Congregation at Prayer

Catechesis Notes for the Week — Celebrate the Nativity of Our Lord in Devotion and Prayer — This week’s Congregation at Prayer affords us the opportunity to read and mark in Holy Scripture the Church’s minor feasts that follow Christmas: St. Stephen, the First Martyr (December 26); St. John, Apostle and Evangelist (December 27); and the Holy Innocents (December 28). Stephen was one of the first seven ministers ordained in the Church after the Apostles. His ministry included giving Word and Sacrament to Greek-speaking Jewish Christian widows. The account of Stephen in the book of Acts shows him to be a faithful preacher of Christ from the Old Testament Scriptures. His use of the Old Testament is an important guide to us in understanding that the Old Testament Scriptures, like the New, point to Jesus Christ. He condemned the unbelief and impenitence of the religious establishment of his day by comparing it to the unbelief and impenitence of Old Testament Israel. Stephen reminds us that the message of Christmas must also be the call to repentance from dead works to living faith in God’s mercy in His Son. This feast also reminds us that the joy of Christmas exists in the context of persecution, suffering, and even death for being faithful to the Gospel. The feast of St. John, Apostle and Evangelist, underscores the great truth that we can have no faith in Christ apart from the Scriptures that are written that we may believe that Jesus is the Christ. Faith is created and rests upon the certainty of the Apostolic and prophetic witness to Jesus. The feast of the Holy Innocents depicts the depth of human sin in the evil of King Herod who will stop at nothing in his attempts to kill God. This appetite of the sinful flesh is the nature of all sinners and is the reason why “the Word became flesh” for our redemption. Baptism saves us from this horrible evil and makes us children of the Child born in Bethlehem. Remembering our baptism daily makes every day a celebration of our Lord’s birth and our rebirth in Christ: “He saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit whom He poured out on us generously through Jesus Christ our Savior.” (Titus 3 from the Catechism)CP221225

Catechesis Notes for the Week — Advent Meditations: St. Thomas, Apostle – As we begin our final week of Advent, looking toward the celebration of the birth of the Son of God in human flesh, we hear the detailed testimony from the evangelists St. Matthew and St. Luke in the Bible Stories. Listen carefully how the evangelists cite the Old Testament Scriptures which are being fulfilled in Jesus’ birth.  Christ’s Birth Is Foretold to Joseph is anchored in the promise of the Virgin birth from the prophet Isaiah. The Nativity of Our Lord and the Birth of Christ Is Announced to Shepherds shows the connection between the presence of the Lord in the glory-cloud that was suspended between the cherubim above the mercy-seat in the Old Testament and the fulness of that glory in Jesus that shone around the shepherds as the Angel of the Lord announced His birth. Against the backdrop of Scripture fulfilled in the birth of Christ stands the Feast of St. Thomas, Apostle, on December 21. Thomas, together with his fellow apostles, witnessed the fulfillment of the entirety of the Old Testament Scriptures in everything that Jesus said and did. Thomas’ insistence that he must see the resurrected Lord was proper. As an Apostle, he could not bear witness to that which he had not seen. This teaches us that everything recorded in the Apostolic witness of the New Testament is what the Apostles heard and saw from Jesus in fulfillment of the Scriptures.CP221218

Catechesis Notes for the Week — Advent Meditations: St. John, the Apostle and Evangelist – This week’s Bible Stories turn to the narratives in the New Testament leading up to the birth of Christ. Gabriel Appears to Zachariah in the Temple while he is officiating as priest and announces to him that he and Elizabeth would be the parents of the forerunner of the Christ who would prepare His way. After six months, the Angel Gabriel appears to the Virgin Mary in the Annunciation of Our Lord, “announcing” that she would be the mother of the Son of God—the promised Christ, the Son of David, the Seed of Abraham, and Seed of the Woman—who would redeem us from sin, Satan, and death. In the Visitation, Mary visits her cousin Elizabeth who is six months pregnant with John the Baptist. The Word of the Lord through the Angel Garbiel is confirmed. Mary confesses the Magnificat by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, and both Elizabeth and John confess the faith with joy. The final story of the week is the Nativity of St. John the Baptist. John, who would prepare the way for Jesus, is born according to the Lord’s promise. His father Zachariah, a one-time questioner of the Lord’s Word, has his heart and lips opened by the Lord to confess his faith and announced that the child’s name would be John, which means the Lord is gracious. Against this backdrop of narratives, Wednesday’s Advent meditation celebrates the Feast of St. John, the Apostle and Evangelist. John, the son of Zebedee and brother of James the Elder, was one of the original Twelve called to be Apostles. In addition to his apostleship where he would bear witness to all the events of Jesus ministry, including especially his baptism, death, and resurrection, John was called to be the disciple who would take care of Mary after Jesus’ death and resurrection. He is referred to as “the disciple whom Jesus loved” not because Jesus did not love all the disciples, but as a sign to us poor and lowly sinners who often doubt his love, that He loves us too. It is very appropriate during this season of Advent, in which we prepare to celebrate the Lord’s incarnation, that we meditate upon John’s words in the first chapter of his Gospel: “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14).CP221211

Catechesis Notes for the Week — Advent Meditations: St. Stephen, Martyr – During the second week of Advent our daily Bible narratives focus upon Jacob’s journey back to the land of promise where he will meet his brother Esau. Over twenty years earlier his brother vowed to kill him, but in the end the mercy of God won the day, and Jacob and Esau were reunited in the Lord’s forgiveness. This week’s advent meditation focuses upon St. Stephen, the First Martyr in the New Testament. Normally this feast is celebrated the day after Christmas which brings a sense of sobriety to our Christmas celebration. Since, however, Advent celebrates living by faith in this vale of tears, it is appropriate to celebrate this feast ahead of time.

“St. Stephen, “a man full of faith and of the Holy Spirit” (Acts 6:5), was one of the Church’s first seven ministers, chosen and ordained after the Apostles. He was called to especially minister to the Greek-speaking Jewish Christian widows who were being neglected (Acts 6:2-5). Their ministry enabled the Apostles to give their full attention to the proclamation of the Gospel to which they were called as direct witnesses of the Lord Jesus’ ministry, death, and resurrection. The central authority of the Office of the Ministry is to preach the Gospel and administer the Sacraments. We see the Seven doing exactly that. Philip, another one of the Seven, catechized and baptized Simon the Sorcerer and the Ethiopian Eunuch. Stephen preached the Gospel in the Synagogue of the Freedmen (the free Hellenized Jewish citizens of the empire). It was this faithful preaching of the Gospel, whereby he demonstrated that Jesus of Nazareth was, in fact, the promised Messiah predicted in the Old Testament, for which Stephen was martyred. During his martyrdom we see a faithful Christian, not only in his preaching, but also in his faithful witness to God’s mercy in Christ as he prays for his enemies, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them.”CP221204