Where exactly has the year gone? It seems like just yesterday I was writing a post for New Years day last year. Well, if you want something mystical and profound today from me, you’re not going to get it. If you have inner cravings for something on resolutions, you should go and look up my post from last year 
. I have, however, been contemplating changes in culture reflected in children’s films over time. This may seem a tad strange topic for a post so let me explain a bit. Over the holidays, we have been entertaining my husband’s 11 year old sister and their 9 year old cousin – it’s a novelty to have sleepovers at our house at the moment, which means we’ve had quite a few of them. I observed their crazed conversations about high school musical and its MULTIPLE sequels, Hannah Montana and read their girlie magazines. Seriously, most of it is capricious, frivolous rubbish. So over the last couple of weeks I have attempted to educate them with movies from the 80s and 90s. Does anyone remember Willow, the Never Ending Story, and my personal favourite “The Labyrinth?”. As I re-watched these movies with the girls I discovered that these films had virtue. It wasn’t about boys, cloths and the importance of acquiring copious amounts of material goods. These fantasy films were about the triumph of good over evil, there is a clear distinction between virtue and vice, and in many cases the characters grow in virtues such as courage, hope and learn to forgo their own selfishness for the sake of others. And the girls loved them! Now, each time they come over, they ask me to get out a movie that I watched when I was little in preference to the movies of their own cultural milieu. I think this hits on something innately wonderful about the human person – that virtue is naturally attractive and uplifting! If you have the time this holiday season go and get one or two of them out from the video store and tell me what you think.
Archive for December, 2009
Childhood Virtue
I apologise for the silence last week…not good to leave it to the last minute to post and find that the Wifi is down (ah life on a generator…) and I apologise (good to practice) if this post is not entirely coherent, but I wrote it on Christmas Day as I spent a bit of time contemplating the day…
After a very ‘busy’ two weeks before Christmas, where I lost my sense of Advent anticipation more than a few times, the feast of Jesus’ birth has literally hit me like an internal earthquake. At the risk of being a little bit frank, I feel an urgent need to kind of yell at the roof tops “Oh my GOD…YOU…became like US…in LOVE…YOU are AMONG US…the humility to become an infant dependent on OUR love…LIKE, WHAT THE…???”
In French, there’s a verb ‘bouleverser’ that doesn’t exist in English, or more accurately, has several different meanings in English…to be ‘bouleversé’ could mean you’re flabbergasted, or deeply moved, or deeply disturbed, or completely disoriented or knocked off track by something. To be honest, I think it’s the most perfect verb to describe how the birth of Jesus could/should/would be felt in the heart of each person who really enters into the Christmas mystery.
This Christmas Day, in the absence of the usual superficial distractions of the holiday period, I have to admit I’ve felt this bouleversement quite a lot more than previous years. And all the more intense when the only one with whom I actually shared the experience is one of our drivers. The only person with whom I’ve really been able to speak about the great mystery of Christmas was the chauffeur who dropped me at Christmas morning Mass. His name is Noel, and it was his birthday (hence the name)…he got me, I got him…we understood why we were here. He expressed his puzzlement with the way ‘the white people don’t seem to believe much’…he’s bang on.
As I’ve said before, are we missing the point SO often…in our search for the more powerful, more efficient, more isolating, more consuming, more painless options for everything, we become senseless to the fundamental human ‘wiring’ to respond to the love of the One who made us. And the irony that it’s about four Western governments that provide something like 80% of all aid and development funding to the developing world and therefore determine quite substantially the philosophical and spiritual (or lack thereof) paradigms that underlie such interventions. I don’t want to draw gross generalisations, but there’s something truly truly profound about being among people in abject poverty who really sing the praises of their Creator.
If the whole Nativity story was to re play itself in 2009, I’d bet a whole year of per diem that the manger throne of the Child Jesus would be somewhere here, in a little shack on the side of a bumpy, unpaved road, semi-flooded thanks to the rain the night before. The smell would be nothing to write home about. There would be nothing glamorous about the scene. And this must be what it means to speak of God’s incarnation…only the most obscure, distasteful and uninviting corner would be fit for the paradox of this mystery.
I’ve just found myself incredibly ‘bouleversé’ – in every sense of the word – by the way the suffering continues. Yes it’s Christmas, ‘Rejoice O world, your Saviour has come, through the love of a virgin’s womb…’ and yes, my colleagues and I celebrated, and Mass was truly glorious…but this didn’t change the fact that for so many people in this city, it was just another day of challenges. Are we conscious of bringing into the orbit of our worship the scarred and painful parts of our lives and the societ(ies) in which we live? Are we conscious that our Eucharistic worship be the source and summit of all that happens in history? Not just the nice bits?
Last night, I spent a substantial portion of time chatting with a colleague currently based in Goma in the east of DR Congo, in the warzone…as he shared about life over there. The contrast is just impossible to digest. It can be numbing to hear on a daily basis of new attacks, within kilometres of your workplace, on people that you know, including recently the assasination of two priests. Yet Christ’s Church is there, as she is everywhere, courageously witnessing, unceasingly and without fail to the mystery of the incarnation of God as man for the sake of us all and our salvation. The joy of the Child Jesus’ birth, such a precious and intimate moment, may at first seem to sit so uncomfortably beside the reality of daily life in Goma. Yet, this humble birth is ultimately more powerful than any weapon or conflict. The ultimate victory is already won and in a place like Goma, that’s sometimes about the only hope you can bank on.
I like Christmas. I like how it brings people together, encourages sharing and generally makes commonplace good cheer and merriment.
And I had a good Christmas. Plenty of family together for some good food, good company and plenty of sparkling (and somewhat animated) conversation. 
Plus I always like going to Mass when it’s for a big festival like this – there’s just that little bit “extra” effort thrown into the celebration I find.
However, I couldn’t help pondering on the difference between going to Mass yesterday morning and when we went on Friday morning. On the surface, not much was different: same parish, same Christmas-tide decorations, same priest with the same vestments.
But, digging a little deeper, the difference was in the congregation. Mainly in its size and constitution. Now, this probably won’t be news to anyone who has heard the term “Christmas Catholic”, but it is fair to say that there were a number of faces missing at the Sunday morning Mass. Or, to put it more accurately, I saw a number of people at Mass on Christmas Day who I haven’t seen at Mass all year.
Before I go any further, I just want to clarify that this is not trying to be a “judging” post. Of course there is no way I can accurately account for the Mass-going (or not-going) actions of hundreds of people. So please take all of this with the proverbial pinch of salt, and remember these are just my observations.
Right, so what I was pondering on was the make-up of Christmas (and less so nowadays, Easter) Masses and those that attend out of some duty or obligation…or guilt?…rather than out of love for the Mass and the Faith. I’m thinking about some of my school-chums and even some of my extended family who I know do not regularly attend Mass (and haven’t for a long time), but who will still make the effort on Christmas Day if requested to attend – usually as a favour to a parent, I’ve found.
They still remember a lot of the prayers, and when to kneel and when to stand, and they all mosey on up for Communion. But I just wonder at all of this and ask how is it that such wayward sheep return to the flock once a year, but we can’t get them to stay? What are we doing about using the Christmas and Easter feasts as an opportunity to remind those who have fallen away from the Faith just what they have fallen away from?
In my local parish, for example, the weekly parish bulletin is replaced at Christmas time with a sheet outlining the various activities that carry on in the parish throughout the year – from prayer groups to bible studies to youth groups. I think this is a good idea to remind those not already familiar that most parishes have a vibrant community life associated with them.
But I also wonder if there is more that could be done around the Sacraments to remind everyone – new and old – of the importance of what is taking place? Perhaps a bit more instruction by the priest at sermon time? Or perhaps a “cheat sheet” that is distributed at Mass entitled “Been a while since you’ve been here?” Such a sheet could remind people of the need for regular reconciliation, how to examine their conscience, how to present for a blessing if not for the Eucharist itself?
I’m open to other ideas, but I do think that a lot of this does come back on the parents of those involved. As was pointed out by our parish priest in his homily on the Feast of the Holy Family, it is the parents that are the first teachers of the Faith. Not the priest. Not the school. So if the students aren’t learning, do we need to re-educate the teachers too?
e.g. If it were my young adult son coming along to Mass for the first time this year, in the car as well as saying thank you for making the effort, I’d be gently reminding him to examine his conscience before going up for Communion. I don’t think we should sacrifice everything in the name of familial peace and harmony.
But that’s just my opinion anyway.
Expect the unexpected…
This is the season of the Church year when we reflect on Jesus coming us a child, becoming a human being, to save us. It can all sound so cliche sometimes that we almost forget to think about what it means. It is really quite an odd thing – God becoming a baby. After he is found in the temple when he is lost, Jesus refers to God as his Father. His divine sonship, and his obedience to his heavenly Father’s will, take precedence over his ties to his own family at that time. The trinity is also a mystery that is hard to get your head around. Jesus is God, but God the father is also God. The the Holy Spirit dwells among us still – also God. A little mind boggling!
It is interesting to think that the people at the time knew from the prophecies of the Old Testament that the messiah would be born about that time and were expecting him. Yet, they were expecting something quite different from what they got. They were expecting a King to save them from the political dictators of the time. Someone to be a powerful and strong leader. They were not expecting a baby born among cows and sheep in a smelly manger.
Jesus is surprising like that isn’t he. He turns things on their head. The first will be last and the last will be first. It sounds so simple but in reality it is an effort and really quite hard to do; to be humble; to let our pride fall away. Yet trustworthy sources say it is also the key to happiness. Someone who is depressed is usually very inward looking and finds it difficult to think past their own pain or anxiety. People think of love as emotion and happy feelings. But true love is all the people who do so much for their children, who make dinner on Christmas day and do the dishes, who care about the people around them at work, or look after a sick parent day after day, and love even when they don’t feel it.
Earlier this month Pope Benedict talked about the need for us to be humble. In promoting peace and reconciliation, he said, Christians must take their example from Christ, who freely became human and died for the sins of all.
Free of ulterior motives, people must “be willing to take the first step, be the first to meet the other, offering them reconciliation, taking on the pain that comes with letting go of having to always be right,” the pope said.
Pope Benedict called for a rediscovery of the sacrament of penance, which has more or less “disappeared from the existential habits of Christians” today.
The neglect of the sacrament is “a symptom of the loss of truth in relation to ourselves and with God; a loss that puts our humanity in danger and weakens our capacity for peace,” he said.(http://www.catholicnews.com/data/stories/cns/0905624.htm)
I hope we can more like that this year – and grow in love.
Feast of St. Stephen
Merry Christmas everyone. I hope yesterday brought with it great joy that our Saviour has arrived. It is interesting to reflect that the day after Christmas is the feast of the first martyr for the faith. We celebrate the arrival of our saviour, then immediately after, the death of a martyr. Here is one of Pope Benedict’s previous messages on the meaning of St. Stephen’s feast day:
Praying the Angelus December 26th on the Feast of St. Stephen Martyr, Pope Benedict XVI spoke of the many Christians who are still suffering persecution in today’s world and commended them to the care of Mary.
The Pontiff pointed out how the celebration of the Feast of the martyr St. Stephen on the day after Christmas, “can surprise us, because it strikes the contrast between the peace and joy of Bethlehem and the drama of Stephen, stoned to death in Jerusalem in the first persecution against the newly born Church.”
The Pope also noted that, “St. Stephen was the first to follow the footsteps of Christ with martyrdom; dying like the Divine Teacher, forgiving and praying for his executioners (cf Acts 7,60).”
Moreover, he explained that during the first four centuries of the Church, when all of the Saints were martyrs, “their deaths were not instilled with fear or sadness, but with a spiritual enthusiasm which is always aroused in new Christians.”
“For believers, the day of death, and even more so the day of martyrdom, is not the end of everything, but the “passing” into immortal life, it is the day of their final birth, in Latin “dies natalis.”
“We can understand then, the link which exists between the ‘dies natalis’ of Christ and the ‘dies natalis’ of St. Stephen. If Jesus was not born on earth, mankind would not be able to be born in heaven. Because Christ is born, we are able to be “reborn!” exclaimed the Holy Father.
In conclusion the Pontiff entrusted to Mary “the many who are persecuted and suffering, in various ways, for their testimony and service to the Gospel.”
Without mentioning them by name, the Holy Father made specific reference to Catholics in China, saying, “with a special spiritual closeness, I think also of the Catholics who, maintain true fidelity to the Chair of Peter without surrendering or compromising in times of trial or great suffering.”
“The whole Church admires this example and prays that they have the strength to persevere, knowing that their tribulations are fonts of victory.”
Merry Christmas!
Well I get the Christmas Day post, so Merry Christmas everybody!!! (Admin if you’re checking, you’ll note that this post is up on time). I hope everyone is having a safe and happy time with family and friends.
Can’t really say anything too hard hitting or thought provoking as it will get lost amidst the holidays. Plus I don’t do thought provoking often…(some may say at all). So i’ll just say that one of the things I like about Christmas is that it comes around every year. Not only because of the carols, or Christmas tunes, or the snow, or presents, or the family reunions. When you think about what Christmas means, and all the buildup and expectation tied into Christ’s coming, it really is a magical event. Being able to celebrate this is a great way to close out every year, no matter what the months leading up to Christmas were like.
So I hope everyone out there has a prayerful Christmas amidst everything else!! See you in the new year!
Liturgy and Festival
Tomorrow, being Christmas, I’m sure pretty most of us will be attending some type of service, and many of us will be attending Mass. Is it so wrong to choose masses based on the liturgical content, music, homily? Personally I don’t think so – at such a rich liturgical time, I want all my senses to be feed so as to awaken my heart and to truly enjoy this beautiful season in the Church’s calendar. To truly celebrate in a liturgical sense. So when a good friend of mine passed on the reflection below from a good man who many of us know, I found myself nodding in agreement.
The Catholic Church historically has been at the centre of great festivals that have richly marked and shaped many cultures. Her liturgical life calls for festival and naturally overflows into it. Musical dramas emerged in the late middle ages to extend the celebration of feast days, especially around Easter and Christmas. Colourful processions have marked the life of the Church from the early centuries, while ballades and songs were often the natural accompaniment of long pilgrimages. The holiday is truly a holy day not simply because of Holy Mass, but also for the time set aside for communitarian celebration, in both banquet and art. Shared celebration such as this over generations is the stuff cultures are eventually made of.
Today there are some signs of festival returning to the Church in New Zealand – with the ten day Catholic summer school for young adults, “Hearts Aflame” just after Christmas; the “Eucharistic Convention” in Auckland in the Easter Octave each year; and the Family Life International bi-annual convention. There are Rosary Processions each year in October in some dioceses and an annual Stations of the Cross in Auckland on Good Friday from the seminary to the Cathedral. Certain parishes also mark special days with family days of food, games and entertainment.
Yet in the main, we remain relatively impoverished in New Zealand at the level of festival, in comparison to countries with a stronger Catholic heritage, such as Spain, Poland, Malta and central and South America.
It seems to me that there is an attempt to compensate for this void by the increasing insertion of creative entertainment and cultural display in the liturgy of the Mass. The procession of the gifts or that of the gospel is often used to insert a cultural or dramatic moment. This year I have seen Irish, Philippino and Tongan dancing groups take centre stage at some moment of the Mass – as well as dramas presenting the lives of saints or themes from the gospel, not to mention post-communion dances. One day a pig might be carried in; another time there might be a symbolic procession of tiki and punga, along with explanatory commentaries, as a sort of extended ‘prayers of the faithful’.
Yet each time, one has the sense that the Mass is being interrupted for a moment of festival. The priest or bishop watching from the presider’s chair begins to give the impression of a visiting dignitary being entertained at Waitangi or Government House, after which the Mass tries to pick up again where it left off, with the readings or the Eucharistic prayer.
Festival is a wonderful thing, and we need it – especially around our big Catholic feasts. On those occasions – all the colour in the world is justified, full cultural displays, dance, drama, all kinds of traditional music, food and wine – all combine to express the joy that the occasion calls for and the unity in diversity of the people of God. Our world is crying out for such festival – for as it busily tries to forget its religious roots, it loses all reason for celebration. And festival has a hidden religious source – and for Catholics this is all the richer in the Eucharistic gift of Christ Himself. From this holy of holies, all our holidays spring.
We make a tragic mistake though if we try to incorporate the celebration of festival into the sacred celebration of the mysteries. In a very genuine attempt to heighten the occasion, we end up diminishing both the sense of sacredness in the Mass and the sense of joy in the festival – because we are caught in a no-man’s-land of being entertained without being fully able to clap and cheer – without being able to join in the dance spontaneously, without being able to let our hair down, as festival calls for. Somehow we are still semi-conscious that that kind of abandon does not belong in the Mass. Let us be more than semi-conscious then – and enter into more of that full consciousness that Vatican II insisted on when it spoke of the liturgy. Let us allow festival to have its full life by giving it back its rightful place as an overflow from the Mass – extending each Holy Day into holiday. But for the Mass to overflow, let it find again its deep sacred character of mystery and not become our creative platform.
I hope you all have a blessed Chrismas and if you are interested in feeding your senses then I would personally recommend Midnight Mass at St Mary’s Avodale in Auckland. I hope the baby Jesus brings you everything you need at this very special time.
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