VIEW FROM THE PEW
It’s the seventh day of Christmas and we should still be on a hallelujah high. (Eighth, ninth, if you lagged in opening this paper, and still happy we’re in a season that didn’t end with one day of frenzied unwrapping and overeating but just began with the holy birth in Bethlehem.)
If we were lucky we got the high early on, but most likely we were grounded by the distractions of shopping, cleaning and trying to meet everyone’s expectations about what Christmas should be, including some unrealistic ones of our own.
But finally, we completed the hectic countdown of Advent, and we could focus on the nativity scene and the meaning of it all. We can feel the Love and wonder at the Light that envelopes us. We’ll be continuing the celebration of Christmas into the New Year, even though the secular celebration is fizzling like firecrackers in puddles.
While the Mass readings are still hitting the high notes of this holy happy holiday, we did just flip the calendar to a New Year of bills coming due, tax time ahead, postponed commitments looming and facing resolutions to change our ways.
The Diocese of Honolulu has great expectations for this new year, aiming to stimulate us to live in the spirit of Christmas love and giving all year long. Don’t pack the generous heart away in the closet with the ornaments. Don’t unplug the extra energy you put into your holiday season activities the way you’ll undo the colored lights. Do remember the hallelujah high.
Knowing that stewardship and evangelization will be the theme of the year, I was thinking it’s unfortunate that Bishop Larry Silva doesn’t have the self-ordained license that evangelical Christian ministers have. They can pick a theme and pound away at it week after week, which can give their listeners a limited peek at the wide scope of the Bible.
The Catholic Church follows a liturgical calendar, with scriptural readings set years in advance for each date of each year. But the end of a three-year cycle, we have had a thorough schooling in the Gospels and the books that came before.
But I was imagining the bishop setting an agenda for pulpits across the state that would put the subject of stewardship in our face every day we sat in a pew. He was able to do that Dec. 13 at the cathedral in a ceremony of opening a door designated the Door of Mercy, mirroring Pope Francis in his dramatic opening of a door of Rome’s cathedral as a symbol of the beginning of the Year of Mercy he has declared as our marching orders for the year.
Mercy is a theme that can grab the most simple minds among us in a simple, feel-good kind of way. It’s the kind of instantly recognizable campaign mantra that public relations firms and advertising agencies strive to create for items and ideas far more mundane.
It’s going to take a mighty internal evangelization engine to kick-start this church of ours in Hawaii. There are pockets of rampant stewardship and deep wells of committed evangelizing spirit in this, the largest Christian denomination in Hawaii. But mostly, I see us as being in a state of inertia. Or should that be capitalized? Picture that as the enemy to be defeated in one of those cartoon television commercials. Inertia, sitting, listening for an hour on Sundays, absorbing the Gospel message in a passive, couch potato kind of way. Then leaving it on simmer as we leave the room.
In my fantasizing about our bishop entering the evangelizing world of fundamentalist Christians — those guys who have preempted the word hope — I set up an online search for “Bible quotations stewardship” and “Bible … evangelization.” Whoops, avalanche! He could probably pick a-text-a-day and not run out of citations for the rest of this year. Of course, I’m not saying he needs Google to lead him to Gospel themes. Just saying, they are not in the liturgical calendar too often.
Good thing, I suppose. It would get to be overkill really fast. We’d burn out as we are nowadays on the theme songs of political candidates. How many repeats before you would be sent screaming away from the message and messenger.
Looking at those online citations, made me appreciate Jesus and his use of parables to teach. He didn’t point an index finger and scold, or come around with a clipboard to browbeat someone to sign on. He told a story, and the message sunk in.
In the online litany of stewardship, I found that story from Matthew’s Gospel of the wealthy man who, before going on a journey, left his money in various portions for his employees to keep track of. When he came back, he was proud of two of them for investing the money and getting a good return. The third fellow, with whom we can identify, buried his portion of the treasure, thinking it was a good thing to keep it safe, fearing the boss would be angry if it were lost or stolen. Not so, he was furious that it had laid inert and not growing. He sent the shortsighted fellow packing.
How handy has it been for preachers down through the ages that the word for a large measure of coins in that era was “talent.” Expect to hear and read that word often in the near future.
I took a break from Christmas baking one day to sit down — oh, yeah — and write checks to charitable organizations. It feels like an extension of Christmas giving spirit. But let’s be honest, the timing also has to do with lining up deductions for the taxes for the year. Looking at the literature of Catholic Charities Hawaii, Salvation Army, Special Olympics, Ka Ohana O Kalaupapa, etc., I contemplated how many people are involved in such varied ways to show mercy to needy people. How much energy is expelled by so many folks who did not let inertia control them.
It’s not much in the Christmas spirit of me, but I hereby confess that the check-writing frenzy did not include something for my parish, which lost my financial support when it went out of the business of mercy by closing the thriving food pantry. Another story. A symptom of my inertia, stewardship deficiency syndrome.
Putting checks into envelopes is pretty passive. But let me affirm that baking cookies isn’t, especially not for an aging baker with waning energy. I brought the product of my anti-inertia day to church for friends, but they were missing. So I sent cookies home with people I hardly know, with my sincere Christmas wishes.
It was a tiny twinge of heeding that parable on talent. It was a whispery echo of a hallelujah moment. I’ve done it again to a wider audience. The 12 Days of Christmas aren’t over so I plan to crank up the oven and repeat.
It made me think I should get in touch with the promoters of this coming year of stewardship and evangelizing. So, here’s the plan: make it all about keeping the Christmas spirit going for the next 365 days. We’ve just gotten cranked up with energy, finding giving is an inspiration, outreaching to others is stimulating; you’re up and moving so don’t sink back into inertia. Best of all, we know we have a wondrous message to share with others, no need for the PR writers to create a script.
There’s God, sending his own son as a gift to humankind. There’s a lot of people who haven’t heard that yet. It’s a story anyone can fit into, simple sleepy shepherds having an experience greater than the happenings in a galaxy far away. And speaking of gifts, we could get a lot of teaching points from three foreign strangers who got off their couches and took a lot of time and effort to share their talents.
What a concept. Let’s run with it. Live Christmas 24/365.
