Looking back at the weekly messages of Father Paul Counce, first published in The Carpenter, our weekly Parish Bulletin
Published: December 18, 2016
This year’s Advent season is as long as it can possibly be: four full weeks of preparation for Christmas. But still it seems to me that Christmas comes so quickly these days nonetheless. Next weekend we’ll celebrate the Solemnity of the Lord’s Nativity. I hope you’re already planning to join us here at the Cathedral for one of our four Masses: the Saturday Vigil Mass at 4 pm; the “Mass during the Night” at 10 pm (with a musical program preceding, beginning at 9:25 pm); the 8 am “Mass at Dawn” on Christmas morning; or the 10 am Mass of Christmas Day itself.
As I write this confessions are still being heard, our decorations have not yet been put up, the choir and musicians are still practicing, serving schedules are still incomplete, and the bishop and I only have vague ideas about what we’ll preach about. But I can assure you that in the end the graces of Christmas here at your Cathedral will be profound. I hope you can come to share it all with us.
In fact, while you’re circling the Mass you wish to attend in red on your calendar, also please circle the New Year’s Vigil Mass the next Saturday, December 31: it’s followed by our traditional “Champagne and Gumbo” meal for everyone in the Parish Hall. This popular event is the perfect way to bid farewell to 2016 and welcome 2017 without losing sleep over it!
In the meantime, like you, I have been busy. I actually managed to get most of my Christmas shopping done – thank you, Amazon! – but now I have to get everything wrapped and a good bit of it mailed off. Even more importantly, I’ve also been trying to make sure I spend some significant time in prayer, reflecting on the whole “Christmas event.”
The late Sulpician Father Raymond Brown, who was arguably America’s most pre-eminent Scripture scholar, long held and taught that the Bible’s Christmas story is a short summary of the whole, longer history of salvation. (The technical word he used was microcosm.) It has promise, challenge, and ultimately victory in it; its poetry speaks of salvation breaking upon world darkened by sin like candles softening dark December nights.
In my prayer and preaching I’ve stolen this idea of his a bit and re-worked it: I think the Christmas story is also a microcosm of our own lives! After all, our lives are complicated mixtures of many ideas and experiences: we know “beauty in the midst of dirtiness.” We can appreciate feasting because we know what hunger is. We’re familiar with generosity because we also know how widespread selfishness is. Beautiful music appeals to us because we’ve also heard cries of pain and loneliness and poverty. Just about anyone who endured 2016 in Baton Rouge, with its racial tensions and flooding especially, knows the downside of life, and thus appreciates life’s blessings too.
Because in the midst of the darkness of our life’s limitations, light shines! In other words, there’s “a little bit of the Christmas story” in each one of us! Just as the Son of God came to a nondescript little family in a very out-of-the-way corner of the world, so too does He come to us as well. It wasn’t just the Blessed Virgin Mary and our patron St. Joseph who formed a “holy family” with Jesus: our own families and households are holier too because He has entered our lives as well. My prayer for you this holiday season is that you notice and savor the grace of Christmas, in your own favorite way – and that you notice how your very own life reflects Christmas so much!
Yours in the coming Christ,
Father Paul
