Friends
Peace be with you.
Around this time of year, our atheist and agnostic friends and family, especially those who used to practice the Catholic faith, will find the story of Sol Invictus, the Roman deity whose name means “Unconquered Sun” and whose birthday was thought to be on the winter solstice, December 25, each year. This fact is used by them to prove that we stole Christmas from the pagan Romans and that Jesus wasn’t really born on December 25th and, therefore, there somehow is no God. Some fundamentalist Christians will point out the same fact but use it to show, not that there is no God, but that Catholicism doesn’t worship Jesus, the Son of God, but Sol Invictus, this false Sun God. A lot of time has been spent researching if we did, in fact, appropriate it from the Romans or if, as some have suggested, we dated the Annunciation on March 25th and assumed that, if Mary was informed she was pregnant in March, she gave birth nine months later, in December. It’s possible that our celebration of Christmas, in fact, reignited the pagan celebration of Sol Invictis as a form of pagan Roman protest to the new, up and coming religious celebration of the incarnation, not the other way around. If you point out this fact, they may say that Jesus’ birth must have been in springtime because, as we know from the Gospel of Matthew, shepherds were having their sheep graze in the fields on the night of Jesus’ birth and you wouldn’t do that in the middle of winter. Shepherds stayed close to the warmth of home and kept their flock close by, in caves or underground dwellings of their houses. Catholic scholars answer that the sheep still needed to eat and Beaudoin and other poor shepherds don’t have permanent dwellings to this day. They live in tents and rely on fires to keep warm even in the coldest parts of winter. And we go back and forth and back and forth about who is right. It makes me kind of tired to be honest, especially when people use facts they would otherwise mock, like angels appearing to shepherds in the night sky, to disprove the reality of other facts, like the fact that Jesus was born.
Personally, I know that Jesus is not the invincible Sun God of the Roman empire. I don’t worship the sun and I don’t know anyone who does, regardless of what some fundamentalists will say we do. Sometimes they point to a monstrance as proof that we worship the sun, since a lot of monstrances have what appears to be rays of metallic light coming from the host. I think of the sun as something closer to a sacramental, as something that makes me appreciate the sacraments and, therefore, appreciate God. For example, on Thursday, the sun was out and it was warm for December so I decided to go out for a bike ride to Ely. As I rode along with the sun full on my face, despite all the layers of clothes and the chill in the air, I gave thanks for the warmth I felt from the sun. It was a gift from God between two busy periods of the day. It reminded me of the gift we have in the Divine Mercy Chapel and the adoration that takes place there. In my time here as your pastor, I have often felt the call to spend five minutes or ten minutes with the Lord in adoration where I feel a different type of warmth, this time from the Son of God present in the Eucharist.
In the gospel for today, John the Evangelist says of John the Baptist that he was called to testify to the Light. He was not the light but was called to testify to the light and his testimony is that John the Baptist is not the messiah and that we do not recognize the messiah. I think we don’t recognize him because we are not him either and we don’t always know where to look for him. We look for him in the nicest Christmas gifts or in an easy life where we are constantly in control or in a life of fleshly and spiritual pleasure instead of in the quiet abandonment of adoration. But that is where we truly feel the healing rays of Christ’s love for us, not in those other substitutes. That’s where we truly recognize him in his body, blood, soul, and divinity exposed for us to see.
We are in need of adorers. Won’t you please consider signing up for an hour during the week to feel the warmth of the Son of God so you can testify to the light of Jesus this Christmas? It’s okay to just stop in for five or ten minutes but it’s too easy to use excuses not to come. Only by committing to coming regularly will we make it a priority to testify to the light and feel the vulnerability of his presence in the exposed Blessed Sacrament.
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