![\"\"](\"https:\/\/aleteiaen.files.wordpress.com\/2015\/11\/nativity.jpg\" "\\"nativity\\"")
<\/a><\/p>\nAs some of you know, my office is located in the Catholic Center in Manhattan, on First Avenue.\u00a0 On Friday they were decorating the lobby for Christmas \u2013 trimming trees and hanging lights and assembling a small wooden stable, the Nativity scene. As I was leaving work, I stopped to take a look.<\/p>\n
This Nativity scene is a little out of the ordinary.\u00a0 While it has all the usual characters, carved from wood \u2013 Mary, Joseph, shepherds, animals \u2014 it doesn\u2019t have a manger.\u00a0\u00a0 Instead, the figures are arranged in a kind of semi-circle, and Mary is kneeling, with her arms outstretched \u2013 arms that, at Christmas, will hold the Christ child. But now, like all of us this Advent, she is waiting. Her arms are empty.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a poignant image \u2013 and, I think, given the events of the last 48 hours, devastating.<\/p>\n
In those outstretched arms, we can\u2019t help but notice what is missing.\u00a0\u00a0 I looked at that figure in the cr\u00e8che on Friday night and thought of the empty arms of the mothers of Newtown.<\/p>\n
We are all Newtown this morning.<\/strong>\u00a0 Those children are our children.\u00a0 The indescribable heartbreak of those parents is shared by the world.<\/p>\nIronically, in our liturgy, this third Sunday of Advent is a Sunday for rejoicing.\u00a0 We put away the purple and wear rose.\u00a0 The readings point with excitement to Christmas.\u00a0 \u201cCry out with joy and gladness,\u201d the psalm tells us.\u00a0 \u201cRejoice in the Lord always,\u201d St. Paul declares.\u00a0 In the gospel, we hear for the first time the phrase that will define the Christian faith for all time: \u201cgood news.\u201d<\/p>\n
Yet, the news right now isn\u2019t what anyone would call good.<\/p>\n
We keep hearing words like \u201cmassacre\u201d and \u201ctragedy\u201d and \u201cslaughter.\u201d\u00a0 Mixed in, of course, is another word that we can\u2019t escape: \u201cWhy?\u201d\u00a0 I wish I had an answer.\u00a0 I can\u2019t explain it.\u00a0 I don\u2019t think anyone can.<\/p>\n
At times like this, God can seem distant, even detached.\u00a0 Yet, this Sunday, we are reassured:\u00a0 He is closer than we realize.\u00a0 \u201cThe Lord is near,\u201d Paul writes. And it\u2019s not just because Christmas is 9 days away. It is so much more than that. In the great mystery we are about to remember at Christmas\u2014the Incarnation, the Word made flesh\u2014we celebrate this astonishing fact:\u00a0 God became us<\/em>. He invested Himself in humanity.<\/p>\nThe implications are staggering.<\/p>\n
On the five-year anniversary of 9\/11, the great Presbyterian minister Timothy Keller spoke about the Incarnation.\u00a0 I\u2019d like to read you part of what he said:<\/p>\n
\u201cOne of the great themes of the Hebrew Scriptures,\u201d he said, \u201cis that God identifies with the suffering. There are all these great texts that say things like this: If you oppress the poor, you oppress me. I am a husband to the widow. I am father to the fatherless. I think the texts are saying God binds up his heart so closely with suffering people that he interprets any move against them as a move against him. This is powerful stuff! But Christianity says he goes even beyond that. Christians believe that in Jesus, God\u2019s son, divinity became vulnerable to and involved in \u2013 suffering and death! He didn\u2019t come as a general or emperor. He came as a carpenter. He was born in a manger, no room in the inn.\u201d<\/p>\n
And then Rev. Keller adds this:<\/p>\n
\u201cBut it is on the Cross that we see the ultimate wonder. On the cross we sufferers finally see, to our shock, that God now knows too what it is to lose a loved one in an unjust attack.\u201d<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\nOn TV the other night, they showed the devastated father of a child, hearing the news of what happened and burying his face in his hands.<\/p>\n
God is that weeping father.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Lord is near.\u201d He knows what it\u2019s like.<\/p>\n
And He knows what we need: hope.\u00a0 And He has given it to us. The Passion of His son assures us of this: death doesn\u2019t have the last word.\u00a0 We have been promised eternal life.\u00a0 We live in the hope of one day seeing God face-to-face \u2013 and seeing in His reflected light those we love.<\/p>\n
This is the real promise and joy of Christmas: the salvation that was made real on Calvary began in Bethlehem.<\/p>\n
And so we wait for that beginning.\u00a0 We wait for what will be\u2014 like that figure of Mary in a lobby on First Avenue.<\/p>\n
We wait with open arms.<\/strong><\/p>\nAnd in our waiting, we pray.\u00a0 For the victims.\u00a0 For their families.<\/p>\n
We pray for the gunman and his family.<\/p>\n
We pray for our country.<\/p>\n
And we pray, especially, for the children.<\/p>\n
I think one of the reasons that this terrible event struck all of us so deeply is that it was carried out against the smallest among us\u2014the most trusting, the most hopeful, the most vulnerable.\u00a0 Five, six, seven years old.<\/p>\n
On Friday night, was there any parent who didn\u2019t hold their child closer, who didn\u2019t pray a little more deeply, who didn\u2019t cherish even more profoundly the gift of life?<\/p>\n
As I mentioned at the beginning: we are all Newtown this morning.\u00a0 Those children are our children.\u00a0 The wound is deep.<\/p>\n
This morning, we pray for all the victims of Newtown, and we pray for those things we Catholics always pray for in times of mourning.\u00a0 We pray for rest, for light, for peace.<\/p>\n
It is a prayer whispered with the resilient hope of people who believe that God is with us.<\/p>\n
The Lord is near.<\/strong>\u00a0 He walks with us.\u00a0 He weeps with us.<\/p>\nAnd so we pray:<\/p>\n
Eternal rest grant unto them O Lord and let perpetual light shine upon them.\u00a0 May their souls and the souls of all the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace, Amen. \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As some of you know, my office is located in the Catholic Center in Manhattan, on First Avenue.\u00a0 On Friday they were decorating the lobby for Christmas \u2013 trimming trees and hanging lights and assembling a small wooden stable, the Nativity scene. As I was leaving work, I stopped to take a look. This Nativity […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":132,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-79192","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-homilies"],"yoast_head":"\n
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