Search

Results

Homily stories

01 Jan 2012 - Octave Day of the Nativity of the Lord; Solemnity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Mother of God, Cycle B

There is always a market for nostalgia. Depending on our age, we look back at the '40s or '60s or even the '80s as the "good old days." On the internet and in specialty stores, we can listen to music from Guy Lombardo to the Jackson 5. We can purchase lava lamps and bean bag chairs. We can play with Slinkys and Barbie and Pong. Things are in fashion one day and out the next. Family values, at least the phrase, has come back into style more as a political statement than a way of living. It is incredibly easy to look at the past and see simpler, better times. Our memories have a way of erasing the negative and smoothing the rough edges. This is especially tempting to do during the holiday season as we look to a new year filled with resolutions about the future. The secret is to take what is right about the past and make it part of our new reality. That is what Jesus' mother Mary does. By reflecting on all that has happened to her within the traditions of her faith she is able to make the presence of our Savior a reality in our world, thus fulfilling a promise of the past and giving us hope for the future. And so we must model our lives on that same challenge Mary's life makes. The traditions of our faith stand ready to help us find our salvation in the future. What we believe is far more than a nostalgia for the past. It is a challenge for the future.

Authors Father Dominic Grassi

family values nostalgia Mary Faith

Restricted
Exploring the word

27 Nov 2016 - First Sunday of Advent, Cycle A

One step into Advent, and we’re suffused with memories. It’s nearly impossible to separate the run-up to Christmas 2016 with holiday seasons of long ago. At the first appearance of evergreens and colored lights, after a few bars of a traditional carol or the delivery of the inaugural Christmas card, we’re plunged into nostalgia for child pleasures and wonder, reindeer and Charles Dickens, long-lost relatives arriving at the door, mysterious packages piling up, sledding or ice skating or snowball fights, cookies, pies, nuts in shells, and clear toy candies that only seem to exist for this special time of year. We approach the holiday season as knee-high citizens of a land of eternal youth. The magnificent weight of Decembers past draws us backward into longing for what was, the way things used to be, and perhaps even for who we once were. For people of faith, of course, there’s also the religious angle to this season. We’ve got angels zipping in and out of view, bringing good cheer of a higher order. Births are predicted and prophets from centuries past add words of anticipation and caution. Foreign wise men wander against a far horizon, while unprepared parents-to-be scramble to make space in their expectations for a child of destiny. Advent, to be honest, isn’t about any of that. It’s not about the nostalgia we legitimately feel for the most memory-laden season of our youth. Nor is it about events that happened 2,000 years ago, presaged by prophets 800 years before that. Advent is the beginning of the church year. As such, it looks forward, not back. Advent is about the future, not the past. While memory tugs us backward to yesteryear, Advent prods us onward toward revelations of future astonishments. This is a happy sort of tension. We might embrace it rather than seeing it as a contest to be resolved. Nostalgia prompts us to consider that the world’s salvation is a done deal: A child was born for us, Amen, and all that’s left is the celebration. But as scripture commentator Sister Pamela Smith notes in Days of Light and Darkness, we can’t “recite the poetry and the bombast of the prophets” without suspecting there’s more to come than what already was. “There is still some mysterious appointed time, some coming . . . that promises to startle us and turn our lives topsy-turvy.” Advent is not our annual invitation to winter slumber and daydreams about white Christmases and chestnuts roasting on open fires. There are “days to come,” Isaiah reveals, when peace will replace the violence of our churning, restless world. “Stay awake!” Jesus reminds us, so that we don’t miss the signature of those days. Nor the vital decisions each of us has yet to make. Related scripture links What are we waiting for?: Isa. 65:17; 66:22; Rom. 8:18-25; 2 Pet. 3:8-14; Rev. 21:1-5 Christians on a journey: John 14:6; 1 Pet. 2:11 Catechism links Advent: CCC 522-524; 1093-1098 Prophecy and preparation: CCC 64; 761-762; 2317 Second Coming: CCC 668-679

Authors Alice Camille

nostalgia advent future stay awake

Restricted
Nostalgia doesn’t work, part I

Short essays about observed trends in Roman Catholic life - Pastoral trends

Conversion is a “turn toward,” a facing to the future. But are we willing to take the risks conversion entails? Today we find ourselves in a kind of in-between time, a transition time as a church. We might call it a “liminal moment” where we know the old paradigm of the past few generations is no longer what will sustain the church of the future. We know that things are changing, but we don’t quite know where they are going, or what things will look like at the other end. From the perspective of pastoral sociology, the surest recipe for disaster is nostalgia, an emphasis on what we have known before or on an idealized past. We need to let that go. To focus on the past underlines the fact that folks in ministry, like church leaders at the highest levels, are a kind of gerontocracy, a leadership distinguished by their age and ability to collectively think of peak moments that are not so much socially and ecclesially important as biographically and generationally important. The majority of Catholics in the United States today were born after the Second Vatican Council. Their engagement needs to be in the living reality of the present, hopefully one deeply informed by the council but by no means mired in a kind of time warp. Telling the old Catholic campfire story—European immigrants huddling in the big cities, building remarkable institutions, and moving into the middle class and social and political acceptance and leadership—is arguably insulting and insensitive to a generation of the youngest Catholics for whom only a relatively small majority has any blood connection with those European immigrants. The next generation is sure to bring a majority of Catholics who are decisively Hispanic/Latino, Asian, African American, Native American—and where being Irish or German or Italian is simply less common and far less important as a cultural marker within the church. This doesn’t mean that culture is unimportant; far from it. It does mean that the way we often frame it is hopelessly nostalgic.

Authors Bryan Froehle

nostalgia transitions liminal moment

Restricted
Nostalgia doesn’t work, part 2

Short essays about observed trends in Roman Catholic life - Pastoral trends

The best way to destroy the values that sustain today’s Catholic institutions is arguably to maintain them with the least possible change. To maintain Catholic schools without rethinking funding patterns, parish relationships, and structural, cultural, and community issues is to move toward a situation where more and more schools close for lack of funding, and the only Catholic elementary schools become those associated with large, wealthy parishes—hardly the values on which Catholic schools were founded. To maintain Catholic parishes without rethinking community based less on territory and more on chosen affiliation growing out of work, culture, age, and socio-economic or other ties is to move towards parishes that are sacramental factories, all alike on the outside and lacking a true community life. If nostalgia is a dead end, what works? What about retrieval? How about rethinking how certain tools or visions that worked in the past might speak to the challenges of the future, without putting them into a straightjacket of pre-conceived expectations? For example, eucharistic adoration might seem like hopeless nostalgia—until we see research that shows that young adult Catholics in the midst of their transient, stressful lives feel the space created by eucharistic adoration gives them an opportunity to slow down and address their spiritual needs, period. So not surprisingly, many churches and university chapels are finding that setting aside such space speaks powerfully in a culture of choice and pluralism—and in ways potentially very different from how eucharistic adoration would speak to other, past and dead, cultures. Or, perhaps, what about a reflection on how our Catholic parishes and schools and dioceses and families and people of the 20th century came to be what they were—and aren’t any longer, since that time is past and they cannot be what they once were: that they were created by creative, individualistic pioneering pastoral leaders, bishops, priests, sisters, laypeople—who did not necessarily know where things were headed but knew that they had to build something new for a new time? Retrieving the kind of energy, enthusiasm, and evangelical spirit that builds community and shares the faith might be a good place to start.

Authors Bryan Froehle

Change nostalgia retrieval eucharistic adoration

Restricted
Homily stories

01 Jan 2019 - Octave Day of the Nativity of the Lord; Solemnity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Mother of God, Cycle C

There is always a market for nostalgia. Depending on our age, we look back at the ’40s or ’60s or even the ’80s as the “good old days.” On the internet and in specialty stores, we can listen to music from Guy Lombardo to the Jackson 5. We can purchase lava lamps and bean bag chairs. We can play with Slinkys and Barbie and Pong. Things are in fashion one day and out the next. Family values, at least the phrase, has come back into style more as a political statement than a way of living. It is incredibly easy to look at the past and see simpler, better times. Our memories have a way of erasing the negative and smoothing the rough edges. This is especially tempting to do during the holiday season as we look to a new year filled with resolutions about the future. The secret is to take what is right about the past and make it part of our new reality. That is what Jesus’ mother Mary does. By reflecting on all that has happened to her within the traditions of her faith she is able to make the presence of our Savior a reality in our world, thus fulfilling a promise of the past and giving us hope for the future. And so we must model our lives on that same challenge Mary’s life makes. The traditions of our faith stand ready to help us find our salvation in the future. What we believe is far more than a nostalgia for the past. It is a challenge for the future.

Authors Father Dominic Grassi

nostalgia memories traditions

Restricted
Homily stories

01 Jan 2020 - Octave Day of the Nativity of the Lord; Solemnity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Mother of God, Cycle A

There is always a market for nostalgia. Depending on our age, we look back at the '40s or '60s or even the '80s as the "good old days." On the internet and in specialty stores, we can listen to music from Guy Lombardo to the Jackson 5. We can purchase lava lamps and bean bag chairs. We can play with Slinkys and Barbie and Pong. Things are in fashion one day and out the next. Family values, at least the phrase, has come back into style more as a political statement than a way of living. It is incredibly easy to look at the past and see simpler, better times. Our memories have a way of erasing the negative and smoothing the rough edges. This is especially tempting to do during the holiday season as we look to a new year filled with resolutions about the future. The secret is to take what is right about the past and make it part of our new reality. That is what Jesus' mother Mary does. By reflecting on all that has happened to her within the traditions of her faith she is able to make the presence of our Savior a reality in our world, thus fulfilling a promise of the past and giving us hope for the future. And so we must model our lives on that same challenge Mary's life makes. The traditions of our faith stand ready to help us find our salvation in the future. What we believe is far more than a nostalgia for the past. It is a challenge for the future.

Authors Father Dominic Grassi

nostalgia family values

Restricted