Fr. Thom's Homilies

           What is Christmas about?  I mean, what is it really about?  There’s no shortage stories, movies and Christmas specials that attempt to answer this question, with more or less success.  Some of them miss by a mile; some of them come very close.  I think of “classics” like Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol or Frank Capra’s It’s A Wonderful Life .  These stories, and others like them, show the dignity of each human life; they show the importance of relationship with God and neighbor; they exalt the virtue of charity – as they seek to call forth the very best of our humanity in this holy season; they point to what is ultimately most important in this life.  But even these stories, as good as they are, don’t completely capture the “true meaning of Christmas.”   My brothers and sisters, Christmas, at its heart, is about the Incarnation – that God became one of us ; that the Son of God (the “Eternal Word ...

          Each year it seems Christmas comes earlier and earlier.  It is as though after Thanksgiving the secular world, having “already seen this movie,” presses the “fast forward” button to “get to the good parts.”  Meanwhile, we in the Church look like a bunch of curmudgeonly old humbugs, because we insist on watching the whole thing and repeating all the lines; we insist on this thing called “Advent.”  Well, I can assure you, I am no humbug.  I even wore my festive Christmas socks tonight to prove it!  Christmas parties that are actually pre-Christmas are inevitable at this time of year, and even the Church’s liturgy seems to give a “green light” to some anticipated celebration, as each year on the 3 rd Sunday of Advent we have what we call “Gaudete Sunday.”  Gaudete , being the Latin second-person plural imperative for “Rejoice!”  And so, we are told in each of the readings this Sunday, in some way ...

We gather tonight as a campus community to pray, to sing, to and to give glory to God for the birth of His Son, Jesus Christ.  Now, granted, we are anticipating this a little bit, as it is only Tuesday of the 2 nd Week of Advent and Christmas is still almost two weeks away.  But, as we won’t have the opportunity to be together then, we gather tonight in what has been a very longstanding tradition here at St. Ambrose.  Also, today is the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, commemorating the appearance of our Blessed Mother to a poor, indigenous man by the name of Juan Diego on Tepeyac hill near Mexico City in 1531.  And so we ask for the prayers Our Lady of Guadalupe, Patroness of the Americas, tonight as well.           While we come together to sing Christmas carols in this somewhat anticipated celebration, it may be easy to get caught up in the sentimentality of it all.  It may be easy to think that Christmas is abo...

          We seem to get some mixed messages in the readings for this 2 nd Sunday of Advent.  On the one hand, we hear a message of peace and comfort, as the Prophet Isaiah prays: “Comfort, give comfort to my people, says your God.  Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and proclaim to her that her service is at an end.”  On the other hand, in just the next couple of verses, there seems to be a stern challenge issued: “A voice cries out: In the desert prepare the way of the Lord!  Make straight in the wasteland a highway for our God!”  This is then reinforced in the preaching of repentance by John the Baptist, the great forerunner of our Lord, at the beginning of Mark’s Gospel.  In fact, the passage from Isaiah is even referenced here: “A voice of one crying out in the desert: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make straight his paths.’”  It’s as if we are being told simultaneously, “Be at peace. Everything’s going to...

          When we experience something truly beautiful in life, for instance when we see a beautiful sunset or a painting or when we hear a piece of music, this can sometimes cause in us a deep emotional reaction.  It can even produce tears.  I once heard this reaction explained as the “pain of separation.”  In other words, when we encounter something beautiful on earth, it is a “little slice of heaven,” and it brings great joy.  But at the same time we know that we’re only getting that little sliver; we know that there’s more.   We know somehow that the goodness, the beauty that we are experiencing is not yet experienced in all its fullness.  And so there is a kind of sadness as we long for but our temporarily separated from the ultimate good.  The Catholic poet Anne Porter described it this way in her poem, “Music”: When I was a child I once sat sobbing on the floor Beside my mother’s pian...