Dear Friends in Christ, my Brothers and Sisters in the Family of God,
It is the fourth Sunday of Advent 2014, and we have reached our 2014
celebration of Christmas. Allow me to reflect doubly on this incredible,
unbelievable season, giving just the first part of a dis-course which
will be continued in our parish bulletin for Holy Family Sunday. Between
December 25th and January 1st – between Christmas and the Solemnity of
Mary, the Mother of God – we will find ourselves encountering,
contemplating, celebrating the greatest thing that God put on this
earth: Himself in human form. How many people call themselves Christian,
and yet never wonder at what it means to believe in Christ? If you call
yourself a Catholic, or even a Christian, you should be awestruck at
your own professed faith. On this Christmas Day, Thursday December 25th
2014, at least a quarter of the people in this world will celebrate the
birthday of a man who rede-fined all of human time; his birth reset the
clock (T = zero) and we have counted 2014 years since that day. Can He
be a mere human being? An objective look at history will lead to wonder
that He is the difference between BC and AD. He is the difference
between humanity living with a faint glimmer of hope that communion with
the Divine is possible, verses the world-changing difference that was
made when… when… What happened on Christmas 2014 years ago? God… came…
to… earth… as… a… baby…boy… ! GOD became part of the human family which
He Himself had cre-ated! Throughout the Year of our Lord (Annum Dominum,
A.D.) only the saints have come close to molding their lives and their
words to the greatness of this Christmas Revelation. Did you know that
St. Nicholas, a Catholic Bishop, is renowned for his fight to uphold
this Revelation? In the year 325 AD he “had it out” with the heretic
Arius, over a heresy which was claiming that Jesus Christ was not Truly
God. Connect the dots in St. Nicholas’s life; it was the same passion
for Christ’s Divinity, that led him to fight for the true Catholic
meaning of Christmas (the birth of True God and True man), that also led
him to give away money and possessions to the poor, as we try to
imitate with Christmas gifts. Do we really know Jesus Christ? What have
we learned from the men he sent, like St. Nicholas? The Apostles, now
the bishops and priests of the church, visibly represent Christ on
earth. Christ redefined the human family in a Covenant which he called
his “Church.” Do we pretend that we have really embraced that Covenant
fully, when in fact we could grow so much more in our passion for
Christ, a passion like that of St. Nicholas? Start growing in this
conviction and passion today. Rediscover what it means to be Christian.
Rediscover why the family of God has adopted the name Catholic. Say, “by
the sacraments, especially confession and the Eucharist, I draw close
to God-made-man.” In the Catholic Church we encounter Christ Jesus
Himself, the God-Man coming to earth each and every day through the
hands of his priests, through the power of his scriptures, and through
the lives of his brothers and sisters in the Family of His heavenly
Father. True, we often fall short of the life which a son or daughter of
God should live. Yet Christ keeps coming and keeps drawing us closer. I
may slack off, I may cut corners, I may cheat a little in life,
“hoping” for an easier grading curb. But the great news of Christmas is
that God came to earth for me. God came to earth for liars, for cheats,
for scoundrels. God came to earth for lip-service Christians. God came
to earth for hypocrites, like me. No matter what has passed, the Son of
God came to meet me where I was, and that encounter is always available.
That encounter with God will reach a new and wonderful high-point at
Christmas Mass; not because I climbed to such divine heights myself, but
because He lifted me up. And I will have a little more passion and
conviction, to love and thank the Lord Jesus Christ this Christmas day.
Cont. in next weeks letter.
Dear Parishioners,
It is Sunday in the Christmas Octave. Consider a scripture verse you
may not associate with Christmas: “you know the gracious act of our Lord
Jesus Christ, that for your sake he became poor although he was rich,
so that by his poverty you might become rich” (2. Cor 8:9). It describes
Jesus being born into the world. Allow me to compare it with my own
life blessings in Christ Jesus: Himself the essence of the Christmas
season.
My reflection starts with an aside. In my first few years as a
priest, I have tended to introduce myself as “Fr. Naples.” Initially,
the only people who called me “Fr. Tim” were those who had already known
me personally for a few years. It thus seemed strange to adopt to more
and more people using the latter salutation “Fr. Tim,” when it always
made it sound like they knew me quite well, while I thought they didn’t
know me at all! I don’t really care, whichever salutation is most
comfortable for people. But let me share this one additional thing that I
like about referencing myself as “Fr. Naples.” It is my family name;
and as such, it invokes a whole number of blessings which never belonged
to “Tim Naples” personally, except by the undeserved and unmerited
blessings on the Naples family in general. There were many, and the
majority may remain mysterious until heaven.
This Christmas Feast Octave, as a continuation of last week’s letter
about the greatness of Catholicism, let me share with you a small
snippet of the mysterious blessings of my life. I have never known
poverty. The fact that my family did not have the means to take family
vacations other than camping trips, or to have costly pas-times, never
led me to feel want for anything essential. This came with the disguised
blessing of engaging in work, foisted upon me as a teenager, like
mowing lawns and shoveling walks, with little pay, but even less of a
need for that pay. Having no financial needs until college, I bought my
first car outright with cash all on my own. I worked part time in
college, and always had two or three thousand dollars at my disposal,
for any rea-son, right up until I became a priest. While in seminary I
was blessed to make a retreat in Ars France, the home of St. John
Vianney, now patron saint of all priests. His virtue of poverty was
impressed upon me, although he was a diocesan priest and never took a
vow concerning material possessions. It resonated greatly with the
life-style of simplicity with which I grew up. This has been a great
help to me as a priest. I do not want possessions. I want the people I
know to conform their lives to the laws of God. I want the people I know
to stop caring about worldly appearances, to stop caring about worldly
priorities, and put everything they have at the service of the Lord
Jesus. I want the grace to practice what I preach; to know, love, and
serve Christ.
My situation now is similar to that of my youth. All sorts of
administrative and busy work is foisted upon me, not because the
Catholic faith demands that this work be done by a priest, but because
there is no one else to take it on. The pay is not great. But rarely do I
even need the pay. As far as truly priestly tasks are concerned, I am
thoroughly overpaid and underworked. It is ridiculous that people want
to give me money for saying Masses, for doing baptisms, for performing a
wedding, for bringing communion, for giving spiritual counsel, or for
preaching and teaching the Word of God. It is crazy to think that the
reason the priest is underpaid is because he does so much spiritual good
for his people; there may be other reasons, but this is not one of
them.
This Christmas Octave I am focusing on renewing the act of Marian
consecration to Jesus which I professed as a seminarian. When our Lord
was born on Christmas, and divested himself of his heavenly riches, as 2
Cor. 8 affirms, we can posit that He entrusted them all to the soul of
His Immaculate Mother. From her, they have been loaned to us, and they
are truly great. Therefore we are rich; and every priest has been given
more than his fair share of these riches. What else is needed? So, for
the third year running, I refuse to accept personally the Pastor’s
Portion of 25% of the Christmas collection. The few hundred dollars I
plan to give to the 2015 Charity resolutions of the Knights of Columbus
in Vermont, in the name of the parish. From the hands of the Blessed
Virgin Mary, we have received “every spiritual blessing in the heavens”
(Eph. 1:3). Let us spread them far and wide. They will not run out.
Merry Christmas!
in our Lord Jesus Christ and His Immaculate Mother Mary, Fr. Naples
December 28, 2014 Feast of the Holy Family of Jesus Mary and Joseph
