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2nd Sunday in Advent Mt 24/37-24 |
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| Background: Advent and Christmas represent a very special intervention of God in the human condition, a revolution indeed because it revealed to us just how much God loves us, one that, as G.K. Chesterton said, turned the world upside down and, astonishingly, when viewed from that perspective the world made sense. God, in the words of the Irish Dominican poet, Paul Murray, loves us so much that if we should cease to exist, he would die of sadness.The Christmas stories reveal to us that God loved Her human children so much that He took on human form so that he could show us how to live and how to die, even walking with us down to the valley of death itself. The stories today tell us that even from the beginning it was not easy to be the special light of the world. Jesus was under threat all his life. The threats would finally catch up with Him as they catch up with all of us. But from Christmas we learn that finally the darkness can never put out the light. |
read the padre |
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Story: When Mollie Whuppi and her friends were in eighth grade, they
discovered at one of the parks in their neighborhood a game called women’s softball.
It wasn’t really sixteen inch softball like we play in Chicago but smaller softball
which is played in most of the rest of the country which is not as civilized as Chicago.
Anyway, they liked the game and decided that there should be a women’s team at Mother
Mary High School So the first week of their Freshman year in high school Mollie walked
into the principal’s office and demanded that their be a team. The principal had yet
to learn that Mollie was the boss, so she said. Go organized your team Mollie. We
don’t have money for coaches or uniforms or a team bus but we can buy a couple of
bats for you. Mollie said that was just fine. She’d be manager and coach too and
they’d save money to buy their own uniforms. So, even though she was busy with other
things like being class president and president of the chess club and chairman
of the social action committee – and lots of other things besides, she organized the
softball team. Now as everyone knows young women are much more serious about sports
then young men so they practice very hard. Mollie told them it would take three
years of experience before they could win city. The first year, they were terrible, the
second year they were pretty good and the third year they surprised everyone by getting to
the city finals. They had to ride across town in their parents’ SUVs and the
reception was very unfriendly. The crowd booed them. Boys shouted bad words at them. The
other team snarled and made fun of their uniforms. But with Mollie on the mound Mother
held the others scoreless and hitless for six innings. In the first half of the seventh
Mollie hit a home run so going into the last of the seventh (softball games last only
seven innings) Mother Mary was up 1-0. Mollie struck out the first two batters. Then she
pitched three straight strikes to the last batter. But the umpire, who made no secret of
which side he was on, called them balls. Everyone knew that Mollie’s four pitch was a
strike too, but the ump waved the batter down to first based. Then the next batter hit a
long foul ball – everyone knew it was a foul ball, but the ump called it fair. The
tying run scored. The throw from right field was slow but Mollie caught it and ran to the
plate to tag the hitter out by a mile. The ump called her safe. The crowds went wild
with laugher. The winners stalked off the field. The Mother Mary players didn’t
curse, they didn’t shout. They just cried. All except Mollie. Chill out, she shouted,
we’re still on our game plan. Next year we will play them at home and we’ll win,
just like we planned. The players from Mother Mary stalked out of the field
chanting, “wait till next year” the battle cry of defeated sports teams and
political parties – a hint of the Christian Hope that next year will be better even
when this year is the last year of our life.
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