Merry Christmas Vigil

From the Pastor:    Merry Christmas Vigil

       This weekend’s bulletin will be available on the last day of Advent. Since Christmas falls on Monday this year, the rubrics of the 1962 liturgical calendar state that the Vigil of Christmas takes the place of the 4th Sunday of Advent. But the 1970 calendar says that it remains the 4th Sunday of Advent because it changed the definition of what a “vigil” is. I have already written more about that at other times but I wanted to put it in again for the sake of any visitors we may have who are confused about which Mass is being celebrated this weekend. The back-to-back Sunday/Christmas days also mean that we can finally decorate the Church for Christmas. Many of the new parishioners and visitors wonder why we have a Nativity scene out front all year but then no Christmas trees and blinking lights like everyone else has had since the weekend after Thanksgiving. The answer is quite simple. Advent is Advent and Christmas is Christmas. Combining them would be like hiding Easter eggs and eating jelly beans and chocolates all through Lent, celebrating Easter during those penitential Lenten days. Soon enough, there would be no distinction between the two, and the penances of Lent would disappear. Properly done, during Lent you practice the mortifications of fast and abstinence, and you don’t feast until Easter. The same is supposed to be done for these two related but distinct seasons, keeping the season of Advent as a time of preparation and the Christmas season (not just one day) as the time of celebration. But we have seen it morph into one big Christmas celebration and then the entire Christmas season is abandoned as the tree hits the curb on December 26. In the “old days,” Advent used to include daily fasting and Friday abstinence similar to Lent. By the 1962 calendar fasting was reduced to the three Ember Days of the third week, with partial abstinence on Ember Wednesday and Saturday, and full abstinence on all Fridays. The 1970 calendar, as the final nails in the coffin, removed the Ember Days and even abrogated the necessity to abstain from meat on Fridays (another penance of one’s choosing sufficing to replace it). Rather than lose this distinction completely, we try to keep to the tradition, as much as possible, anyway, of keeping Advent pretty low-key and then sprucing (a Christmas tree pun) everything up once Christmas finally comes. We do have to cheat a little on this, however, as getting enough volunteers to decorate the social hall and church on Sunday night just before Christmas Midnight Mass would be quite a challenge. This is a good time to note that if any of you wish to string thousands of lights outside the church in addition to the towering lighted Christmas tree (you might not have noticed it during the daytime but it is there) please feel free to volunteer and we will procure the lights for you. If you can find another huge, inflatable dinosaur with a wrapped gift in his mouth, feel free to bring him in, too, for I sure do miss that big guy! (That’s a joke. Please don’t bring him back!)
       As for the relatively new Nativity scene (one year ago last October it was installed just in time for Cardinal Burke’s visit) that we keep out front all year, it is not a Nativity scene at all. This is Epiphany of Our Lord parish and that is an Epiphany scene. Notice the Three Kings! If this was St. Denis parish and we had a large statue of a Bishop holding his severed, mitered head in his hands, nobody would ask us if we were decorating for Halloween all year! Well, yes they would, unless they knew the story of St. Denis. But even though people know the story of Epiphany they still don’t make the connection. By the way, if you ever find a nice marble statue of St. Denis, I would be happy to find a place for him somewhere on our grounds!
       With that out of the way, Merry Christmas everyone! Whew! I thought I would run out of space before I got around to writing those words. Very early Monday morning (midnight, in the old calendar anyway) we begin the Christmas season. But on Tuesday the first non-Christmas Mass of the season is for a martyr. What gives with that? Why are Catholics celebrating the Birth of Jesus with the death of St. Stephen? He was murdered in hatred of Our Lord. Two days later we celebrate the feast of the Holy Innocents. Those poor babies died when Herod was trying to kill Jesus. We can’t celebrate death, not of a mere man and especially not of innocent babies, can we? Yes, we can and do and should! The Deacon Stephen was the first recorded man who was killed for the Faith. The Holy Innocents were killed for the Faith when Jesus was still a babe. Yet those holy deaths are not to be ignored, swept aside, or even mourned, although the grief would have been profound when these atrocities first occurred. Now we see them as Merry (to use the word of the season) beginnings of new life! We are supposed to be like Jesus in all things, not just the things that are “pleasant” in this world. We are to long to imitate Him more perfectly every day. More prayerful. More loving. More compassionate. If we live like Him we will even lovingly die for Him as the martyrs did and resurrect like Him and be with Him in Heaven! That is what he came for, after all, isn’t it? Don’t miss the meaning of the Christmas Season! It goes far beyond just buying, giving, and receiving toys.


With prayers for your holiness,
Rev. Fr. Edwin Palka