The Catholic Thing

By Father Jerry J. Pokorsky.

The Catholic calendar carries this noteworthy designation on various dates: "Holy Day of Obligation." The Church requires us to attend Mass in order to honor the Third Commandment. Those of us present at Mass should comply with a sense of duty. A properly directed sense of duty is holy and good. But salvation does not come from dutiful compliance alone.

A sense of duty maintains families. Fathers, as good husbands, dutifully keep schedules, go to work to put food on the table, and pay the rent. Mothers are also dutiful, as good wives, in their motherly tasks, making the home a domestic church. A baby rewards maternal solicitude with its first word, mama.

By vocation and circumstance, thoughtful single folks often have an intensely focused sense of duty, dedicating their lives to endeavors that benefit the local community and the whole world. Priests dutifully prepare and execute a parish schedule with Masses, Confessions, and Baptisms. Duty motivates workers to make the trains run on time. Duty builds and defends nations. A sense of duty is a cornerstone to efficiency, productivity, and getting the job done.

We fulfill our religious duty to keep the Sabbath by attending Mass on Sundays and holy days.

But fulfilling our obligation to attend Mass is sterile without love. An excessively efficient priest damages his prayer life. (Church law prohibits priests from celebrating an excessive number of Masses.) We risk reducing Mass attendance to clock-watching - especially the odious and absolutely horrible practice of checking watches during a priest's, no doubt, eloquent homiletic remarks. Those with a truncated sense of duty habitually come late to Mass or depart early to beat the traffic.

Duty needs our love.

Most Catholics love the reality of the Mass with its myriad symbols and human relationships. The squawking of children is beautiful and enriches the sacramental realism of the mass. But Mary likely walked out of the synagogue when baby Jesus was crying for food or change of diaper. (There isn't an account of that in the Gospel of Luke, but there should be.) We love the conversation in the narthex after mass. Married and single alike find loving consolation in the worship of God in our parish communities. The Mass and its aftermath are often unintentionally holy (and not-so-holy) sit-coms. Love endures all things.

But our sense of duty fortified by our love cannot save us from reality broken by our sins. As sinners, we have an abiding subliminal sense we are unlovable or incapable of love. Surveys reveal that 99.9 percent of the entire world is love-deprived. The remaining 0.1 percent are, I suspect, lying. Only God's love can heal the reality of our wounded human dignity and the guilty memory of our sinful betrayals.

Saint John the Apostle writes: "This is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the expiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another." (1 John 4:10-12) We attend Mass to give thanks for God's love and His infallible offer of forgiveness.

Need evidence of His love? Gaze upon that Cross above the altar: "Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends." (John 15:13) Too harsh for Christmas sensibilities? Gaze upon that Nativity scene: "Be not afraid; for behold, I bring you good news of a great joy which will come to all the people; for to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. And this will be a sign for you: you will find a babe wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger." (Luke 2:10-12)

A helpless Child attracts the love and worship of Mary and Joseph, the shepherds, and the Magi. God and man are reconciled in a Child born of the Virgin. Heaven and earth are reconciled in Bethlehem. The very name of Bethlehem prefigures His saving mission: the "House of Bread," the superabundant Bread of the Blessed Eucharist, the Bread of eternal life ...

By Fr. Raymond J. de Souza.

It was one year in a single day. On 11th May, the year 2024 unfolded for American Catholics. In the space of a few hours, two commencement addresses were delivered: Jonathan Roumie at The Catholic University of America in Washington, DC, and Harrison Butker at Benedictine College in Atchison, Kansas.

Much of what marked Catholic life in America - ecclesially, culturally, politically - in 2024 can be heard in the different approaches offered by the two speakers on that day.

If there had been a Time magazine Catholic of the Year for being newsworthy, it might well have been Butker, who is adjacent to the celebrity world of Taylor Swift (who actually was Time's Person of the Year 2023, her second time, though in 2017 she was part of a group).

The Butker speech got more attention than Roumie's by several orders of magnitude. That itself was a telling sign of who shaped the national conversation in 2024.

Butker began by castigating "bad leaders who don't stay in their lane," and presenting himself as one who "preaches more hard truths about accepting your lane and staying in it."

But who is in which lane when dispensing Catholic advice: Roumie, a veteran actor who plays Jesus in the stunning theatrical phenomenon of The Chosen, or Butker, the kicker for the Kansas City Chiefs?

The lanes are certainly shifting. Presidential candidates in 2024 frequented podcasts rather than the mainstream media. Those who no longer stay in their lane had a prominent role. The Republican National Convention, for example, featured Amber Rose - whose work includes a "digital strip club" and the Los Angeles "Slutwalk" promoting "sex positivity" - in a primetime speaking slot.

Perhaps there are no lanes anymore. In 2024, public discourse seemed more demolition derby.

Butker's speech sparked a national controversy for his encouragement that young women seek fulfillment as mothers and homemakers, noting that his own wife's life "truly started when she began living her vocation as a wife and as a mother." There were other musings against natural family planning and choosing where to live based on proximity to the traditional Latin Mass.

Yet the heart of Butker's address was inveighing against bad leaders. He castigated President Joe Biden as "delusional," Catholics who "fear speaking the truth," and "bishops and priests misleading their flocks."

In the category of bad leaders, Butker notably did not mention NFL owners, a group that tends to prioritize private gain over the common good, or sports celebrities, two groups that would be very much in Butker's lane.

Butker offered a combative Catholicism at Benedictine, which is intensely attractive to many, especially young men, as any campus chaplain will report. He represents a source of vitality and energy in the Church, and the broader culture.

Combative men in digital media emerged in 2024 as an important cultural influence. The trend has been evident for some years, but their influence on the presidential race gained them more attention. Many of them are not Christian and some even anti-Christian, but there are prominent Christian "content producers" as well.

Butker's approach was more evident in an interview he gave to EWTN on 15th March 2024. Speaking about the previous month's transgender funeral at St. Patrick's Cathedral, Butker said he refused an invitation from Cardinal Timothy Dolan's radio program because he found Dolan's response to the funeral lacking: "I was waiting on someone to come out and say that this is outrageous, this is an abomination, this should have never happened, this should have been stopped. . . .And nothing came."

In fact, a statement did come from the rector of St. Patrick's Cathedral several weeks before Butker's EWTN interview. Father Enrique Salvo expressed his "outrage over the scandalous behavior at a funeral here at St. Patrick's Cathedral." Stating that the cathedral's welcome had been "degraded in such a sacrilegious and deceptive way," h...

By David Warren.

The universe is gratuitous, unforced, and unexpected. To be literal, it is a Gift, and in form, a substantial passing from the supernatural. We are sometimes astounded by this reality; other times enmired in the boredom of existence.

Whereas, in science, there is no Gift. Reality just happened. From the time we began to notice, it was just there.

Science presents itself as an explanation of things, as the analyst of material nature. But the existence in this universe, veritably on the earth - of life, of consciousness, of the conscience, &c - must at some point bring us into the presence of the miraculous.

To the Catholic, there is difficulty, not in understanding science in its claim to be the front line of reason. The Catholic conception of the universe as Gift is in contradiction to this. What is given did not (randomly or otherwise) happen. The Aristotelian sense of telos, of purpose, is instead tied up in everything that we know.

There is intention in the Gift - DIVINE intention - and without an instinct for the intention, there can be no understanding of things at all.

This is why reason and faith have been so perfectly allied, from the beginning of Christian tradition. It is why modern science "evolved" within our tradition, rather than within another; why the great scientific explorers have been, overwhelmingly, Christian (and mostly Catholic).

It is because of our supernatural understanding of the universe as Gift that we expect to find reason and consistency in things, for we would in Gift. What is before our senses will make sense. We knew this, and our faith in this insight would never fail us.

Modern science, especially in its recent developments, has abandoned the scientific enterprise. It has been separated from God. In its degeneration into materialist technology, it has been captured by "big government" and "big business." These, not the Church, are science's new masters.

A book just published by Fr. Martin Hilbert, A Catholic Case for Intelligent Design, provides a rational approach to the Gift, once again. It gives an account of the disintegration of Darwinism, from its own very aggressively materialist beginnings.

We no longer need to believe the mythology that was built around Darwin himself, who was a materialist atheist from early youth, dreaming of the overthrow of religion by science, like Huxley and the rest of the evolutionist crew.

Fr. Hilbert, with the help of what is now extensive research from the Discovery Institute and elsewhere, takes us through this "anti-story" - the argument for evolution by natural selection - into the heart of absurdity.

By developments in microscopy and thought, we are now able to glimpse inside the living cell, at a complex world intelligently designed; and more deeply into genetic procedure than the nothing that Darwin's contemporaries knew.

The search for missing links and "trees of life" through fossil records has not worked out. Instead, the evolutionists are confronted by the Cambrian Explosion, and throughout history by species that simply enter and exit the biological record, without announcing themselves.

Creatures assigned a place in the chronological record millions of years ago turn up (without permission) in fishermen's nets. Techniques including "state of the art" Carbon-14 dating, which may seem to work, take us back only centuries, and give us no assurance that the "history of animals" is anything like what has been displayed in our museums.

Fr. Hilbert's book functions as a useful guide or overview of this state of play in biological science. He drops further hints over the edges: that, for instance, the "young earthers" have been winning arguments that they were expected to lose to sneering academics.

But his best service is in his survey of modern evolutionary defenses. For the materialist-atheists (both admitting and shyly concealing their beliefs) have not given up the fight, and do what they can to overthrow observers of the Gift...

By Stephen P. White.

Duke Václav the First, sometimes called Václav the Good, ruled over Bohemia during the first half of the tenth century. Christianity was still very new to that part of the world (the modern-day Czech Republic), and Václav did a great deal to help Christianity - specifically Latin Christianity - take root. During his short life, he was renowned for his piety and love for the poor. He built a small Romanesque church within the walls of his castle to house the relics of St. Vitus; the small church would eventually be expanded into what is today Prague's great, gothic Cathedral of St. Vitus.

Václav only lived to be about 30 years old, give or take. He was assassinated - martyred, really - by his younger brother, Bolesłav. The murderous Bolesłav later repented of his fratricide and lived to see his own son-in-law, Mieszko I, establish Latin Christianity in a newly unified Poland in 966.

As for poor martyred Václav, it wasn't long after his death that the late duke received, by general acclamation, the title of "saint" and even (the Holy Roman Emperor conferring upon him posthumously the royal dignity and title) the honorific title of "king."

More than a millennium later, King Václav is still widely revered as a national and religious hero in central Europe, especially among the Western Slavs. In this part of the world, most of us remember him by the anglicized form of his Latin name and the nineteenth-century Christmas carol by which we know him as Good King Wenceslas.

Good King Wenceslas looked out,

on the Feast of Stephen,

When the snow lay round about,

deep and crisp and even.

The words of this carol were written by an Anglican priest, John Mason Neale, in the early 1850s. (Neale, as it happens, also gave us the standard English translation of "O Come, O Come Emmanuel.") The lyrics were based on an old episode from the life of Wenceslas and the tune was borrowed from a much older song about, of all things, the arrival of flowers in springtime.

And so a tenth-century Bohemian duke came to be associated with the feast day of a martyred first-century Hellenistic Jew on account of a nineteenth-century English carol based on a thirteenth-century Latin tune.

The lyrical connection may be purely serendipitous: the story of Wenceslaus is set on a snowy night, St. Stephen's Day falls on December 26th, so it makes sense to set the one story against the backdrop of the other. Still, I'm sure I'm not alone in being unable to remember a time when I did not associate the name Wenceslaus instantly with Stephen.

As for my dear patron, Stephen, his feast has been celebrated on this date, the day after Christmas, since the early fifth century. He, of course, was a deacon and the first martyr. His story is recorded in the Acts of the Apostles. One of the seven men "filled with the Spirit and wisdom" chosen by the community to serve as deacons, Stephen was ordained for that ministry by the Apostles themselves.

Stephen's speech before the Sanhedrin, which immediately precedes his martyrdom, is the longest disputation in the book of Acts. Reflecting on this speech, Pope Benedict XVI wrote that Stephen, "reinterprets the whole of the biblical narrative, the itinerary contained in Sacred Scripture, in order to show that it leads to the 'place', of the definitive presence of God that is Jesus Christ, and in particular his Passion, death and Resurrection."

This 'place' is the new temple, the temple not made by human hands (as idols are fashioned), the temple that Jesus promised to destroy and raise up again in three days, the very body of God Incarnate.

Just as Stephen's preaching was an imitation of Christ's own preaching, so his death became an imitation of Christ's as well. Pope Benedict observes:

Indeed, before dying, Stephen cries out: "Lord Jesus, receive my spirit" (Acts 7:59), making his own the words of Psalm 31:6 and repeating Jesus' last words on Calvary: "Father, into your hands I commit my spirit." (Luke 23:46) Lastly...

By Fr. Paul D. Scalia

But first, All of us at The Catholic Thing wish all of you the most Blessed of Christmases, and a New Year filled with happiness and holiness.

Now for today's column...

We all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being changed into his likeness from one degree of glory to another. (2 Corinthians 3:18)

Although this verse does not show up in the Christmas liturgy, it's very much at the heart of the Christmas mystery. This feast is one of looking and seeing, of beholding and being changed. The angels bid the shepherds to go and see the child lying in a manger. John tells us, The Word became flesh, and we have seen his glory. We sing, Come to Bethlehem and see. . . .Venite adoremus. . . .Come and behold Him.

Now, behold means more than just to look at or to see. It means to take hold of internally what we see externally, and thus to allow it to change us. To behold Christ means to be held by Him. The act of beholding Christ is meant to transform us into the very One we adore.

Jesus Christ, the infant lying in the manger, is the invisible God made visible. He comes into the world precisely so that we can look and gaze upon Him. We've been praying for this. Repeatedly throughout Advent we pleaded, Let your face shine upon us and we shall be saved! Now, like Zechariah, we find our prayer answered more than we could ever have imagined. By taking on our human nature he makes Himself visible. Veiled in flesh the Godhead see. . .

We have a hint of this reality at Mount Sinai. Moses's face became radiant after his conversations with the Lord. So radiant that he had to veil it, lest its glory overwhelm the Israelites. A similar thing happened to Bernadette of Lourdes during the Marian apparitions of 1858. When she looked upon our Lady, her face took on a glow of unearthly quality. She became like what she beheld.

Indeed, we always become like what we behold. We are inevitably held by what we behold. This has important implications for our screen-saturated culture. All our devices tug us into looking at what is, at best, superficial and passing. If we become like what we behold, then all our flickering screens and fleeting images are making us superficial - less attentive, less reflective, less inclined to gaze upon one thing. . .or one Person. We are being changed into their likeness from one degree of superficiality to another.

Come and behold Him. How do we behold Him? How do we gaze upon Him? We do not yet see Him face to face in His sacred humanity as Mary and Joseph did. But we do see Him, first, in our mind's eye, in our prayer, in our meditation on scenes from the Gospel. This feast puts the creche before us, so that we can look upon Him with Mary and Joseph. Visiting the creche, looking upon the infant in the manger, is a childlike thing and ought to be done by all children of God. So that we can be changed more into the Child we adore.

All the figures in that scene are changed. Mary, Joseph, and the shepherds are all turned toward the child. The light of the newborn Christ shines upon each face. And each person is changed as she or he beholds the Christ. Mary, like every mother, is changed forever as she gazes upon the Son she bore. Joseph is forever changed as he gazes upon the God Whom he will call "Son" and Who will call him "Abba."

The shepherds behold the child, sleeping among the sheep. He is both the Lamb of God and the Good Shepherd. He has become like one in their care and one of them. He has dignified them and their flocks. Soon, when the Magi gaze upon Him, they will be changed in the knowledge of true kingship. Their lives will be so changed that they must, as Saint Matthew puts it, return to their country by another way.

Time before the crèche should change us. We behold the One Who became little and helpless for our sake. Who made Himself dependent on His own creatures and creation. Who came not to condemn but to call to conversion. Who as an infant begs to enter our liv...

by Robert Royal.

Given all the toil and trouble of the human race in a fallen world, it's only right that we look to some peace on earth and goodwill to men in this season. There's certainly no excess of brotherhood and fellow feeling during the rest of the year. And let's stipulate: It's not just our happening to be alive at this moment that makes us believe that - anno Domini 2024 and perhaps even more 2025 - things look particularly troubled: Wars and rumors of wars, widespread unrest at home, deep division in the Church. You don't need to look far for why, to slightly adapt a famous modern philosopher, only the coming of God can save us now.

Or at least that's the lesson that bad times should teach us.

But there's another lesson about His Coming. As Bishop James Edward Walsh, one of the first Maryknoll missionaries in China, said after years of experience, even before spending nearly two decades in captivity: "Christianity is not a private way of salvation and a guide to a pious life; it is a way of world salvation and a philosophy of total life. This makes it a sort of dynamite. So when you send missioners out to preach it, it is well to get ready for some explosions."

Among the many paradoxes of God becoming man, we have to somehow take into account - not "understand" as we normally think of understanding - how the Prince of Peace can also be the One who brings a sword: the ultimate disrupter. Is true peace, for us, unsettling? Indeed, if we believe that the Fall turned the world upside down, it follows that the coming of the Redeemer has to turn things right-side up again - with no small degree of disturbance.

And whatever peace that thought may bring us, the experience is still going to be dizzying. Christianity is not a soft pillow on which to lay your head, but something, sometimes, immediately overwhelming, at other times a slow but relentless overturning of - let's not soften the truth - everything. The world is what it's always been and, suddenly, at the same time, entirely different.

It's good to remember that the explosions aren't just "out there," somewhere else, in strange mission lands. They happen - and very much ought to happen - here, now, everywhere as well. That's the story of the Gospels. And even of the more remote past. A baby is born in an obscure town:

But you, O Bethlehem Ephrathah,

who are too little to be among the clans of Judah,

from you shall come forth for me

one who is to be ruler in Israel,

whose coming forth is from of old,

from ancient days.

That was prophesied by Micah (5:2). Remember him? No? St. Matthew did (2:6), even though those words by one of the most minor of the minor prophets were set down, oh, maybe 750 years before they came true. And referred to truths immeasurably old.

By normal human reckoning, that shouldn't happen - and certainly shouldn't have remade the mighty Roman Empire and changed the course of human history. It's almost not fair of God. Why go to all the trouble of building up a whole civilization only to have it taken over and transformed by a few poor fishermen, tax collectors, a doctor or lawyer or two, some provincial notables? Even the destruction of Jerusalem a few decades later couldn't stop the thing.

In one way, it was the work of madmen. People willing to die for a story about a child who grew up to be a charismatic preacher, did a few "miracles" (or so they say), was brutally executed, and supposedly "rose" from the dead. Which everyone knows cannot happen.

In another way, it drove his followers to gibberish, or multiple languages that various peoples somehow understood, or whatever that was all about. That Paul of Tarsus guy, who had studied a bit too much for his own good, gets religion and goes off his head, starts writing things that even that Peter guy says are hard to understand. And yet he, too, turns thing upside down wherever he goes. Some people, understandably, stone him or beat him. Chase him out of town. Others can't make sense of him, b...

by Randall Smith.

In the movie Fiddler on the Roof, when the Jewish people in the fictional town of Anatevka are tragically evicted from their homes by the Russian government, one of them asks the town's beloved rabbi: "Rabbi, we've been waiting all our lives for the Messiah. Wouldn't this be a good time for Him to come?" To which the rabbi replies: "We'll have to wait for him someplace else. Meanwhile, let's start packing."

Christians likely find it sad that there are those who don't recognize the first coming of the Messiah, but we might also have deep respect for anyone who can say honestly that, in the midst of all the trials and tribulations, his or her life has been devoted to watching and waiting for the Messiah.

I hope I will not seem too much like a Grinch if I remind people that the Advent season isn't only about the first coming of Christ. Anyone listening to the readings at Mass will know that the Church during this season is for the most part directing our attention to His advent at the end of time when "the Son of Man" will come in clouds with great power and glory. (Mark 13:26)

The twofold directive we are given repeatedly about this is that we are to "stay awake" for "no one knows the day or the hour," and "the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night." (Revelation 16:15; Matthew 24:43; 1 Thessalonians 5:2-4; Mark 13:24-37)

When the subject of the Second Coming comes up in class, I remind my students that, since "no one knows the day or the hour," and it will come "like a thief in the night," in all honesty - and I mean this seriously - He might come before the end of class.

By the same token, I tell them, since as 2 Peter 3:8 tells us, a thousand years for us is like a day for God, if it's going to happen in a week in God-time, that would be seven thousand years. So they better go ahead and study for the final.

But keep alert.

I sometimes ask my students what they would want Christ to find them doing upon His return? Plotting some evil? Surfing the web pointlessly? Binge-watching some mind-numbing show? Spreading more gossip on their iPhone? What would we say if Christ asked, "So, my child, what are you doing with the life and all the gifts I gave you?" "You people in the United States, I left you with 10,000 talents. What have you done with them?" Do we really want to have to say: "Uhhh, well, they're here somewhere - I think."

Personally, I like to take a short nap in the afternoon. I sometimes worry that Christ will come then. I mean, it seems to be one of the most popular times for people to interrupt me, so it's altogether possible. And if He comes, what would be my reply if he asked: "What are you doing? Didn't I say repeatedly, Stay awake!"

I would prefer that the Lord find me dutifully washing dishes for my wife or grading student papers and then I might hear: "Good and faithful servant." But that's not as likely as Him finding me napping or procrastinating to avoid washing dishes or grading student papers. And what would I say then? "But Lord, you know everything; you know I hate doing those things." Because then I'm likely to be reminded: "Didn't I say, 'Pick up your cross daily and follow me'?"

Oh, right.

Scholars will sometimes say that, in the early Church, there was confusion about whether Christ's return - the Parousia - would be soon after His death or whether it would be a while. So, for example, in a 2018 article by Mark Keown begins:

It is commonly held in NT scholarship that there was expectation of an imminent parousia within the first generation of the church. For example, I. H. Marshall, writing in 1970, states, "[o]n this point there is there is complete agreement among scholars." It is commonly viewed that this hope was dashed and that later writings. . .reflect the church dealing with the so-called "delay of the Parousia." The expectation of an imminent Parousia is especially held for Mark's Gospel (especially Mark 9:1; 13:30) and the undisputed Pauline Epistles (e.g. Ro...

By Fr. Robert P. Imbelli.

Martin Luther speaks imaginatively of the Old Testament as "the manger in which Christ lies." Richard Hays begins his splendid book, Reading Backwards: Figural Christology and the Fourfold Gospel Witness, citing Luther's insight. Then, he expands the image: "[Jesus Christ] is the treasure who lies figurally wrapped in the folds of the Old Testament." "Figurally" because Jesus Christ, "prefigured" by God-inspired personages and events of Israel's history, recapitulates them, bringing them to historical and spiritual fulfillment. Like swaddling clothes, Israel's Scriptures both reveal and conceal the promised Messiah.

The first chapter of Saint Luke's Gospel masterfully weaves the ties binding the testaments not in abstract terms, but in the concrete persons of Zechariah and Elizabeth, Mary and Joseph. What Luke says of Zechariah and Elizabeth, can be said, a fortiori, of Mary and Joseph: "they were righteous before God, walking in all the commandments and ordinances of the Lord blamelessly." (Luke 1:6) Yet notwithstanding this clear embeddedness in the faith of Israel, there also emerges, gradually but unmistakably, the newness that will become manifest in the Good News of Jesus Messiah.

Already the angel's double annunciation heralds the newness. Announcing to Zechariah the birth of the Baptist, Gabriel proclaims that "he will be great before the Lord. . .and will be filled with the Holy Spirit even from his mother's womb." (Luke 1:15) But in his annunciation to Mary Gabriel attests that "the child to be born will be called holy, the Son of God." (Luke 1:35)

Now, it is true that, in the Greek, the verse does not contain the definite article and therefore is more literally translated "son of God." But as Luke Timothy Johnson affirms, "for Luke Jesus was not only a son of God. . .but the Son of God in a unique fashion."

This conviction is confirmed by Luke's lovely account of Mary's visitation to Elizabeth, the first part of which is the Gospel for this Fourth Sunday of Advent. Elizabeth, "filled with the Holy Spirit," cries aloud: 'Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb!'" (Luke 1:42) How many times has her cry been repeated, over the ensuing centuries, in the prayers of millions, especially the poor and needy imploring, "Hail Mary!"

But Elizabeth continues with words less familiar, but no less significant. "And how does this happen to me that the mother of my Lord [kuriou] should come to me?" (Luke 1:43) Elizabeth senses that the fruit of Mary's womb is one greater than a prophet, one whose Lordship is unparalleled in Israel's past.

Later, after the birth of John and the loosening of his muteness, Zechariah bursts forth in praise of God, as he foretells his own son's mission. "You, child, shall be called prophet of the Most High, for you will go before the Lord [kuriou] to prepare his ways." (Luke 1:76) Ever less astute than his spouse, Zechariah belatedly comes to realize the uniqueness of the child whom Mary bears.

There was a time in the final quarter of the last century when a prevailing view was that the Synoptics presented a "low Christology" - Jesus as teacher and prophet, though perhaps the greatest in the line of prophets. Thus, many commentators contrasted the Synoptics with what was deemed to be the uniquely "high Christology" represented by John's Gospel.

Richard Hays is one of the scholars who are successfully challenging that facile disjunction. He writes: "the more deeply I became engaged with the Synoptics, the more the conviction grew on me that their common witness to the divine identity of Jesus belonged closely together with John's witness." And he espouses the view that "Luke's Gospel creates a narrative identity of Jesus as 'Lord' - an identity shared with the one God of Israel."

That identification, illustrated in the prayerful confessions of Elizabeth and Zechariah, already takes distinctive narrative shape in the very first chapter of the Gospel....

By Fr. Thomas G. Weinandy, OFM, Cap.

But first a note from Robert Royal: Today is the last day for our end-of-year funding campaign. We've done pretty well, but I ask one last time for your attention and support. Let's finish this off with a flourish, so that we can all turn back to carrying on business and - more importantly - prepare for the imminent feast of the Birth of the Savior.

Now for today's column...

In the Prologue of John's Gospel, I believe the Evangelist presented his theological interpretation of Christmas, that is, of the Incarnation.

John first declares: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." Since the Word was with God and was God, He existed before the beginning began, that is, before Creation.

Existing prior to when the beginning began, "all things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made." The reason the Word was the author of all that came to be is that "in him was life," and that the "life was the light of men."

Being the Word, he possessed the fullness of divine life, and so, he could bring to life all that came to be. The Word's godly life was the light of men, for he was the life-giving light wherein humankind could behold God.

For John, the Word's life-giving light "shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it." This is an enigmatic statement, for it refers to a twofold darkness.

First, the Evangelist, in replicating the first phrase of the Book of Genesis, alludes to the dark nothingness prior to Creation, when no-thing existed. That darkness could not overcome the Word's life-giving light. In speaking his "Word," God said "'Let there be light;' and there was light." The first light was the life-giving light of God's Word, and in the light of his life-giving Word, God creates all else that came to be. The darkness of nothingness succumbed to the life-giving light of God's Word.

Second, darkness entered into God's good Creation - the darkness of sin and death. This darkness, however, could not overcome the life-giving light of God's Word, for the Word shines in this darkness as well.

For John, "the true light that enlightens every man was coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world knew him not." Having been created by the life-giving Word, the light of that Word never departs the world. Yet the darkness of the sin-marred world of humankind failed to perceive his presence. Nonetheless, the true light that ever enlightens humankind was now, once again, coming into the world.

Moreover, the Word "came to his own home, and his own people received him not." Beginning with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the Word found a home among the Jews. By means of a covenant, He made them His singular people. The prophets spoke His words and foretold His coming, yet when He came, His very own people refused to acknowledge Him. They knew Him not.

But to "all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God; who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God." Only by receiving the Word, by believing in His name, do we become God's children - not by way of natural means, by way of the flesh and the will of man, but rather, it is by the power of God. Only through faith and the new birth in the Holy Spirit does one become a child of God. But in whose "name" must one believe for this transformation to be achieved?

Here, John's Prologue reaches its climax.

And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth; we have beheld his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father.

Previously, God was present in the temple. There he tabernacled among his people. Now, the Word, who was with God and who is God before the beginning began, has come to exist as man, and He tabernacles in our very midst, as man. It is through the weakness of our sin-marred flesh, that we behold his glory - the glory of t...

By John Emmet Clarke:

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Now for today's column...

"The Word of the Lord" is a phrase regularly and reliably heard throughout the Church Year. When we hear it and reflexively reply: "Thanks be to God." And this is only right and just, since no response other than heartfelt gratitude is fitting in the face of so great a mystery as the utterances of the one true God.

As it was to the prophets of old, the Word of the Lord comes to us, condescending to our lowliness, casting light into our darkness, and cultivating the shallow, rocky, and sunburnt soil of our minds, hearts, and spirits. That's what we're about to celebrate next week.

Yet how often does the Word come to me and I know it not? How commonly does it come to me and find my mind uninterested and my heart unfeeling towards its revelations?

For myself, the answers are, sadly, "Quite often," and "Quite commonly." In my defense, I can only offer that the Word of the Lord is not always readily intelligible or immediately interesting. And the average quality of homiletic interpretations and explanations are (and I mean this in all charity) uninspiring.

So there's a twofold problem. I know full well that I'm making a poor defense, a shoot-the-messenger defense, all the more impoverished since the messengers are either (or both) the Lord Himself who speaks, or His priest who preaches.

"The purpose of our lives is to reveal God to men," Pope Benedict XVI declared in his first homily as pope. This goal is only possible because God revealed Himself to us. Christ asks Peter, "Who do you say that I am?" And Peter can answer truly because the true answer actually exists. Indeed, the answer has already been spoken: its Word stands before Peter, in the flesh, the guarantor that the correct answer can be known - and given.

Thus, when the Word of the Lord comes to us and we understand it not; when it is brought to us and misconstrued, mishandled, or mistreated; when it is uttered, whether by us or by others, and God is not revealed, that failure is not the final word. God is who He says He is, not who we say.

The passing on of that revelation - which is what we mean, or ought to mean, whenever we invoke "the tradition" - is not dependent upon our capabilities or creativity, but on the openness of our hearts to receive the heavenly gift which is the Word of the Lord. Once received, the benefits are ours, the glory is His.

Few of God's servants have testified to this truth as simply yet profoundly as Monsignor Ronald Knox.

Perhaps the most famous Anglican con-vert to the Catholic Church since St. John Henry Newman, Knox served the Church and various flocks with zeal: offering hundreds of retreats, writing dozens of books, completing his own translation of the Bible, and embracing to the full the priestly life, which he loved.

Sixty-odd years since his death have done nothing to diminish the power of his preaching. It is no coincidence, in my mind, that the source of that power is the Word of the Lord - the books of Sacred Scripture.

Of the almost 209 sermons that comprise the best of his preaching (the Pastoral Sermons and Occasional Sermons, now available in new editions), all but 23 have a Biblical epigraph. Regardless of the occasion (Sunday, saints' feast days, secular holidays) or the congregation (rural parishioners, university students, schoolchildren), the inspiration and substance is steadfastly the same: God as He has revealed himself to us in Sacred Scripture.

These sermons are strong meat in...