On New Year's most peoples celebrate the world's creation

Today is New Years Day, and an odd thing about this feast, is that all peoples of all religions celebrate New Years. Most of those ancient peoples follow different calendars. Korea, where I spent twelve years as a young priest, celebrates its New Years five weeks from now on our February 8. China does the same.

In celebrating New Years, most ancient peoples throughout Asia and Africa are actually celebrating the creation of the world. That’s not a bad idea. We too could use this day for thanking God for giving us this wonderful world of ours.

But when those other peoples celebrate creation, they don’t commemorate God’s making everything out of nothing. Rather, they believe that there was always wild chaos here, and creation consisted in the gods bringing order out of the original chaos. 

That might sound weird to us, but out Bible actually starts out in the same way. The first sentence of the Book of Genesis says, “In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth the earth was a formless wasteland.” The original Hebrew for “formless wasteland” was tohu-bohu which sounds like clothes being flung around and around in a dryer.

An odd thing about the New Years celebration for all primitive peoples is that with each ancient people it consists in their acting out their own creation myth. All those people believed that heaven showered the world with blessings on the day of creation. Their myths all then follow up with a story of how the first people did something awful; the way in our creation story Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit, causing God to turn away from them.

When primitive peoples dress up as animals, and then act out their creation myths, they are trying to make their gods think it is creation time again. They are trying to trick the gods into returning with the same favors they showered on mankind at creation time.

We don’t believe any of that, but it is still a good idea to make this a day when we thank God for creating out world. 

Our wild New Year’s Eve parties are a holdover from those ancient legends that saw the world in chaos up to the moment the gods brought order into the world.Today is New Years Day, and an odd thing about this feast, is that all peoples of all religions celebrate New Years. Most of those ancient peoples follow different calendars. Korea, where I spent twelve years as a young priest, celebrates its New Years five weeks from now on our February 8. China does the same.

In celebrating New Years, most ancient peoples throughout Asia and Africa are actually celebrating the creation of the world. That’s not a bad idea. We too could use this day for thanking God for giving us this wonderful world of ours.

But when those other peoples celebrate creation, they don’t commemorate God’s making everything out of nothing. Rather, they believe that there was always wild chaos here, and creation consisted in the gods bringing order out of the original chaos. 

That might sound weird to us, but out Bible actually starts out in the same way. The first sentence of the Book of Genesis says, “In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth the earth was a formless wasteland.” The original Hebrew for “formless wasteland” was tohu-bohu which sounds like clothes being flung around and around in a dryer.

We end the year with the beginning of John's Gospel

Saturday, 12/31/16

Today we have the opening verses of the Gospel according to John. He wrote these words for the Greek-speaking people of his time. Now, in ancient times the Greeks believed in the gods and goddesses of Mount Olympus. But, in John’s time they were like people today who believe in Mother Nature, but in no God in heaven.

What we call Mother Nature, they called the “Logos,” which is simply Greek for the “Word.”

So, John began this Gospel for Greek speaking people, by agreeing with them in their believe in a God in Nature. The bookish word for being in nature is saying he is imminent in Nature. The bookish word for existing above Nature would be transcendent.

John immediately went further than the Greeks. He said their imminent Logos had a transcendent existence in which he was one with the creator or Father of nature. The Logos did not just exist side-by-side with the Father; in another place John described their relationship as an unending act of love.

Now, it is of the nature of true love that it must always be giving to others.

(Going way outside the Bible for an example of love’s need to expand, I think of my sister Peg and her husband Joe. They had thirteen kids, but they were always fitting in extra beds for families deserted by their dad, for my brother when he was having a rocky time, for my dad in his last year, and for visiting priests who at least paid for the roll-away they used when in town.)  

Of the Word John wrote, “What came to be through him was life, and this life was the light of the world.” In calling him the life we can look upon him as the only source for all physical and mental life. We are the light or the sparks struck off him. Even our moments of consciousness with which we identify ourselves are flashes of is life he shares with us

Anna was a prophetess. A prophet is one who lets God use his or her mouth to speak the truth.

Friday,  12/30/16
Today’s Gospel gives us a lady named Anna. St. Luke informed us that her father’s name was Phanuel, and he was of the tribe of Asher. Anna, having been married for seven years when she was young, lived on alone until she was eighty-four. 

Luke tells us that she was a prophetess. The Hebrew word for a prophet was nabi. It was taken from  a child's word for a mouth. Anna gave God the use of her mouth.  Anyway, she came to the temple every day of her life; and when she saw the child Jesus, she immediately recognized him, and she went on to speak about him to all who would listen. 

Several years ago, in speaking to the grade school children at Mass, I told them that the old people who come to Mss every day are very close to God; but some of the kids protested, saying, “Those people don’t like us.”

Whatever. Jesus said, “The first will be last, and the last will be first.” 

If we make it past St. Peter we will be able to see who comes on first. Will it be the kids or the old ladies? Would any of you put your money on our   archbishops?

We picture Joseph and Mary carrying the forty day old child to the temple

Thursday, 12/29/16

In our hearts we should reconstruct the Gospel scene. We should picture  Joseph carrying the forty-day-old child. We should picture Mary reaching over  to readjust the robe.

And how do you picture the baby wrapped? 

I used to chuckle over this account in the Korean Bible. Over there, sixty years ago there were no plastic or paper bags for purchases. Every wife carried a big bandana for wrapping up what she bought. It was called a podeggi; and their bible said that when Jesus was born, Mary wrapped him in her podeggi.  

Stay with that scene. Picture, if you can, the pride and joy in the faces of Mary and Joseph.

What about the priest? When he took the two small doves the couple offered in buying the first-born back from God, did he know what was happening? Probably not. The things priest do every day get to be routine. 

Old Simeon did recognize the child. He had been coming to the temple every day, hoping that one day he would see the fulfillment of the promises he lived for. 

“Lord, now you can let your servant go in peace. My eyes have seen the salvation of your people.”

On this Feast od the Holy Innocents we should do our best to lessen the isolation of children refugees.

In Chapter Two of his Gospel Luke described how when the child Jesus was forty days old Joseph and Mary brought him to the temple where he was recognized by Simeon and Anna. Luke followed that by relating, “When they had fulfilled all the prescriptions of the law of the Lord, they returned to Galilee, to their own town of Nazareth.”

If it happened that way it could not have happened the way Matthew described it. He told us that the Holy Family remained in Bethlehem for up to two years before they went down to Egypt, staying there for years, then going to settle in Nazareth for the first time. 

This is a hard, but necessary, thing for people to grasp: the incidents related in Bible stories are often not factual. Though not factual, they are true in that they convey true concepts. When Matthew and Luke sat down to write their Gospels they settled on the stories going around that backed up the message they were writing their gospels to teach.

The story of the massacre of the babies in Bethlehem cannot be fitted into Luke’s Gospel;  and, there is a good chance it never happened. The Jewish historian for those years, a man named Josephus, didn’t approve of Herod, and he wrote about all the heartless things King Herod did; but he makes no mention of such a massacre. 

The story of the slaughtering of the Innocents is there to turn our attention and pity to such children as those who are victims to AIDs, Cholera, and starvation. That is what this feast is meant for. It should make us protectors of today’s innocent ones.

Today we honor St. John who lay on the breast of Jesus.

Tuesday, 12/27/16

Today, in honoring St. John, the Beloved Disciple, we should note the passages where he is contrasted with St. Peter. First, at the Last Supper, when John was lying against Jesus, Peter instructed him to find out from Jesus who his betrayer would be.

They are contrasted again in today’s Gospel as they ran together to the tomb of Jesus. John ran faster than Peter, but then he waited to let Peter go in first.

Next we see them together when they breakfasted with Jesus by the Lake of Tiberius. Jesus takes Peter aside to give him charge over his sheep. Then, when Peter asked what John’s role would be, Jesus answered, “What if I wish him to remain until I come?”

In each of those instances John recognized Peter’s authority, while Peter recognized John’s deep relationship with Jesus.

The lesson for us there is that we must have respect for the authority of Church leaders, while they must have respect for good peoples' possibly closer relationship with the Lord.

For fun, we will sing the song about Wenceslaus on this feast of Stephe.n

Monday, 12/26/16

Here is a song for this feast of Stephen.

Good King Wenceslas looked out on the feast of Stephen,

when the snow lay round about, deep and crisp and even.

Brightly shown the moon that night, though the frost was cruel,

when a poor man came in sight, gathering winter fuel.

Hither, page, and stand by me. If thou know it telling:

yonder peasant, who is he? Where and what his dwelling?

Sire, he lives a good league hence, underneath the mountain,

right against the forest fence, by Saint Agnes fountain.

Bring me flesh, and bring me wine. Bring me pine logs hither.

Thou and I will see him dine when we bear them thither.

Page and monarch, forth they went, forth they went together

through the rude wind's wild lament, and the bitter weather.

Sire, the night is darker now, and the wind blows stronger.

Fails my heart, I know not how - I can go no longer.

Mark my footsteps good, my page, tread thou in them boldly:

Thou shalt find the winter's rage freeze thy blood less coldly.