Comfort Ye!

Student assembly address

The year is 540 B.C. 

Almost fifty years earlier, the Babylonians had destroyed what was once southern Israel, or Judah, and its capital city Jerusalem, the once-proud city of David. The Babylonians had been brutal, savaging women and children, and sending families into exile as slaves into cities far away, dividing parents from their children, siblings from siblings. All symbols of God's covenant with the Israelites were desecrated and then destroyed--the Ark of the Covenant, the Temple itself--leaving the Jewish people with little hope that the "promised land" obtained during Moses' time would ever be theirs again. The harsh judgment of earlier prophets-- Amos, Elijah, Ezekiel and others--had come true. It was clear to the Jewish people that God had punished them for their sinfulness, allowing Babylon to utterly crush them.

Imagine what it would be like to have foreign invaders destroy everything we regard as sacred and holy. Imagine being separated from our parents and siblings, never to see them again. Would our faith survive that? This was the plight of the Jewish people during the Babylonian exile. 

But at the peak of despair, when even the most faithful and holy among them had begun to lose hope, God sent his people a new prophet, Isaiah, speaking soothing words that they had not heard for nearly five decades: 

"Comfort ye, give comfort to my people. Israel's sins, her iniquities are forgiven, her warfare has ended." (Isaiah 40). 

A new age is soon coming, sayeth the Lord, when every valley will be exalted, and every mountain will be laid low. The Lord shall allow his people to return to their ancient city Jerusalem, where the Temple shall be rebuilt, families reunited, and the ancient faith of Abraham, David and their forefathers restored.

George Frideric Handel was a German composer who lived in the 18th century. Among his most famous works was the "Messiah: A Sacred Oratorio" which has become one of the most well-known choral pieces of all time--almost everyone has heard the 'Hallelujah' Chorus. But earlier in the "Messiah", Handel puts to music the prophecy of Isaiah, promising the redemption and restoration of Israel from exile. The Messiah is frequently played during Advent and the Christmas season.

Though we do not live in slavery, we do live in a world that seems to have less and less knowledge of and concern for the Lord, where people who try and live as devout Christians are often ridiculed. The theme of Advent is "Come, Lord Jesus." We are in need of hope, much like the ancient Jews, and we need to re-hear the promise of the Lord's coming, promise that God's kingdom will come again and a new order restored. 

I know this is not the type of music you'd have on your phone's play list, but one of the signs of an educated person is the willingness to consider new things, so I ask you for the next six minutes to listen with an open mind to this recording of a portion of the Messiah as performed by tenor Nicholas Sharratt in London, 2012. Try to place yourself back to the situation of the Jewish people some 550 years before Christ, in despair, listening to the words of Isaiah, telling them their suffering is finally coming to a close, and that their warfare is over.

 

Come, Lord Jesus. Make what is crooked straight and the rocky places plain, so that we may follow you more faithfully. Amen.

A Force for Good

Student assembly address:

Good morning! I was passing by Opry Mills  Mall on Black Friday on my way to the airport to drop off my daughter and son in law. Were any of you there? All I could tell from Briley Parkway as I drove by was that the parking lot was jammed with cars, and there was a line of cars on Briley about a half a mile long just to get off the Opry Mills exit. 

Retail businesses do about three trillion dollars in sales during the build-up to Christmas, or about 20% of their annual business. Black Friday is the biggest retail day of the year, followed closely by "Super-Saturday," which is the last Saturday before Christmas--this year, on December 20. All this also means that we're also deluged with advertisements clamoring noisily for our attention.

Some of the very best minds in business work in advertising. It's no easy task to create witty, 30 second ads that stand out from among all the other ads. People with a talent for it are well paid, and should be--good commercials influence us to buy the product that they're selling, so much so that thirty-six companies spent over one billion dollars in advertising last year. (Trivia: Which company spent the most, at 4.9 billion dollars? Procter and Gamble--think Tide detergent, Crest toothpaste, Charmin bathroom tissues, Gillette razors, Head and Shoulders, etc.)

One of the interesting questions about advertising is: what are they selling? I don't mean the products they ultimately want you to buy, but how they're trying to connect with you--what their underlying message is. Consider this recent Cadillac commercial:



This commercial is very good--it's funny, it features a goofy fella whose name is Steve Merchant, a British comedian and writer--and it's memorable. If you've seen it, you remember it. But underneath the humor, what is the appeal? If you drive this Cadillac, you'll turn heads. Pretty women will notice you. Men will be jealous of you. It's an appeal to our vanity, really. People will know you're a success if you drive this Cadillac. They'll envy you. Be a person who is envied by others.

That's a pretty consistent advertising technique, especially for luxury items: to appeal to our vanity. But there's another kind of commercial, much rarer, that appeals to the opposite side of our character, to our better instincts. Consider this recent Navy recruiting commercial:



What is the appeal of this commercial? Aside from its high production value, it appeals to a noble desire within each of us to make a difference with our lives, to do something of value, to serve others. All of us, I think, want to be challenged and want to be proud of ourselves. It's why we respect coaches who push us, or teachers who are hard on us. 

Instead we live in a coddled culture, with low expectations, where everyone gets a trophy. When my son was ten years old, he had about 20 trophies from football, basketball and baseball on top of his dresser. One day, I noticed he had arranged them, with half sitting prominently on his dresser and the other half on some back shelves. I asked him why he had arranged them like that. "The trophies in the back are participation trophies,"  he said. "They don't mean anything. The trophies in the front are for making all-stars, or for winning something."  If it's easy, it doesn't mean as much.

The armed services commercials appeal to our deep desire to challenge ourselves and to do something noble with our lives: "The Few. The Proud. The Marines." or "Army Strong" or "Aim High. The U.S. Air Force." They are extraordinarily successful, too--all four branches of the armed services met or exceeded their recruiting goals this last year.

I think we can learn from their success. If we commit to serving others, if we act not out of vanity but out of altruism and concern for others, our lives will resonate with other people, and we will not only feel better about ourselves, but others will want to be around us.  Want to impress a girl or a guy? Don't appeal to his or her vanity; instead, appeal to what's good, deep down inside him or her, deep inside all of us. Suggest you do Christian Internship hours together, or visit an elderly home at Christmas, or do something for someone else. The measure of a good relationship is: Are we better people because of our association with that person? Do we draw out someone else's best instincts to serve others? 

We began the Advent season yesterday. In preparation for Christ's coming, let's recognize the best way to welcome Christ is to be--perhaps not a global force--but a local force for good in the lives of all those we meet.

Made for Greatness

Inside St. Peter's Basilica

Student assembly address:

My father was “old-school” when it came to discipline. We never had to sit in a corner, skip a dessert, or go to bed early. We got spanked. And he had developed the whole process into a kind of ritual, as I look back on it now. First, there was the verdict and the sentencing: “You were disrespectful of your mother and so you’re going to get a spanking.” Then there was the banishment to our bedroom. Then there was the waiting, which often took 15 to 20 minutes--that was the worst part. Then my father would walk slowly up the stairs, and by then, as a young boy, I’d be crying. Then there’d be 3 hard swats on the rear end. We’d be told to stay in our beds until he came back. We’d cry our eyes out. Ten minutes later he’d come back, hug us, tell us that he loved us, tell us to apologize to our mother, and that it was all over now.

I don’t remember all the times I was spanked, but I remember the last time. I was about 7, and it was Christmas morning. My aunt from New York always spent Christmas with us, and she was very generous, but let’s just say she didn’t give the kind of presents that 7 year old boys got too excited over—usually clothes. I remember opening up her present that Christmas, and it was a cardigan sweater. I can’t remember what I said, but it wasn’t very gracious, and I chunked it across the room with scorn.

That’s all it took. “Faustin Neff,” my father said, “go immediately to your room. You’re getting a spanking for being ungrateful and hurting your aunt’s feelings.” I don’t remember much else, except what my father told me in my bedroom just before I got my three swats: “This was your aunt’s gift to you. When you are ungrateful for someone’s gift, it’s like you’re spitting in his face.”

When we are ungrateful for someone’s gift to us, it’s like we’re spitting in his face. I was reminded of my father’s words this weekend at Church, when in the second reading, St. Paul tells us very simply:

Brothers and sisters: You are God’s building…Do you not know that you are the temple of God,
and that the Spirit of God dwells in you? (I Corinthians 3: 9, 16)

One of God’s greatest gifts to us is our bodies—not because our bodies are perfect, not because we look like models, but because he dwells in us--because we are temples of the Holy Spirit. When we honor our bodies, when we keep them from being debased, when we act modestly and insist that people respect us, we honor the Holy Spirit living within us.

Too often, we forget that. We live in a culture where people use their bodies as a means to an end, where sex is commoditized to sell something, where people tell us that our bodies are to be used for pleasure, and nothing more. But that’s not how God made us, and it turns out, that when we disrespect ourselves, when we act loosely or crassly, we are filled with extraordinary guilt, because we know, deep down, instinctively, that we were not created for that purpose.

One of the problems we have as Christians is that Scripture becomes so familiar to us that it loses its impact. We are TEMPLES of the Holy Spirit. We are GOD’S BUILDING. Just as we wouldn’t walk into a Church or Temple and start vandalizing it, so too may we be given the strength and grace not to vandalize ourselves, remembering that the best way to respect the gift-giver is to be grateful for the gift. 

 We were made for greatness. We belong to him.