Front Page News

Look who made the front page of the San Diego Union Tribune on Christmas! Great article, and great image!

Christmas Sermon: We are Shepherds

Christmas Day/Year C

Isaiah 62:6-12

Titus 3:4-7

Luke 2:8-20

I was reminded recently from a commentary  written by The Rev. Dr. David Lose, a professor at Luther Seminary, how shepherds at the time of Jesus’ birth were not romantic or saintly types. From years of Christmas pageants, movies, lovely cards, and artwork, the image of shepherds which has emerged is of relatively clean, nicely coifed, animal lovers, who drop everything and travel to Bethlehem in order to find the savior of the world, based on the word of some angel.

But in actuality, men usually became shepherds because they couldn’t find any other way to support themselves—not out of a desire to protect cute little sheep.

In fact they often couldn’t stand sheep, let alone sheepherding was hard work, and would abandon them in a second if something better came along. Sheep were considered dirty, dumb, and stubborn and the men who herded them were just a notch above.  Almost. They didn’t exactly carry signs at the entrance of villages saying, “will herd sheep for food,” but pretty darn close.

And if they claimed to hear any angel it was entirely possible because they were either mentally ill or drank a little too much cheap wine.

You get the picture: there are plenty of “shepherds” among us now. They may not be herding sheep but they’re in front of us every day. Chronically unemployed, mentally ill, homeless, not clean, and generally people we would not have over to our homes for dinner. In fact, we often turn away when we see them or maybe even pretend to we don’t see them at all.  

But in Luke’s Gospel, these are just the people the angels first reveals the birth of Jesus to and it is intentional. Professor Lose writes:

Should we really be surprised, then, that these are the first people
who will hear the message of God’s redemption? Across Luke’s Gospel one of the dominant themes is that God comes for those who are on the outside—those who are poor, vulnerable, and of no account to the world. 

Why? Perhaps because they are the ones predisposed to listen and rejoice. Angles could have visited Herod or Augustus or Quirinius or any of the other powerful characters that have made their cameo appearances in Luke’s story. But why would they rejoice at the
announcement of a king? . . . What need have they of God’s redemption when, to all outward appearances, they themselves were like gods? 

No, the angels come and sing their news to those for whom it means something. Outcasts, ne‘er-do-wells, the lonely, poor, and lowly— unwed teenage mothers and loser shepherds and all the rest—all, that is, who are in need. For, ultimately, the only requirement to receive God’s love is to need it.

It is easy to follow his logic. Indeed we see throughout all the Gospels how Jesus continually reached out to the marginalized so the fact his birth is announced to the shepherds makes sense. It helps set the tone from the beginning of Luke’s Gospel and proclaims something new is happening here. God, through Jesus, is coming into the world in a new way and saying in essence, who I find valuable is very different and much broader than who the world finds valuable.

And we would do well to pay attention to that.

However, Professor Lose’ last line is rather provocative, “the only requirement to receive God’s love is to need it.” Do we really need God’s love first in order to receive it? It sounds like God’s love is dependent on our action, in this case based on need, which seems contrary to any notion of grace.

But I think Professor Lose is on to something I had never seen articulated before in quite this way. We all need God’s love but our life situations, be they based in success, happiness, contentment or even just plodding, can if not blind us to our need, lull us into forgetting it.  And because of that, many of miss the many ways God tries to reach us.

But once again, let us return to the shepherds from Luke’s Gospel.  Perhaps because they were more away of their need, it was hard to be a shepherd and not know things weren’t going well, they were able to see and respond in the way we all should, “Let us go now to Bethlehem and see this thing that has taken place, which the Lord has made know to us.”

Consciously and with a sense of anticipation, not necessarily certainty. They didn’t know exactly what they would find but they went anyway, which may be as good a definition of faith in action as any there is.  

In her book, Things Seen and Unseen, A Year Lived in Faith, author Nora Gallagher tells the story of a Christmas Eve service she attended, at Trinity Episcopal Church in Santa Barbara, her parish. As is so often the case at the “midnight mass” service she was struck by its beauty and sense of mystery.  And that in and of itself would have been a most wonderful gift.

However, after the service as she was walking to her car, she noticed Mike, a homeless man Trinity had recently hired as a janitor, who along with his girlfriend, slept on the church grounds at night. Mike was standing outside the church with his bedroll and said, “Merry Christmas” to Nora as she walked by.

She writes:

I feel a drag on my shoes, as if they were weighted. I turn around. Only [the rector] Mark Asman’s car is left in the parking lot. He’s standing in   the hallway, turning out lights, when I walk back in. “Can Mike and his girlfriend spend the night inside tonight?” I ask him. 

Mark looks out the door at the figure on the porch. 

“Tonight of all nights,” he replies and gestures to Mike to come in.”  

Mike was clearly the shepherd in this story but he was also the messenger, for he was able to awake a need in both Nora and Mark.  And the interaction between the three of them brings home brings home everything this season is about and how we are all shepherds in need of God’s love.

From Mike’s simple greeting, “Merry Christmas,” to Nora and Mark’s realization they could give Mike and his girlfriend a great gift, “this night of all nights,” the three of them experienced what it means to need God’s love, and in this case give it in ways they might have never known otherwise. Whatever happened after that would be in God’s hands.

Here is the promise of Christmas: God will reach out for us often from the most unlikely of circumstances or persons: a shepherd, a homeless man, even a tiny baby born to an unwed teenage mother but the essence of the message will always be, “listen to me, come to me, and know you are loved.”

It’s a love we need and is freely offered but all that much sweeter when we do respond, consciously and with a sense of anticipation, for whatever may happen. .

And nowhere is that more apparent than at Christmastime when we celebrate the birth of an infant in whose life lies the hope and great promise of the world.   May all of us say this season and beyond, “Let us go now to Bethlehem and see this that that has taken place, which the Lord has made known to us.”

The Rev. Canon Allisyn Thomas
25 December 2012

Joyous Day

When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, ‘Let us go now to Bethlehem and see this thing that has taken place, which the Lord has made known to us.’ So they went with haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the child lying in the manger.When they saw this, they made known what had been told them about this child; and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds told them. But Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart. The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, as it had been told them.         Luke 2:15-20

Image: Giotto (1267-1337), Cappella Scrovegni a Padova, Life of Christ, Nativity, Birth of Jesus

Christmas Eve Sermon: The World is the Manger (5pm service)

Isaiah 62:6-12
Titus 3:4-7
Luke 2:8-20



Good evening.  On behalf of all the people of St. Paul’s Cathedral, I welcome you and am so glad you are here with us tonight.  As we say every Sunday, whoever you are and wherever you are on the journey of faith, you are most welcome to participate fully in absolutely everything we do here this evening.  And if you happen to be here for the first time, please know we do not consider you a guest or visitor but a member of this holy family, in this holy place, and especially on this holy night.

  It feels especially important right now we be here together because as a people we have experienced some difficult times of late. However this night reminds us that the difficulties we may experience are not the final word.  We are not forsaken but rather are beneficiaries, or as it says in tonight’s reading from Titus, heirs of God’s overwhelming hospitality, and love.  Hospitality and love extended to everyone, not on the basis of merit or what we have earned, or not, but rather out of God’s all inclusive grace and mercy.

And the circumstances of this coming about couldn’t be more unusual or disarming.  A child is born under the lowliest of circumstances and through him everything changes.  Those who have not been welcome, or at least made to feel unwelcome at God’s table, now have a seat.  And those who knew they had a seat, now see a longer table stretching out far beyond what their eyes can see.  

We are in the words of Theologian and pastor Frederick Buechner in the manger together.  He writes:

The young clergyman and his wife do all the things you do on Christmas Eve. They string the lights and hang the ornaments. They supervise the hanging of the stockings. They tuck in the children . . . 

Just as they’re about to fall exhausted into bed, the husband remembers his neighbor’s sheep. The man asked him to feed them for him while he was away, and in the press of other matters that night he forgot all about them. So down the hill he goes through knee-deep snow. He gets two bales of hay from the barn and carries them out to the shed. There’s forty-watt bulb hanging by its cord from the low roof, and he lights it. The sheep huddle in a corner watching as he snaps the bailing twine, shakes the squares of hay apart and starts scattering it. Then they come bumbling and shoving to get at it with their foolish, mild faces, the puffs of their breath showing in the air. He is reaching to turn off the bulb and leave when suddenly he realizes where he is. The winter darkness, the glimmer of light. The smell of hay and the sound of the animals eating.  Where he is, of course, is the manger.

. . . He whose business is above everything else to have an eye for such things is all but blind in that eye. He who on his best days believes that everything that is most precious comes from that manger might easily have gone home never knowing that he had himself just been in the manger. The world is the manger.  

The world is indeed the manger.  Imperfect.  Often messy.  Scary at times.  Even smelly. But also contains within it, all that is precious, loving, life-giving, even sacred.

The world is the manger.  And we are in it together.  All of us—those who have been, those who are, those who will be.

So on this holy night, as we celebrate like the shepherds for what we have seen and heard, and leave this Cathedral to go to our next destinations, let us honor the manger so lovingly given us, by holding our children and loved ones close, so close, and give thanks for the child whose birth we remember this evening and in whose life rests the hope and great promise of the world.

Finally in that spirit may we also be like Mary, and treasure this amazing gift and ponder what it truly means in our hearts, and then live our lives accordingly.

The Rev. Canon Allisyn Thomas
24 December 2012  


  Frederick Buechner, Whistling in the Dark, A Doubter’s Dictionary (HarperSanFrancisco: New York, 1993), pp.29-30.

It’s Only a Number

If it is only a number, it seemed a significant one to me. Friends tell me about their angst over turning forty or fifty or sixty. But I’m here to tell you that turning seventy gave me plenty to think about.

I don’t mean the fact that there are fewer years ahead than behind, although that did cross my mind. What came to me in waves sometime in mid-November when the realization hit me square in the head that I was about to be seventy, were memories. They were more than memories and more like mini movies, playing in vivid detail and color. I supposed that’s what Ebenezer Scrooge had going for him while on his trip with the Ghost of Christmas Past as he relived parts of his youth. And the scenes kept coming.

I thought for a while that I might be dying, what with all of my life flashing before my eyes, but obviously that didn’t happen. I still can’t account for the visits from my grandmothers, from Christmases long ago, from people long dead, and at first they alarmed me, but then I got accustomed to having them show up, and I began to enjoy them. And then they stopped.

I guess that whatever sent them felt that enough past life was enough. I began instead to plan a party for my family here, the family that surrounds me every day, the family that shows up at the hospital, that calls to find out how I am by now.

And what a party it was. Some forty or fifty of my family turned up at Il Postino Italian restaurant last Tuesday, some to have a glass of Chianti and a chat, others to have dinner. Some friends hadn’t seen each other for a long time and the party provided them a kind of reunion. Linda could not be talked out of bringing my birthday cake, a four-tiered chocolate beauty filled with cherries and kirsch. Craig took time away from his Palm Spring stay to drive over for the evening. Terry and Lean stopped by on their way to another party, and I know that my party was out of their way. Cards by the score arrived (I’d requested a no-gift party), hugs and more hugs. And so it went, every minute golden. I did the best I could working the room, but I couldn’t sit down with everyone. Didn’t matter. My family knows how to make friends, and they did just that.

I’ve spent the last few days pondering everything, how so many wonderful people have come to be in my life. I have no specific answers, and all I can do is be grateful for the love and kindness they show me. Lorenzo, the manager of the restaurant, said that he felt that love and esteem surging through the room, and I felt it too.

Our lives all take forks in the road, and sometimes those forks lead us away from friends and people and even relatives we once were close to. They have their own forks in the road, new interests and responsibilities, often new families. That’s okay after all, and we find ourselves in places that Providence puts us, with the family we make and hold dear. For those turns in the road for that that family that I’ve found along it, I am more grateful than I can express.

So, if it’s only a number, it’s a grand one. Don’t worry about approaching it; your family will be right there to cheer you on. By the way, this is the last rave about my 70th, promise.

Robert Heylmun 

A Hope for Christmas, Advent part IV

It is the fourth week of Advent; may we remember children and their parents, they are and always have been the best hope the world knows.

The child was made

with breath & whispers; the warm tones of flesh

in a rose-colored flush, the red of blood. The child, made in an embrace,

was hope & like light

the child nurtured us.

Waiting, we conceived the brightest dreams.

Born in struggle, blood & water the child was

beautiful; perfect,

slender; tangled limbs & wailing life.

The child was washed & held.

In the child’s eyes, life;

the wealth of the world where things were new.

Never again would we wish

to see blood on you & wailing, cradle you

seeking life in the child’s eyes.

Though for family there is nothing we would not do.

It will be years before the child knows

the names of flowers & their season;

that what is shattered cannot always be restored.

& years more before the child knows

it remade our world

& that again, in all children,

the world is made

in breath & whispers, Love & the flush of blood,

an embrace where hope is new.

--KC Crain blogs at www.georgecrain.com

Responding to Newtown…with Kindness

28 Random Acts of Kindness is a simple, yet profound way to respond to tragedy.

   Many people have asked how they might respond to the tragedy of Newtown.

 Here’s a wonderful way to honor the memories of those who perished, by pushing back again violence with kindness. Consider doing 28 completely random acts of kindness for strangers. 

They don’t have to be complicated or expensive. Just simple, little things that would put a smile on someone’s face. They can be as simple as buying a coffee for someone in line behind you at Starbucks, holding the door open for someone at the bank, or telling the co-worker how much you appreciate them.

 Random acts of kindness are the perfect gift for a Christmas season already too packed with unwanted gifts. You do them silently, record them on Facebook or this blog or you might try leaving a little post-it notes in their wake: “Act of kindness #3 in memory of Newton.”

 Try it out and see if you experience the old adage that giving really is better than receiving. Here are some ideas  and more here!


 

Tolling the Bells and responding to Newtown

St. Paul's joined houses of worship around the world this morning tolling the bells in rememberance of those killed in Newtown, CT. What can we do? Consider giving 28 Random Acts of Kindness this Christmas.

The BIshop's Christmas message

Smoke carries our prayers to heaven

On a Sunday full as ever with last-minute liturgy changes and uncertain weather, and difficult questions arising from current events, I had a moment of quiet grace, brought to me by one of our tiny parishioners.  

As a thurifer, I spend a bit of time outside the church walls during services, preparing the coals, and loading the thurible.  The accompanying smoke often attracts the curious.  

This time, it was L, on his way to Sunday school.  Very polite, he said, “that’s smoky—is it gonna spark?” 

I explained that we safely disposed of spent incense and coals under the heavy in-ground grate he was inspecting near the side entrance to the sacristy, the grate protecting the coals from wayward inflammables.  

He joined me on the landing, pointing at my thurible.  “Is it hot?”  

“Oh, very,” I said, “It has to be, to make the incense melt and smoke.”  

He asked, “what’s it for?”

 “Well, we believe that the smoke helps take our prayers to heaven,” I responded.  

He took this in quite earnestly, but, “It doesn’t look very hot.”  

I assured him it was as hot as the barbeque his parents might make on a summer day.  

He again asked, “But it’s not gonna spark, is it?”  And I answered, “no, not so’s it’ll hurt anybody.”  

He very sweetly thanked me, then scampered off to class.  And I thought… maybe it will spark something else.

Lisa Churchill is a thurifer and verger.

The Sunday Sermon: “What Then Should We Do?

Advent 3/Year C
Zephaniah 3:14-20
Philippians 4:4-7
Luke 3:7-18


I think as any preacher will tell you, there is the sermon we prepare and the one we end up preaching, and they’re not always the same.  I had started this one several days ago and the story in it revolves around some young people who live in a very poor village in Paraguay.

  Then on Friday after the shooting in Newtown, CT I started to redo it.  But the sense I kept getting was this story of the young people in Paraguay still needs to be told because it is one of beautify, hope, and love and we need to remember what’s possible even in the face of great darkness.

Nonetheless, what happened in CT and what is happening in Paraguay contain great truths about what this time of Advent preparation is about which I do want to talk about.

  But first, about a week ago I was sent a link to a promo for an upcoming documentary entitled, Landfill Harmonics.  Maestro Luis Szaran, a conductor and symphony director in Paraguay, had a vision to start up programs teaching classical music to poor children living in outlying areas, at no cost to them and their families.

Interestingly, there was a tremendous amount of suspicion and resistance on the part of almost everyone he talked to about it, including politicians, religious leaders, business people, even the peasants who would benefit from the programs.  It was such a generous thing to do, they just couldn’t believe he wasn’t going to somehow benefit personally.

But a man named Favio Moran, a musician and music teacher himself, got it and the two of them decided to start a program, with Mr. Moran leading it, in Cateura, an incredibly poor village built over a landfilll.

  And the response of young people in their teens wanting to participate was so overwhelming.  For instance some 50 kids wanted to learn how to play the violin but they only had 5 violins.

But then someone found the shell of a broken and discarded violin in the landfill and somehow out of that, the idea was born that maybe instruments could be made from materials readily available in the landfill.

Mr. Moran found a man named Nicola, who lived in the village and collected and sold recycled materials from the landfill, and gave him the specifications to make a violin.  Which he did.  And while you can’t say it was classically beautiful to look at, it actually sounded really good.

Soon Nicola and others were making all kinds of instruments: a cello with a discarded oil can for its body, and the wood for the neck coming in part from a meat tenderizer; a flute made from discarded metal piping and coins; a saxophone made with spoons and buttons.  These craftsmen had no idea who Mozart or Bach were but something swelled in their hearts to see these young people play music with their instruments and with such passion.  All involved became empowered.

And before long, Mr. Moran had an orchestra of young aspiring musicians playing really very lovely music—which was named aptly named the Recycled Orchestra.
But for these homemade instruments, these young people would never be able play such music.  The cost of a regular violin exceeds the cost of a house in Cateura.  But here they were and the lessons they were, and are, learning go far beyond simply learning to play an instrument.

For instance, one boy reflecting on the reuse of these recycled materials into making something so beautiful, how junk to one person could be so precious to another, said it made him realize “we shouldn’t throw people away either.”    

Together, the young people, their parents and families, the instrument makers, really the whole village developed a sense of pride and self-worth so long denied them, in large part because they had been invisible—they were just among the country’s very poor.  But they were no longer invisible. Not only were they being heard in a new way, they learned something about their self-worth that is eternal.

In today’s Gospel, John the Baptizer, as usual does not mince words when addressing the crowds surrounding him.

He makes it perfectly clear that just because they come from good stock, Abraham, it will not spare them from God’s wrath.  So they ask him, “What then should we do?” and he gives them very good advice.

“Whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none; and whoever has food must do likewise.” John warns the tax collectors to take only the amount prescribed to them and the soldiers to not extort money and  be satisfied with their wages.

It is advice we would all be well served to follow. It’s the “right” thing to do and certainly a good place to start.  But John didn’t just come to pass on some good advice and proclaim the coming of the Messiah—which would have been plenty.
Rather his message spoke of the necessity for true repentance, with God’s help, to look fearlessly at our lives, and then turn them around, and open them up so we can receive God in a fundamentally new way.   To not give lip service to our love of the Lord but to mean it and live it out, with all the implications attached to it—heart, body, mind, and soul.

Which means we don’t simply just give someone a coat because we have two, or food because we have enough but instead out of our love for God and in the spirit and manner of God’s love for us, as born out in Jesus. Incarnate, real, unconditional, sometimes heartbreaking, often confusing, but in ways that matter.

As The Rev. Robin Meyer puts it, “Indeed, a quick glance around this broken world makes it painfully obvious that we don’t need more arguments on behalf of God; we need more people to live as if they are in covenant with Unconditional Love, which is our best definition of God.”      

Maestro Szaran and Mr. Moran could have given the children of Cateura bright, shiny new instruments and taught them to play and that by itself would have been a wonderful thing.

But instead they allowed a spirit, I would say the Holy Spirit, to infuse their efforts which ended up going far beyond teaching the young people how to play, and instead actually empowering the people of the entire village to create and live out something enduring , forever changing how they looked at and valued themselves.

Unconditional Love made incarnate.

On this third Sunday in Advent 2012 we have been given much to consider and ponder in our hearts.  We see firsthand what evil—that is things not of God—can do to destroy the beauty of all that has been given us and leave in its wake indescribable heartache.

We grieve this day with the people of Newtown.  The children and brave adults killed, and frankly the shooter himself, will always leave a mark on all our hearts. And it should.  We need to remember and pray unceasingly for their peace and comfort, knowing God is with them all the very seconds of their lives.

And yet we also see how God’s grace can break through and transform even the grimmest of circumstances.   The young people of Cateura had been by and large written off, thrown away, with no hope of a good future.

The questions for all of us as we await and prepare for the inbreaking of Jesus in our world and into our lives, are and let’s make them personal, what must I do to be an instrument of God’s redemptive love? How can I bring the peace of God into a world that all too often is at best indifferent to violence and pain? How do I make Unconditional love incarnate?

And out of these questions, perhaps the most difficult request to God of all: help me to really do what needs to be done.

While Christmas is near, it is still Advent.  May we all use this time of waiting and preparation to pray, act and seek help in order to make us increasingly courageous and loving followers of the One who gave absolutely everything for us.    

The Rev. Canon Allisyn Thomas
16 December 2012

More information about the Paraguay project

And a video:


Landfill Harmonic film teaser from Landfill Harmonic on Vimeo.

Robin Meyers, Saving Jesus from The Church, How to Stop Worshipping Christ and Start Following Jesus (Harper Collins e-books) page 20 of 243.

Of Violence and Love, Feasting and Jesus the Paschal Lamb

The third week of Advent is closed. Witness to the murders at Sandy Hook Elementary school it might seem that the reflective spirit; the expectant hope of the season of Advent is broken. When lives are taken in spasms of violence it is heart breaking—but that so many this time were children. Children are not only innocent they are the very form of our hope. In their nearly new eyes we recognize the world as it is but is hard to see, the world as a wealth of things unknown; a place of inexhaustible treasure here to be discovered. Very young children love naturally and without reservation, it is a Christ-like quality. That twenty children were taken so callously, it is a loss we cannot escape. We know too the loss of the parents. An absence so terrible we cannot comprehend but we can imagine and the injustice of it is violence to all of us.

As a church we will gather; we will pray, hopefully in a spirit of both compassion and forgiveness. We will mourn also, because as a church we believe everyone is a part of the body of Christ, that all of us are as individually indispensable as the many molecules that make us. Those lost to violence; taken before the fullness of their time are an injury, a wound we mourn and pray to heal. Originally I wrote this week about feasts. I will still visit that reflection because even in loss, the spirit of celebration and its place in Jesus’ life can instruct.

Outside of the church it is a season of celebration already in full flush. There are many parties, many gatherings; a rush of celebration that many find happy and stressful. Jesus appreciated a celebration. He called himself a bridegroom and embraced the feasting and honor that accompany a wedding. Jesus, in life, consistently loved to gather people and food together. Jesus was called ‘teacher’ and food was, and is, a great reason to gather. The warmth and fullness of a feast or dinner was a fine place to teach, to discuss and instruct.

More than that Jesus’ might want to acknowledge what a great gift it was that God, through Him, was among us. Jesus expressed the power of God’s pure love. Jesus’ presence was radiant, the sick and the lost came to him spontaneously. Jesus’ long; strong hands were charged with the awesome power of God; He used them to comfort and to heal. The joy of His presence, the serene and ecstatic comfort of His love was without compare. How could those that saw and knew Jesus not celebrate? To be with Him was to be in the whirling and consuming presence of God and love. Yet Jesus was human. He had breath; His heart did not appear to beat irregularly. Those that came to him smelled his skin and robes and saw him walk. His touch, charged with the awesome power of God had the regular weight of human hands. So, Jesus’ physical presence; the frailty of his human body is essential to understanding the great power of God’s love. It is also one reason why the body is important as a metaphor for the church. We would not know the fullness of God’s love if Jesus had not walked among us. We would not know the fullness of it if Jesus had not died, naked to the world; the victim of every human cruelty and abuse.

Communion, one of our sacraments, is built on an important feast. The last meal that Jesus shared with his followers was a Passover Seder. The Passover Seder is an important ceremonial feast celebrating God’s deliverance of the Jews from slavery in Egypt. Jesus, as he did with other things, amended the Passover celebration with a simple observation. “Then he took a cup, and after giving thanks he said, ‘Take this and divide it among yourselves; for I tell you that from now on I will not drink of the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes.’ Then he took a loaf of bread and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to them, saying, ‘This is my body which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.’” [Luke 22.17-20] Jesus offered this in the expectation that his own end was near. For the Passover Seder a lamb was sacrificed, given to God at the Temple and ceremonially also in every household. Jesus, like this lamb, would be sacrificed; He would be given to God, not at the Temple but on a hill called Calvary. In death Jesus displayed the divinity in all human flesh and its fragility.

Jesus was the fulfillment of our hope. He showed God’s great, transforming power is love. God’s love is not above or outside of us, it does not boom like thunder or rain down inconceivable plague. God’s love is inside each of us. It is love that is familiar to us, the love that we know for friends and family and that love we fall into with others. The love we know is creation, the seed of God in all of us. Achieving the justice and transformative power of God’s love though is a challenge Jesus put to each of us. Our personal experience of love must be nurtured; extended and exercised in the world. God’s love is not only a comfort but a challenge to us.

Jesus showed this, the purity of His love gave sight to blind and healed the sick and through His teaching and example and the examples of the apostles and martyrs that followed, God’s love transformed the world. The world today is a profoundly more just and compassionate place. Jesus’ example showed too that fear and the absence of God’s love is a plague on us. God has no need to visit us with great plagues, with rivers of blood and innumerable locust, when, in the absence of God’s love that Jesus revealed to us, we bring enough loss and suffering on ourselves to instruct.

We are often forgetting ourselves. We prefer to feast; to celebrate the wealth of our inheritance. It is not wrong, it is a wonderful wealth we have—God’s love—and it is meant to be shared. We should gather in celebration of it, like Jesus and his followers did. We should know that love runs through us, that it is in our touch and company. But in celebration we should remember the responsibility of love. God’s love is a seed in us, if it will grow, if it will be a tree of life to sustain us, it will only be through attention and exercise. And when violence visits us, like it did at Sandy Hook Elementary, we must not look away. We have not loved enough. It is understandable that we would want to look away; many of Jesus’ own disciples did not want to look on Jesus’ body on the cross; the violence done to Him and cruelly displayed in death. But we must look. We are responsible; we have not loved enough.

In Jesus’ death God, perhaps, made a final promise to us—He understands. For all those suffering and the inconsolable, God understands. For the parents of those twenty children lost at Sandy Hook Elementary, in your pain and your anger, in your longing and your loss, you may go to God; God understands. You may pour yourself out, all the thorns of pain and rage and the deep water of loss; you may rest with God, God understands. God lost a child too. For all of us that have lost, we may take that aching absence to God and rest there. God understands. With time, when the pain fades and we may forgive, we will find love there, God’s love, waiting so that we may grow again. This is there among the quiet and expectant hope of the season of Advent. In our joys and also our suffering, God understands. God has, through Jesus, shown us a way to healing and justice and that way is love.



--KC Crain blogs at www.georgecrain.com

Advent Calendars – No Longer Just a Box of Chocolates!

During our Advent Forum series and our Advent Edition of Living Wi$ely (online here: http://stpaulcathedral.org/9am-forum and here http://stpaulcathedral.org/livingwisely ) we have been talking about Advent Calendars and how they can be much more than a fond childhood memory about little cardboard windows and chocolates. They can really be a wonderful devotional, helping us to slow down, day by day, and soak into the season of Advent.

 Today, Advent Calendars are online, mutli-media interfaces that help us to focus on this season of waiting and joyful anticipation through daily readings, reflections and prayers. Here are three that I have enjoyed so far. I particularly like Busted Halo as there is both a reflection and a mini-challenge with each one (and although it is online, it’s not afraid to challenge us to get OFFline!).   But I really like little challenges.

 Remember, Advent is also a season of “beginning anew.” With all the talk of a “quiet Advent” and not getting caught up in the hustle and bustle of Christmas prematurely, there is always space to get busy with the business of being Christ to ourselves and others during this holy season of waiting. To “begin again” in our lives in Christ as we await His birth. Let’s get busy!

Society of St. John the Evangelist: http://pinterest.com/iamepiscopalian/advent-calendar/  Christ to ourselves and others during this holy season of waiting. To “begin again” in our lives in Christ as we await His birth. Let’s get busy!

Church of England:  http://www.whywearewaiting.com/   Christ to ourselves and others during this holy season of waiting. To “begin again” in our lives in Christ as we await His birth. Let’s get busy!

Busted Halo: http://bustedhalo.com/features/advent-calendar-2012

Chris Harris is Canon for Congregational Development at St. Paul’s Episcopal Cathedral.  His passion is helping others integrate their faith and values into their workplace, finances and relationships—in the hope that he might learn a thing or two along the way as well. 

GETTING AND GIVING The story behind Santa Claus, Advent Part II.

Advent is in its second week, by the church and its calendar it is a reflective; promising time. Outside, the holidays have picked up energy. The shopping season is in full swing. Stores are draped in glittering things, reams of wrapping paper roll like waves, everywhere are Christmas displays and pine trees are, lately, a weirdly common species in Southern California. All around is a tidal surge of ads. Buy! Buy! Buy! They cry; this is the season for consumption. We are asked to perform a patriotic chore and lift the ship of state by buying gifts. For more motivation there are ads, promising and pushing gifts; inspiring guilt; envy and desire. Finally there is Santa Claus. Santa Claus might be the shopping season’s mascot. He is the jolliest man in the world, the once a year bringer of gifts and cheer. Santa Claus is more than a mascot though, he is a myth. Like many myths, Santa Claus descends from a real man whose story can tell us much about giving and receiving gifts.

St. Nicholas "Lipensky"
(1294 Russian icon)

Santa Claus was originally Nicholas, bishop of Myra. Nicholas was a Greek born in Roman ‘Asia’. He was raised in a devoutly Christian family when Christianity was an illegal, persecuted sect. In his youth he was ordained a priest. Then sometime after the Roman emperor Constantine converted to Christianity and legalized it, Nicholas was elevated bishop of Myra, a port city in what is today Turkey. He was a great wonderworker and for those works, Nicholas was sainted. But it is his gift giving that is remembered today.

In America gift giving is nearly all that is remembered of Saint Nicholas. It was more than a thousand years before Nicholas, sainted bishop of Myra, became the Santa Claus we know today.  Many generations passed after Saint Nicholas’ death before accounts of his life arrived in England. By then Saint Nicholas was called Santa Claus, an English translation of a Dutch name that was a corruption of the original Greek. In the medieval era Saint Nicholas, or Santa Claus, was well recognized in Britain. That long ago, the most popular wonder ascribed to Saint Nicholas was raising three butchered boys from the dead. It was no small feat. A particularly greedy butcher had cut the boys into parts and pickled them, intent to capitalize on the astronomical price of meat during a famine. Saint Nicholas recognized the deceit and resurrected the boys with prayer; apparently they came out complete in all their parts, and ruined the butcher’s reputation. Generations later the myth of Santa Claus followed English colonists and their church to America. The memorable and grisly legend of the restored butchered boys was largely lost along with much of the traditional narrative of Saint Nicholas’ life.

Finally, through the alchemy of advertising, the Santa Claus we know today was created. The tall; stiff bishops hat Saint Nicholas once wore became floppy and acquired a cotton tail; his red robes, once an image of power, were reimagined as a jolly red suit, fur lined and completed by tall black boots. Short, slender and sever Saint Nicholas, bishop of Myra was transformed. In America he was, and remains, Jolly Old St. Nick. Much was lost in translation.

In life Saint Nicholas was a gift giver very different from our American Santa Claus and that tradition of Saint Nicholas’ life has much to teach. As bishop and long after his death Saint Nicholas was most known for a miracle that saved Myra from famine. There was great hunger and suffering in Myra and all of Roman ‘Asia’ when a grain ship, bound to restore the stores of the capital Constantinople, stopped in the Myra’s port. Nicholas, then the bishop, asked the sailors of that ship to unload a large quantity of grain—two years’ worth which also included seed for planting in future seasons, to feed the hungry of Myra. Saint Nicholas promised that, even after generously giving so much grain, when the ship arrived in Constantinople the sailors would find it full. Reluctantly the sailors agreed. Myra was fed through the famine and when the ship arrived in Constantinople it was full; its stores as abundant as when it was first filled. Nicholas, like Jesus with loaves and fishes, had multiplied lack into abundance.

Nicholas took no credit for the miracle. That was his approach to gift giving—Saint Nicholas always gave anonymously. He gave to the poor and struggling, famously leaving coins in shoes left outside the homes of the needy.

In another well-known story Nicholas ‘saved’ the three daughters of a family. The girls’ father fell on hard times and lost so much that he could not afford a dowry for the girls. The family was very fearful, a daughter without a dowry was unmarriageable and an unmarried daughter might have to be abandoned; left to a life of prostitution. Nicholas saved them by bringing dowry money. He always came anonymously and at night.

The dowry for the three virgins
(Gentile da Fabriano, c. 1425,
 Pinacoteca Vaticana, Rome).

There are various traditions, in some Nicholas left gold orbs, in others, purses full of coins; in some he left the gifts one a night for three nights, in others once a year before each girls birthday when they achieved a marriageable age. In each of them Nicholas is found out when delivering the last gift. The father of the girls stays up that night, hears a commotion and confronts Nicholas. The father of the girls asks Nicholas why he would give such generous gifts anonymously. Nicholas answers—“The gifts are GODs and not mine.”

Saint Nicholas always gave anonymously and always to the poor and suffering. His anonymity was not like the anonymity of those that take the name Santa Claus when giving gifts. Saint Nicholas gave not as an individual, set apart by wealth and the ability to give, but as a nameless; faceless, anonymous hand of GOD. There is a tradition ascribed to Paul that sees the church and all its members as the many parts that make the body of GOD. Sometimes this tradition is extended to the whole world and all the people in it.

By tradition every individual has unique gifts to give and yet no one is above another, no person more or less essential. Like a body that would be impaired and incomplete without every last atom that it is built of, so are all people essential in the Kingdom of GOD. It is this tradition that Nicholas seems to be following, giving his gifts anonymously. And gifts, as Saint Nicholas gives them, reveal the power of gift giving when done in the spirit of Jesus and his teachings. Jesus, in his life, always comforted the poor and suffering and challenged the wealthy and comfortable. Jesus healed the sick. HE fed the hungry with bread and spiritual life. HE confronted the wealthy; HE challenged them to give up their comfort. HE received everyone in love and compassion. Jesus showed there is responsibility in giving and grace in receiving.

The life of Saint Nicholas is an expression of the responsibility of giving. It is an essential part of why he is remembered. Saint Nicholas dedicated his life; his position and wealth to giving. He did this not for gain or fame but because as a member of GOD’s body he was responsible to those that suffered. Truly, if we are one body then to help our suffering parts is to heal ourselves.  Of course, we are not all here to be sainted and each of us has a unique part to play in the life and growth of this body. It is not for all of us to dedicate our life to the responsibility of giving. The life of Saint Nicholas, though, does inspire. Sometimes I reflect on giving. What am I giving? Why? Then, if I do give rightly, I find I feel a happy wave of healing come over me.

I could not find a record of how the father and his three, nearly-lost, daughters received Saint Nicholas’ gift. That did not stop me from considering the other part of giving—the grace of receiving. In the Gospel of Luke Jesus receives anointment from a prostitute. At a fine dinner filled with respectable men a prostitute, Mary, bursts in. She rushes to Jesus and weeping, washes his feet with her tears and kisses them. She dries Jesus with her long hair and then anoints his feet with scented oil, a precious possession. The guests are aghast, she is a tainted woman! Jesus has allowed Mary’s unclean hands to touch and wash him. Jesus reproaches the judgmental guests, he reminds them that Mary displayed a purity of love and faith that none of the august hosts had shown. Jesus receives Mary with compassion. There is a grace similar to this in receiving gifts. In giving we heal, in receiving we hope. Receiving a gift with openness and with compassion is a graceful act. Receiving a gift when you are low is to know that God and love will provide and to hope for when you have enough to give. To receive a gift given purely of love is to know GOD and his presence in the world.

The power and grace of gift giving is why Saint Nicholas is remembered after the many generations since his death. In America much of this is lost in translation, spirited away somewhere in the transformation of the sainted bishop Nicolas into Santa Claus. In the spirit of Advent, which challenges us to question, we might reconsider Saint Nicholas. Just behind the American image of Santa Claus is a beautiful; ancient tradition of giving and receiving in compassion and in love.


--KC Crain blogs at www.georgecrain.com

Images from Wikipedia 

What Does Black Friday tell us about Advent? (Not much!)

Advent is a great time to slow down and a take time from our consumer culture out as we prepare to celebrate the birth of Jesus. We all know that Christmas is grand finale of our consumer calendar, but Advent is the beginning of the church calendar. It's a time to "begin again" and renew our commitment to live into God's economy of abundance, peace and contentment, and step back from the world's economy of scarcity, anxiety and fear. I can think of no greater contrast of those two economies -- those two ways of being in the world -- than Advent and Black Friday. Enjoy! Chris Harris is Canon for Congregational Development at St. Paul’s Episcopal Cathedral. His course, “Living Wi$ely” helps people take a deeper look at their relationship with money, stuff and how our spiritual journeys are deeply connected to our journey of generosity. Visit www.stpaulcathedral.org/livingwisely for more information.

Secret Santa Layaway

Editor's note:  a Cathedral member who prefers to be anonymous sent us this blog for the Christmas season.  You may be sitting next to this Secret Santa on Sunday!

In the last year or two, there has been a spontaneous surge of people acting as “Secret Santas”   for folks who have Christmas gifts on layaway.  These contributions have ranged from a hundred dollars to thousands.

Now, economists will point out that layaway is not the best way to buy things.  Many stores charge a fee, so it makes more sense to save up and then buy all at once.  But for many folks living on limited incomes, the small contributions to layaway make it  the most practical way to purchase, and in a sagging economy, layaway schemes have made a big comeback .

Last Christmas, we were really inspired by stories of Secret Santas.  We gathered $300 in cash and set out, ending up in Chula Vista.  It was a week or so before Christmas, and we found that most toy and department stores had already closed their layaway programs.  We went into the Sears store at Chula Vista Center and found a clerk.  “Is layaway still open?” we asked.  She was a bit puzzled, but when we explained that we didn’t want to add anything, but to pay for some, she said, intrigued, “oh, like on the news?” and she found us a security manager to help.

He took us behind the scenes to a warehouse where large plastic bags were shelved.  On each was a typical department store receipt, indicating amount due.  We walked along the rows together looking for bags with children’s clothes or toys.  As we found them, our new friend picked them up.  He was a big man, and easily tucked the bags under his arms.  He led us back onto the floor where he found another clerk to process the payments.  As the clerk rang up each ticket, we handed over the money to pay for it.  Some of them were recently past due.  The manager beamed, passing each ticket over to the clerk and mentally tallying the amount.  Then we followed him back to his office where he piled up the tickets to make calls to the families.  He knew some of the recipients, and knew it would be a big help.

“What are your names?”  he asked, but we declined.  “Just tell them Merry Christmas,” we said.  He gave us a big hug, and a grin, and we headed out.  There’s a lot of need in the world, and we didn’t make much of a dent.  But at least we made a few Christmas mornings a little happier--and put a lift to our step too!

This year, we’re going to do it earlier.  We learned that some people who had things on layaway at other stores but couldn’t make the final payment, lost those items.  This year, we want to make sure to help those folks too, before they suffer default.  One person at a time DOES make a difference.  Merry Christmas!

Advent-Us: Advent, antidote for a stressful season

It is Advent. The beginning of the church calendar, four weeks, four Sundays to celebrate the coming of Jesus. It is a mystery, divine and definitely material that those four weeks of Advent match the most consumerist and stressful season in America. Many churches change the colors of their draping’s and vestments for Advent, for four weeks the colors are purple and blue, colors of promise and hope. Promise and hope amid the mad rush to buy things, to entertain; impress and compare all that we have, the gifts and love we give and get, against standards that sometimes seem impossibly high.

Advent offers a quiet place, more than the first four weeks of the church calendar, Advent is a perspective. Advent asks that we might remember in the scrum of the season that Jesus is coming. Jesus in his body, his flesh and deeds, will bring the promise of hope fulfilled and love. Advent challenges us too, to reflect. What is hope to us? When Christmas comes and Jesus is among us how will we, with Him, work to make a better church and a better world?

Jesus was born to a world that was materially rich, flush and fattened from a Roman peace that nonetheless left many out. Israel was a disappointed, anxious place, a state that might feel familiar to Americans today. The hopeful Maccabean revolt was corrupted. Originally an earnest, righteous guerilla fight against Greek conquerors that threatened more than the Jewish state but the very survival of that faith, the Maccabean revolt evolved into a corrupt and venal government. Israel then was a Roman client state.

Maccabees (a single family before it was the name of a movement) sat on the throne and ran the Temple. They had no ties to David and the royal line or Aaron and his family that GOD made keepers of the Temple. Worse, the Maccabees were corrupt. The Temple, so sacred to Jews, was effectively a treasury exploited to enrich the illegitimate priests and to pay off Roman overlords. The Maccabees even took Greek names.

Confronted with corruption and decay, many Jews turned to their faith, they sought meaning and freedom in the profession of greater belief. Three especially remarkable groups came out of that search: the Essenes; Pharisees and Sadducees. The Essenes are familiar to us today because of their library. Their well-disguised collection of holy books and other writings has been called the “Dead Sea Scrolls” since its discovery in 1946. The scrolls have been subject to intensive research and debate, then and today. The Essenes dropped out of society. They fled civilized Israel for the desert and lived a monastic-like life. Their settlement was communal; likely they demanded a vow of poverty and observation of strict rules. Isolated and radical the Essenes waited hopefully for the Apocalypse. John the Baptist was probably an Essene before leaving for his own corner of the wilderness to prophesize and anticipate the coming of Jesus.

The Pharisees were like todays rabbis. Strictly observant Jews, Pharisees did not drop out of society, they carved out a sacred niche in it. Law and scripture being, necessarily, open to interpretation the Pharisees emphasized scholarship and teaching. There were among the first people Jesus impressed, when he spoke to them as a child [Luke 2:40-50]. Their thoughtful investigation of Jewish law and emphasis on teaching had much to do with Jesus and the dissemination of His message, the Apostles called Jesus rabbi, or teacher. Pharisees, to a degree, prepared an eager and demanding audience to receive Jesus and his teachings.

The Sadducees remain a mystery. They were probably connected to the Temple and its priests; they might have been scholarly too. The only certainty about the Sadducees is that they often clashed with the Pharisees and any other group with claim to Jewish religious authority. It was an ample and anxious world Jesus was born to, still, common to nearly everyone in Israel was a powerful longing and hope. Hope for change; hope, for the Jews, that a prophet would come and lead them to a better; just world.

The stress between hope and a world that threatens to overwhelm us is a conflict we might consider during Advent. Advent is the beginning of the Church calendar. Jesus has not come; it is winter. We are aware He is coming; we are waiting, anxious and hopeful, like those original Jews in Israel; as all people in the depth of winter anticipate spring; summer and the return of the sun. There is virtue in waiting. Advent challenges us to focus on hope, the hope that Jesus will fulfill.

The church calendar, like life and most stories that we tell, has a beginning, middle and end. Like in stories, we tend to prefer the dramatic parts. Christmas is very popular, Jesus is born! He is here, He is hope fulfilled. We can, finally, bask in the intensity of his love. He offers the security of answers, answers we could not find and to questions that are hard to ask. He teaches not only with words but with works. For the Apostles and those that find Jesus in prayer or elsewhere, his presence has the power to literally remake the world, to heal. Jesus’ life is the dramatic part but Advent is where the story starts.

In America the stress of the season is apparent everywhere. Crowded malls, incessant “Christmas” music in stores, whispering like conspicuous subliminal messaging: ‘Shop! People are expecting gifts! You don’t want to seem cheap, or worse, poor.’ There are sales ads all over the place, work parties, friend and family holiday parties. Expectations are that everyone is included but the state and meaning of relationships are sometimes too little considered. Celebrations are not always gatherings of good will and healing but judgment and convention. And when we escape these things, there is still the knowledge that this is not a perfect world. Christmas is coming! Isn’t it obvious that we are still sinners, that we have not loved our neighbors as we love ourselves? Stress was there for the original Jews in Israel, waiting for a prophet in a disappointing world. And for later Christians too, especially those in the North where the Episcopal Church has roots. In the North where the ritual expectation of Jesus was linked to the very real darkness and longing of winter.

Waiting with longing and swept up in the excited; anxious rush of the season, Advent challenges us to take a step back, to stop and consider. We might reflect on what great comfort Jesus and his church is to us. What comfort Jesus, His message and example of love is to our always fragile humanity. We might ask what meaning hope has to us. What do we hope for? Can we, in our lives, make that hope real? Jesus will come, the church calendar promises that too. Like us, among us, thin and warm to the touch, Jesus will show us the profound power of love and the fragility of flesh. He will redeem us, show us that we are not limited by sin but by how fully we pursue our potential. Advent is the season to consider what that potential is and what it will be for each of us, individually and together.

Advent challenges us to prepare. When we dream of better world, what do we see? We are waiting, we are swept up in the swirl of the season but soon Jesus will come. He will help us get there; to that better world we see when we dream.

--KC Crain blogs at www.georgecrain.com

Your Family Advent Wreath

For us today, Advent is a time for us to explore the spiritual ideas of waiting, patience and delayed gratification.   We are counting the days until Christmas and allowing ourselves to hope for all of the best to come.

The concept of the Advent wreath actually originated in pre-Christian times when people would gather evergreens and light candles to ward off the darkness of winter and serve as a sign of hope that spring would come.

The word advent, from Latin, means "the coming." It is a time of spiritual reflection as well as cheer and anticipation. The home or family Advent devotion includes the ceremonial lighting of candles in the Advent wreath.

By the 16th century, Catholics in Germany began using the wreath as a sign of Christ’s coming. From there the tradition slowly spread throughout the world as Germans immigrated to various countries.

Symbolism of the Wreath
The circular wreath represents the fact that God has no beginning and no end. The evergreen branches stand for everlasting life.

Four candles—representing Christ as the light of the world—adorn the wreath. Traditionally, three of the candles are purple, a sign of penance. (Sometimes the  three candles are blue or red.) These candles are lit on the first, second and fourth weeks of Advent.

On the third week a rose (pink) candle is lit. This week is known as “Gaudete” Sunday, Latin for “rejoice.” The rose candle symbolizes joy. (Make sure to check out the priest’s vestments at Mass on this Sunday. They might be rose to match the rose candle that you will be lighting.)

In addition to these four candles, many people place a white candle in the center of their Advent wreath. This candle is called the Christ candle and is lit on Christmas Day to represent the birth of Christ.

The candles should be lit each day of the appropriate week and for the subsequent weeks. For example, during the third week you will light two purple candles and the rose one.

Building Your Advent Rituals
Personalize your wreath. Ask family members to attach something small to the wreath that represents them, something they are thankful for or praying for.

After you have either made or bought your Advent wreath, bless it.  You can make up your own blessings or say the following:

Most precious God, please be with us through this Advent season.  Help this Advent Wreath to bring us closer to you and to your son. 

We will light and gather around our Advent Wreath each night with anticipation of the coming of the light of the world.   With each lit candle we will remember that we are waiting and preparing to celebrate the birth of this child who had so much to teach us of living in your ways and sharing your love.     

Help our Advent Wreath to keep us ever mindful of the importance of hope, faith and patience as we wait and prepare, doing your good works, day by day.

The whole purpose of Advent is for us to slow down and take time to reflect on the upcoming birth of Christ. What better way to do that than to go for a walk all together? While you’re out walking, gather up things such as pinecones or other interesting natural elements and use them to adorn your family’s Advent wreath.

You can also collect various items from around the house, such as leftover ribbon, to add to the wreath.

You can turn off all of the lights in the house and enjoy the light of the advent wreath candles all on their own.

We keep the candles lit each evening as we read Scripture and sing a verse of an Advent hymn. Some families at this time read the Scripture lessons for the Mass on that day.

On Christmas Eve, we light additional candles throughout the house and keep them burning all evening until bedtime.

We follow the customary ritual: We pray a blessing on the wreath the first time we light it.  

On the first Sunday in Advent, and every evening of the following week, we light a single purple candle. The children take turns lighting the candle, though it is an old German custom that anyone with the name "John" or "Joan" can claim the first rights for this job. The reason? It was Saint John the evangelist who began his Gospel by calling Jesus the "light of the world," and it was Saint John the Baptist who saw the light of Christ’s divinity shining as He came to be baptized in the Jordan River (see John 1:1-36).

The family or home advent devotion time can be flexible to your family's personal taste. Adding bible verses, carols, discussions questions or whatever your family chooses.

If your children are older, pick a leader for every week.   The leader can then select the format they want the lighting ceremony to take.  Often the lighting of the candle/s is before dinner or right after sunset. We've provided some suggested bible verses to get you started but they are not intended to imply a set form.

If you have younger children you could read a picture book that explores a spiritual theme.  Some good themes for Advent are waiting, patients, a creation story, love, peace, and hope,

The candle lighting is progressive from week to week,
preparing the way for the coming of Jesus.

First Sunday of advent : Hope
light one purple candle to symbolize Hope
Prayer
Read Isaiah 60:2-3
Extinguish the flame

Second Sunday : Peace
Light two purple candles - Hope and Peace
Prayer
Read Mark 1:4
Extinguish the flames


Third Sunday : Joy
Light two purple candles (Hope and Peace)
and one rose to symbolize Joy
Prayer
Read Isaiah 35:10
Extinguish the flames


Fourth Sunday: Love
light all four candles - Hope, Peace, Joy and Love
Prayer
Read Isaiah 9:6-7
Extinguish the flames

Christmas Eve
After Sunset...
Light all four candles and add the fifth white candle
(the light of Christ)
Prayer
Read Luke 1:68-79 and Luke 2:1-20
Keep the candles lit a bit longer, or safely
throughout the evening.

Christine D'Amico