Fourth Sunday in Advent. December 23, 2012. Extraordinary Form of the Liturgy
Our theme for this Advent is again one of Hope. We have been speaking about hope these last three weeks of Advent and now here we are at the fourth and final Sunday of Advent. In just a few days we celebrate, liturgically, the birthday of our Hope, of Hope Himself—Jesus Christ the Christ Child-God become Man, become one of us in order to be intimately and personally with each one of us.
In light of this great truth, this reality, even amidst the darkness of this world, there is so much to hope for, there is so much hope in our world. Jesus Christ was truly born 2,000 years ago; He is again truly reborn anew on our sacred altars at every Holy Mass. He is still truly God with us, as one of us, in our daily lives; and He is truly physically present in every tabernacle of the world where He continually waits for us to come and adore Him so He can fill us with His hope along with His peace and joy.
We have so much to hope for. The theme of hope, although not explicitly mentioned, is found in our Holy Father’s message for this Christmas. In the message, his Holiness, Benedict mentions some of the great events of the past year, events which were signs of great hope in our world; such as His apostolic journeys to Mexico and Cuba which were received with so much enthusiasm and faith. In Mexico we saw people literally kneeling, young people literally kneeling along the pope’s route to receive the blessing of Peter’s Successor. And we saw the offering Holy Mass beside the statue of Christ the King against the backdrop of so many economic problems and violence in Mexico. In Cuba we saw great public liturgical celebrations in which the singing, the praying and the silence made tangibly present the One that the country’s authorities had tried for so long to exclude.
In His message the Holy Father went on to mention other great events of hope in the last year, not excluding the Synod on the New Evangelization which also served as a collective inauguration of the Year of Faith in which we commemorate the opening of the Second Vatican Council fifty years ago, seeking to understand it anew and appropriate it anew in the changing circumstances of today. The Second Vatican Councils is even more than ever a great hope and a great light for our current age grasping for both hope and light.
Our Holy Father continues to gives us hope, not only by pointing out the hopeful events of this year but also by coming out again and again with much needed teachings, especially moral teachings, which stand up against the modern lies and errors which are stripping the world of its hope. As one writer pointed out, “He (Benedict) clearly understands that truth on these moral issues must now be boldly preached without any regard for human respect or encountering ridicule or hatred. Benedict is imitating the true Christ and showing the rest of the world’s bishops that they are now obliged to do the same. Bravo for Benedict!”
WE see this boldness in the truth in His Christmas message when after some of the hopeful events we just mention, Benedict courageously and with a most politically incorrect stance goes on in His Christmas message to highlight one of the great threats against our Hope today, which is the modern errant philosophical theory which denies the God given gender of the Human person. This hideous theory has it roots in Marxism, and states as did Karl Marx, that gender does not come from nature and the Creator of nature—God, but it is only a societal or even a self impose construct. In other words this erroneous theory denies the distinction of gender and so denies the very nature of man as male and female created in the image and likeness of God-in this, it is demonic.
Once more this theory strips us of hope because it is an attack against the family; it seeks to redefine the family and so destroy family. And ultimately because it is an attack against the very nature of the human being as male or female created in the image and likeness of God, it is an attack against and a denial of God Himself.
The Holy Father says this gender theory is what is behind the homosexual revolution and the current all out attack on the family. He says, there is no denying the crisis that threatens,” the family “to its foundations – especially in the Western world,”
Crediting the Chief Rabbi of France, Gilles Bernheim, for the research, Pope Benedict XVI said “the attack we are currently experiencing on the true structure of the family, made up of father, mother, and child, goes much deeper” than was originally believed. “While up to now we regarded a false understanding of the nature of human freedom as one cause of the crisis of the family, it is now becoming clear that the very notion of being – of what being human really means – is being called into question.”
According to “the ‘gender’ philosophy,” explained the Pope, “sex is no longer a given element of nature that man has to accept and personally make sense of: now it is a merely a social role that we choose for ourselves, while in the past it was chosen for us by society.”
The Holy Father adds: “The profound falsehood of this theory and of the anthropological revolution contained within it is obvious.”
People now dispute the idea that they have a nature, given by their bodily identity, a nature that serves as a defining element of the human being. People now deny their nature and decide that it is not something previously given to them, but that they make it for themselves.
According to the biblical creation account, being created by God as male and female pertains to the essence of the human creature. This duality is an essential aspect of what being human is all about, as ordained by God. This very duality as something previously given is what is now disputed. The words of the creation account: “male and female he created them” (Gen 1:27) no longer apply-how the devil hates that we were created as male and female. And so, what applies now is this: it was not God who created them male and female – hitherto society did this, now we decide for ourselves whether we are male or female or even a combination of both. With this error, Man and woman as created realities, as the nature of the human being, no longer exist. Man now calls his nature into question. From now on, he is merely spirit and will.
The manipulation of nature, which we deplore today where our environment is concerned, now becomes man’s fundamental choice where he himself is concerned. From now on there is only the abstract human being, who chooses for himself what his nature is to be. Man and woman in their created state as complementary versions of what it means to be human are disputed. But if there is no pre-ordained duality of man and woman in creation, then neither is the family any longer a reality established by creation.
Pope Benedict XVI concluded, “When the freedom to be creative becomes the freedom to create oneself, then necessarily the Maker Himself is denied and ultimately man too is stripped of his dignity as a creature of God, as the image of God at the core of man’s being. The defense of the family is about man himself. And it becomes clear that when God is denied, human dignity also disappears. Whoever defends God is defending man.”
Our Holy Father also says at one point in His Christmas message, “only in self-giving does man find himself, and only by opening himself to the other, to others, to children, to the family, only by letting himself be changed through suffering, does he discover the breadth of his humanity. When such commitment is repudiated, the key figures of human existence likewise vanish: father, mother, child – essential elements of the experience of being human are lost.
What a light we have been given in Pope Benedict. Some may think why is he using his Christmas message to speak of such things. Because these attacks on the nature of the human person are so serious to our world and to our civilization, the strip us of hope. Therefore, Benedict’s words are words of hope because they are words of truth and they point to the One that is the truth and who has come into our world as a true man, not as a genderless creature, but as a man, in order to be like us and to be one with us; Benedict points to the One who is our hope, Jesus Christ, He who is the longing of the heart of every man, woman and child whether they realize it or not.
Let us this advent renew our hope, let us in this year of faith commit ourselves more fully to read and study the writings and teachings of this great man, Pope Benedict the Sixteenth, a beacon of hope in our hopeless world. We too can then share his words with others, true words which point to the Christ Child, so they may have an intimate encounter with the Word made flesh and have hope by living in union with the True and Living God. With great expectation and hope, let us seek the Lord who is coming soon; unless we desire him we will never know the Lord, unless we expect him, we will never meet him, unless we seek him, we will never find him (Benedict Angelus Address, fourth Sunday of Advent 2012).
Our Lady, Mother of our Faith, Mother our Hope, Mother of Charity, cause of our joy;
Sub tuum praesidium confugimus, sancta Dei Genetrix;
nostras deprecations ne dispicias in necessitatibus nostris,
sed a periculis cunctis libera nos semper,
Virgo gloriosa et benedicta. Amen.
We fly to your patronage O holy Mother of God;
Despise not our petitions n our necessities,
But deliver us always from all dangers.
O Glorious and blessed Virgin. Amen.
Amen!
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