love dressing my kids up for Christmas Mass, reading them Christmas stories, and setting up the Nativity scene

Here’s the good news. If you observe Advent, on Christmas Day, it will feel like CHRISTMAS! And then you get to celebrate it for TWELVE DAYS. That twelve days of Christmas song was for real! It’s a liturgical season twelve days long. It’s a Christmas-lover’s dream come true! You’ve been waiting and waiting and waiting. You’ve been lighting candles and watching the wax melt a little lower each night. You’ve been setting up your Jesse Tree and remembering God’s story for the world and how the Incarnation is the point on which it all spins. The tree trimming, the carol singing, the feasting, the celebrating—twelve whole days of it! You wait and wait through the long days of Advent like a pregnant woman in her last month. Then when we celebrate the joyous birth of Our Lord it is time to kick up our heels! And we do. We really do.

I want to share with you soon about what our Advent looks like practically in a future post. For now I’ll leave you with a little more inspiration from St. Charles Borromeo:

“Beloved, now is the acceptable time spoken of by the Spirit, the day of salvation, peace and reconciliation: the great season of Advent. This is the time eagerly awaited by the patriarchs and prophets, the time that holy Simeon rejoiced at last to see. This is the season that the Church has always celebrated with special solemnity. We too should always observe it with faith and love, offering praise and thanksgiving to the Father for the mercy and love he has shown us in this mystery. “

Amen.

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Don’t forget to linkup with your Advent posts on December 3rd for Little Holydays: Redeeming Time with Feasts, Fasts, Holidays, and Everyday!

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Posted in Advent, catholicism, Christian Year, Christmas, Seasons

Tagged advent, christian year, Christmas, holy time, little holydays, liturgical year, santa, scrooge

Holy Time: The Gift of the Liturgical Year

Posted on November 13, 2012 by Haley | 16 Comments

“The liturgical year is not an idle discipline, not a sentimentalist definition of piety, not an historical anachronism. It is Jesus with us, for us, and in us as we strive to make His life our own. It is goad and guide to the kind of personal spirituality that is worthy of the Jesus whose commitment to the Word of God led Him all the way to the cross and beyond it—to Resurrection.” (Joan Chittister, The Liturgical Year)

Everyone remembers their favorite professor from college, right? Mine is an East Texas born Baptist, a scholar of Religion and Literature. I clearly remember so many of his lectures given in his big, booming voice. And I remember the painfully truthful criticism written on the first paper I turned in for his class: “My dear Ms. Payne, unfortunately, no one has ever taught you how to write.” Ouch! Followed by one of the most generous offers ever given to me: “Please let me have that honor.” When I left his class, I was a better writer and a better thinker. I have much to thank him for, but I am particularly indebted to him for introducing me to the Christian Year.

He began a lecture for our Literary Classics of Christianity class by drawing a line across the board. He then drew two upward marks evenly spaced. The first he labeled Easter, the second Christmas. “This, friends, is what most of us in the South have grown up believing are the events of the Christian year. Wait, I’ve forgotten the Fourth of July,” and added a mark in the middle of the Christian Year timeline. Growing up in the South as an Evangelical Protestant, I knew he was right. Every Sunday at church feels pretty much the same except for those three days. Easter we had lilies. Fourth of July we sang “God Bless, America,” and Christmas was the last Sunday that we had to sing “Angels, We Have Heard on High” and hear someone belt out “O, Night Divine” as a solo.

“But this isn’t the whole story,” he told us. Then our professor started to add marks to the timeline. And not just marks, but blocks of time. There weren’t just a handful of special days to add, there were entire seasons I had never known about! He started out at the beginning, which for the Christian Year isn’t January 1, but Advent, the four weeks before Christmas.

In detail, he explained what the seasons were. Why they were. What they meant. How they prepared us for the season that followed and how as a whole, they told us the whole story of redemption. He explained the darkness and the preparation of Advent with its symbolic color of purple—the color of the bruised heart. The sorrow of the world waiting for a Savior, followed by the joy of the Incarnation. God loved the waiting world enough to become a helpless child. To be born as a human baby, homeless, and naked.

And Christmas wasn’t just one day! It was a season—12 days long of feasting, celebrating, and joy. And then the season of Epiphany arrives: we remember the Wise Men traveling from distant lands and how Our Lord didn’t come for only one people group but for all. We celebrate him as the Light of the World.

Then, after weeks of preparation, then celebration and feasting, we have “Ordinary Time” with its color of green. Time to live and work and pray—a season for growing.

Then comes Lent as winter’s chill prepares to give way for spring. Again purple, for our hearts are in darkness. We fast, pray, and give, in order to see ourselves as we truly are and have true penitence for our sin. We ask to be transformed. Good Friday arrives, its color black, its complete utter darkness when Our Savior dies for our guilt. And then, the brightness of Easter after a long, cold, difficult 40 days of Lent. The joy of a Risen Savior after we stopped still to mourn the Passion of Our Lord. And there was more! Pentecost! Feasts and fasts and days to remember and celebrate! It was such a rich tapestry telling the cosmic story and I was hooked.

What a beautiful gift the Church offers us in the Christian Year! We get to wait for Christ, walk with Him, die with Him, and be raised with Him each year. We get to use food, music, and traditions to help tell ourselves what story we are really a part of. We get to live by a different calendar, one that isn’t created by Hallmark and candy companies. A rich calendar of redemptive time that makes us take a breath, slow down, grow, change, remember, mourn, and sometimes really kick up our heels and party with joy. Join me as we start this new Year of Faith the Holy Father has called us to. Live by a different watch, by holy time. Be transformed.

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Do you observe the Christian Year? Is your family just learning to incorporate liturgical traditions like mine is? I am so excited to tell you about a new project to encourage and inspire each other to observe the liturgical year, deepen our families’ faith, and build up the domestic church! I’m joining forces with two other Catholic blogs (Molly Makes Do and Dualing Moms) to host a new linkup: Little HolyDays: Redeeming Time with Feasts, Fasts, Holidays, and Everyday. We’ll be linking up with posts (old or new) about feast days, liturgical seasons, and family traditions and we’d love for you to join us! Our first linkup will be December 3rd and focus on the season of Advent. More details to come!