Presby-Musings

Yesterday evening was the one sliver of time I had to finally put away all of the Christmas decorations--preparing them for a year's storage in all of their various Christmas decoration boxes.   I couldn't wait to be done with that task last night.  I think I found some buried and forgotten reserve of energy to keep packing and cleaning far into the night, until every last evidence of Christmas was wrapped, packed and out of sight.   This morning, groggy and nursing some seriously black and strong coffee, I have been gazing at all of the bins and boxes standing sentinel in the hall, waiting to be carried to the garage.  Not that long ago, I opened all of those Christmas decoration boxes with joy and anticipation, and now I can't wait to see them stored away.   I couldn't help but reflect on how, in much the same way, we often run hot and cold when it comes to our relationship with Jesus--depending on what we seem to think we need at the time.   ...

Today is the first day of Epiphany--a season in the Church that lasts until Lent, which leads us to Easter.  If you are a church-nerd like me, the months of November to April are easily the most action-packed when it comes to church-y stuff.   But there was a time when I didn't pay all that much attention to the seasons of the Church.  I had this negative mind set about Church tradition.  I was under the mistaken impression that tradition keeps us mired in the past.   I was all about what was happening now , what the Holy Spirit was doing in the present.   Then I read this quote by theologian G.K. Chesteron that went something like this:  "Tradition is the democracy of the dead."   In other words, to discount entirely what the saints of yesteryear contributed to our understanding of what it means to be Christian is foolhardy.  They get a vote.  And those votes mean something -- what I've come to understand is that Church traditi...

Today is Epiphany, the 12th day of Christmas, and the beginning of the Season of Epiphany, which will continue until the beginning of Lent on February 10th. Epiphany celebrates the visit of the magi (wise men) to the Holy Family, which, by extension, stands as a symbol for the Church  that the Good News of Jesus Christ is for everyone, everywhere.   The Gospel of Matthew relates that the magi brought three gifts (gold, frankincense and myrrh), which has led to the widely held belief that there were only three wise men present during the visit.  In fact, virtually every nativity scene that I have in my house depicts the three wise men holding their gifts and looking adoringly at baby Jesus.   When we start to dig a bit into this story, however, we find that everything isn't as neat as all that.  To begin with, the magi didn't visit the Holy Family just a few days after the birth of the Christ child.  Biblical scholars widely believe that the visi...

This Sunday we will be celebrating what is officially known as "The Epiphany of our Lord," the day that ends the season of Christmas (the famous "12 Days") and begins the season of Epiphany in the Church.  I didn't make these things up, people.  Christians have been celebrating this stuff for a good long time, and I kind of dig it, to be honest. But what does "Epiphany" actually mean, and why should we even care about any of this stuff anyway?   To begin with, "epiphany" is a word that essentially means "realization," or more specifically, "inspired realization."  When you have an epiphany you know it.  You feel it in your bones.  It's more important than realizing that you took a wrong turn on the way to Albuquerque and ended up in Hoboken.  That would be a seriously wrong turn, I might add.   An epiphany is when you realize something that has the potential to change your life, the way you think about ...

This Sunday is Epiphany , the official end of the 12 Days of Christmas , and the day before the NCAA football national championship game, and thus the end of the college football bowl season---which in our culture officially ends the holiday season. Heck, Walgreens is already putting out their Valentine's Day cards, so who am I kidding, right? Still, in some cultures Epiphany is a bigger deal than Christmas.  And in these cultures the rituals of gift giving are tied to wise men instead of a jolly old elf.  I have to admit, this isn't such a bad idea. In many Latin American cultures the day is commonly known as Tres Reyes ( Three Kings ), and is celebrated by children filling their shoes with hay and then leaving them  by their bedroom doors the night before Epiphany in anticipation of receiving gifts on the morning of January 6th.  They hay is for the camels of the legendary Three Kings, of course. In England the night before Epiphany was called Twelfth ...