What We Can Learn From the Feasts Between Christmas & New Year's Day

The Catholic Church after Vatican II basicly kept the same feasts & memorials that were there in the old calendar. With a couple exceptions. They moved the Feast of the Holy Family from the Sunday after Epiphany to the Sunday between Christmas & New Year's Day. New Year's Day used to be the Circumcision of the Lord. They kept the same readings but changed it to a variation of the older title for the feast. It was originally the Maternity of the Blessed Virgin Mary (now Mary the Mother of God). While there is so much I could say about that feast, I want to focus on the days between Christmas & 1 Jan.

It is interesting that the Church opts to take 1/2 of those days to focus on martyrs. Not exactly what we would like to think about at this time of year. But the Church does so to remind us that there is much more to Christmas than merely the Birth of Jesus. Something we have lost on modern times by the way certain Christmac Carols have been edited.

I want to look at 3 in particular before I get to the feasts. The 1st is We 3 Kings. While it hasn't been rewritten we rarely get to the fourth verse where gift of Myrrh.

Myrrh is mine, its bitter perfume

Breathes of life of gathering gloom

Sorrowing, sighing, bleeding, dying

Sealed in the stone-cold tomb

Then there is this line from the 5th verse: King and God and Sacrifice

Then there is the rewrite of What Child is This. Most people (except those who prayer the Liturgy of the Hours) don't realize that This This is Christ the Lord . . . . The Babe, the Son of Mary is actually the 2nd half of the 1st verse, not the chorus. The 2nd half of the 2nd verse actually goes like this:

Nails, spear shall pierce Him through,

The cross be borne for me, for you.

Hail, hail the Word made flesh,

The Babe, the Son of Mary.

I think you see where I am heading, but before I do, I want to bring up 1 rarely heard Christmas carol, I Wonder as I Wander. Here is the important part:

I wonder, as I wander out under the sky

How Jesus the saviour had come for to die

For poor orn'ry creatures like you and like I

I wonder as I wander out under the sky

We don't like to think of the reality of why jesus came, esp at this time of year. But unless we remember why jesus was born, Christmas is devoid of its meaning. Jesus came to die on the Cross for our sins. & that death (& resurrection) requires a response from us. That response means that we who are called Christians are called to die to ourselves & follow Him. & that may mean laying our lives down as well.

That is why 26 December is the feast of the proto-martyr, Stephen the Deacon. St. Stephen shows us how to live a life of service as well as how to fully surrender our lives. That includes forgiving those who persecute us.

On 29 December we celebrate the feast of St. Thomas a Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury. St. Thomas stood up to King Henry II of England when Henry tried to interfere in ecclesical matters. He provides an example for us these days as we are seeing laws being passed the will force the Catholic Church to do things against what it teaches. For example in DC where the law will require all adoption agencies to allow gay couples to adopt. Then there is the threat of requiring Catholic hospitals to perform abortions. St. Thomas was not afraid to pay the cost.

There are 2 other saints we celebrate that are not martyrs, but they paid a cost for proclaiming the truth. The 1st is St. John the Apostle, the Beloved Disciple & author of the 4th Gospel, 3 Epistles & possibly the Book of Revelation. early on we read of how John was thrown in prison with Pope Peter. As the years went on he was again & again persecuted. According to tradition John was finally brought before Emperor Dometian in Rome. There he was beaten, poisoned, & finally thrown into a cauldron of boiling oil Like the 3 young men we read about in Daniel God protected John from harm. He stepped out unharmed. He was banished to Patmos instead. Patmos was a penal colony & John was getting up in age by this time. John lived his entire life proclaiming the truth & refusing to comprimise with the culture of death at that time.

Next we come to Pope Sylvester 1. He survived the last persecution of the Church under Diocletian. After Constantine became emperor he was elected Pope in 314. During his time in office he battled the Arian heresy. The Ecumenical Council of Nicea was held during his reign. He sent 2 legates to represent him. they signed the decrees in his name. There was also the Council (synod) at Arles that condemned the heresy of Donatism. He approved the decision & promulgated it throughout the rest of the Church. This is why the Church celebrates his feast at this time of year. He challenges us to be faithful to the authentic teachings of the Catholic Church even in the face of persecution. Also, Arius & Donatus who gave their names to heresies were Bishops. Sadly we have many Catholic Bishops who fail to stand up for the truth & a few that even work to undermine it (Gumbleton for instance). Sylvester faced the same problem. He did what he could to put an end to the errors even though, in the short run, he didn't always suceed. But we see in the end that he ended up on the right side of history, not the heritics. We can draw encouragement in the face of what are similar circumstances.

As the culture is pushing laws that will try & silence us from speaking out on things like gay marriage, abortion & the like these saints are very important examples for those of us in the Pro-life movement. Despite the claims to the contray, it is the pro-abortion "culture of death" that is willing to do whatever it can to get its way. & that includes persecuting & even killing those who stand up for the truth. These saints should encourage us to continue the good fight to defend the truth & especially to work to defend life at all stages. That includes putting an end to the murder of thousands of unborn daily via abortion.

This brings me to the next group of martyrs, the Holy Innocents. They have come to symbolize those millions of children murdered by abortion. There were probably only about 20 male children under the age of 2 that were murdered. But it isn't the number, it is the why that is important. They died in an attempt by King Herod to maintain power. He defied God's plan to do so as he was attempting to kill the Messiah. & we see the same rebelious spirit operating in those who promote the murder of the unborn via abortion. they know that under natural & divine law, abortion is murder. The pro-aborts reject the rule of the Messiah by saying like Herod, not God's will but mine.

This brings us to the final feast, that of The Holy Family. That feast stands out as a countercultural sign to our culture. We have seen the courts in several states declare that marriage can between 2 men or 2 women. There has also been many laws that define them as families with the same rights to children. Yet, in the Holy Family we see what is God's definition of a marriage & a family. It consists of a man & a woman who are married & love one another. We see in the Holy Family the example of what it means to be a parent. Mary & Joseph put their plans aside when God sent the angel to Mary telling her she was to bear a son, the Messiah. We see Joseph's spousal love for Mary & we see Joseph's willingness to say yes to being a father. he provides the perfect example of what it means to be a husband & father, putting aside his plans to protect his family. He is also a great example for those who adopt.

This is just a short look at these feasts, but we can see the message God gives us in them. They challenge us to live our faith no matter the cost. the challenge us to defend authentic Catholic teaching & the especially challenge us to live out those teachings that call us to build the "Culture of Life". It included defending marriage as being only between a man & woman. It tells us we must defend life from that moment when the egg & sperm join together to form a new life until natural death. It calls us to reject anything that runs counter to that, abortion & artificial birth control as well as In-vetero fertilization & embryonic stem cell research.

In short, the Church challenges us to make Jesus, the Messiah our Lord & savior. It calls us to repentance of our sins & those of the nation. It then calls us to evangelize, sharing the good news of the Gospel & living it out by building the "culture of life".

The question is Will you say yes to that challenge?