Corpus Christi Blog

How can we be like the Holy Family?

12-27-2020Weekly ReflectionJen Arnold, M.A. in Theology and Catechetics

Today, as we celebrate the feast of the Holy Family, we will take a look at the gift God has given us in our own families and how they are reflections of God’s love and inner life.

In 2018, our very own Bishop Olmsted wrote a letter to his flock called, Complete my Joy: An Apostolic Exhortation to the Husbands and Wives, Mothers and Fathers of the Diocese of Phoenix. He wanted to highlight the unique role the family unit has in God’s redemptive plan and to offer us encouragement in our family vacations. Due to the nature of family life, which is rooted in love and communal life, he posited that “Family is likely where we will feel the deepest joys as well as the deepest pain.” (#2). Whatever ups and downs we experience in our family life, they can all be used for our ultimate good and contribute to our own personal healing and the mission of our family in the world overall.

The first point to make is that families are a reflection of the Divine Trinity. God is three persons in one God-Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. This a communal union that exists only in perfect love as the three persons give and receive continual love between one another. Humans were made in the image and likeness of God and were therefore created for love. We are meant to love and be loved and our love produces fruit, both in the procreative act of bringing about children and by the light our love puts out into the world as it reveals God’s love. “As the concrete image of God to the world, every family – your family – is, by its nature, a communion of love and life.” (#10).

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O, Come Let Us Adore Him (Part 4 of 4)

12-19-2020Weekly ReflectionJen Arnold, M.A. in Theology and Catechetics

As we enter the fourth week of Advent, we will look at the final group of people called to adore the infant Christ, the magi. There is a lot of mystery surrounding the magi. Who they were, where they came from, and what their belief system was, is not explicitly explained in Scripture or taught by the Magisterium. In the Acts of the Apostles, there is a reference to a magus (the Latin singular of magi) named, Simon, who was a practitioner of magic. However, this could apply to many cultures and philosophical belief systems. There isn’t even a clear indication of how many there were, but early Church fathers say three, which is likely influenced by the three gifts Jesus received – gold, frankincense, and myrrh. Tradition gives them the names Gaspar, Melchior, and Balthasar.

Despite all the mystery surrounding the magi, we don’t need any more information about them than what we have, to understand who and what they represent in the context of coming to adore Jesus as the Savior of the World. Matthew tells us they were “wise” and when they saw the star announcing His birth, they followed it to go and worship Him (Mt. 2:1-2). In Jesus of Nazareth: The Infancy Narratives, Pope Benedict XVI tells us what it means to be a wise man who sets out to find Jesus. To be wise is to seek TRUTH – truth in philosophy, truth in science, and truth in religion. It is to step out of your own narrow perspective of truth as you have defined or accepted it and to seek truth as it actually is. To be wise is to seek the fullness of truth and understanding. Benedict also states that the magi would not have set out to seek Jesus had they not been a “people of inner unrest, people of hope, people on the lookout for the true star of salvation.” In other words, had they been satisfied with their own idea of truth and spiritual practices, they would have had no inner pull or desire to seek out the Newborn King. Think of all the people in your life who always seem to be seeking more. The Catechism affirms this, telling us, “The desire of God is written in the human heart because man is created by God and for God, and God never ceases to draw man to himself. Only in God will he find the truth and happiness he never stops searching for.” (CCC #27). In other words, the soul is wired to seek out the truth and will never truly rest until it rests in God. The magi were wise, in that they were willing to humble themselves to receive and adore the real truth, as opposed to continuing to seek it in things that contained but a sliver of truth. 

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O, Come Let Us Adore Him (Part 3 of 4)

12-13-2020Weekly ReflectionJen Arnold, M.A. in Theology and Catechetics

This week we will look at the third group that was invited to come adore the infant Jesus in the flesh – the shepherds. The angels, who had already existed in a state of perpetual adoration of God, rushed out to joyfully proclaim the birth of Jesus to the shepherds in the fields. I find that the shepherds are the most easily relatable characters in the nativity story, in terms of their coming to adore Jesus. Sometimes it can be more difficult to identify with Mary, Joseph, and the angels because they were all fittingly endowed with spiritual gifts that the rest of us simply are not. However, the shepherds, the simple workers in the field, are more representative of us ordinary human beings.

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O, Come Let Us Adore Him (Part 2 of 4)

12-06-2020Weekly ReflectionJen Arnold, M.A. in Theology and Catechetics

Last week, we reflected on what it meant for Jesus’ parents to adore Him, not only as their Son, but also as their Lord, and how we are invited into that intimate familial love and adoration of Jesus. This week we’ll look at what it means to adore Jesus from the perspective of another group of beings, the angels. Earlier this year I wrote a piece about the nine choirs of angels and their various roles in the adoration of God and their service in growing His kingdom. If you missed that catechesis and would like an in-depth look at angels, you can find it on our parish website blog, dated June 28, 2020. For this reflection, however, it is enough to know that angels have deep knowledge and understanding of who God is, and as a result, remain in constant adoration of God.

Our guardian angels have been working our entire lives to helping guide us toward God and away from the temptation of sin – whether we listen or not! Imagine their rejoicing when the time came for the Savior of the World to be born in human flesh as the antidote to our ongoing corruption. For all of the time, they have had direct knowledge of the goodness of God, and now, we too could have a heightened and more advanced knowledge of that goodness as well. The honor given to St. Gabriel the Archangel to announce to Mary that she would conceive and bear God’s Son must have been a completely humbling experience, but more importantly, it was an act of adoration through obedience. You see, St. Gabriel adores God so deeply, that it would compel him from the very depths of his being to agree to announce the coming of Jesus to the people of the world so that they could adore Him as he does. We can imitate St. Gabriel and understand that our obedience to God’s will is an act of adoration and that by adoring Him through our words and actions, we are announcing His ever-presence in our world.

On the night of Jesus’ birth, there were also the angels who announced it to the shepherds in the field (more on the shepherds next week). Read this verse from Luke, Chapter 2, and try to imagine the scene:

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