Today (Sunday) begins the season of Advent. Despite what those creepy mannequins in the Old Navy ads tell you, it’s not actually Christmas season. That season doesn’t actually begin until Christmas. But I don’t think it’ll do much good to reason with America’s Christmas-Industrial complex.

Nonetheless, today begins Advent. And today is also the beginning of the Church year. Happy New Year, fellow Catholic!

Advent is a time of preparation; it’s a time to get ready to greet Jesus, the newborn king of kings. How are you getting ready? If you’re like most people, you’re getting ready by dec’ing your halls, making your lists and checking them twice, roasting chestnuts and pondering if you’ve ever seen a sugar-plum in your life (much less envisioned a dancing one). Include me in that list of “most people”. Except the roasted chestnuts thing. Chestnuts are gross. But I digress.

Yes, Advent is about getting ready for Christmas. More properly, Advent is about getting ready for Christ.

So what are you doing to get ready for him?

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I joined the local chapter of the Knights of Columbus a couple months ago. In it’s simplest form, the Knights are a life-insurance program founded to provide for widows if the husband dies. This proposition is laughable in the WRC household, as Mrs. WRC earns more money than I do… even when I’m employed! She wins the bread around here, I just cook the bacon she brings home.

The Knights have grown beyond their historic function as an insurance provider to a charitable or philanthropic organization for the Church and her related work. Maybe the most famous example is when they sell Tootsie Rolls to benefit the Special Olympics. My council (and maybe others, I don’t know) are also selling these car magnets exhorting you to “Keep Christ in Christmas”. This isn’t really my kind of thing. The magnets aren’t particularly attractive, they’re about the size of a dinner plate, and I think they’re less likely to convince someone to act all Christiany than they are to convince someone to tailgate me trying to read the strangely scrunched-up type for a magnet the size of a dinner plate.

But even more than the fact that I don’t really like the magnet, I don’t think that it offers any practical advice for how, exactly, we should go around keeping Christ in Christmas. A person who is casual with their religion might think that the phrase is as simple as “Don’t spell Christmas like Xmas”. I’ve been guilty of this in the past, thinking that “Xmas” is some kind of way to erase the religious context from the holiday. This is not factual. Dennis Bratcher of the Christian Research Institute wrote a great article on the subject in 2007. Excerpt:

Abbreviations used as Christian symbols have a long history in the church. The letters of the word “Christ” in Greek, the language in which the New Testament was written, or various titles for Jesus early became symbols of Christ and Christianity. For example, the first two letters of the word Christ (cristoV, or as it would be written in older manuscripts, CRISTOS) are the Greek letters chi (c or C) and rho (r or R). These letters were used in the early church to create the chi-rho monogram (see Chrismons), a symbol that by the fourth century became part of the official battle standard of the emperor Constantine.

Another example is the symbol of the fish, one of the earliest symbols of Christians that has been found scratched on the walls of the catacombs of Rome. It likely originated from using the first letter of several titles of Jesus (Jesus Christ Son of God Savior). When combined these initial letters together spelled the Greek word for fish (icquV, ichthus).

The exact origin of the single letter X for Christ cannot be pinpointed with certainty. Some claim that it began in the first century AD along with the other symbols, but evidence is lacking. Others think that it came into widespread use by the thirteenth century along with many other abbreviations and symbols for Christianity and various Christian ideas that were popular in the Middle Ages. However, again, the evidence is sparse.

In any case, by the fifteenth century Xmas emerged as a widely used symbol for Christmas. In 1436 Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press with moveable type. In the early days of printing typesetting was done by hand and was very tedious and expensive. As a result, abbreviations were common. In religious publications, the church began to use the abbreviation C for the word “Christ” to cut down on the cost of the books and pamphlets. From there, the abbreviation moved into general use in newspapers and other publications, and “Xmas” became an accepted way of printing “Christmas” (along with the abbreviations Xian and Xianity). Even Webster’s dictionary acknowledges that the abbreviation Xmas was in common use by the middle of the sixteenth century.

Keep Christ in Christmas. Indeed, I agree. He is the reason for the season! How, exactly, do you plan on doing that? Speaking only for myself, it won’t involve sticking any magnets to the rear of the WRCMobile.

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For these four weeks of Advent, the Church has a particular attitude during Mass. It is a time of stripping down and slowing down; the church seems as though it’s been made bare. For the last few months, we’ve been in “Ordinary Time” (or, for the traditional Catholics among us, the equally uninspiring term “time after Pentecost”). This is when the Church just does what she does during the normal year. Except for certain days for notable saints or martyrs or whatnot, Father’s been wearing his green chasuble. He’s been wearing green because that’s been the time of life and vitality in the Church. But today he switched to the penitential color of purple. Purple is also the color of royalty– a fitting display for preparing yourself to greet the king. But it is also a color of repentance, of penance, of setting things straight.

You might notice that the music is getting somber during Advent, too. Sunday Mass omits the “Glory to God in the Highest” at the beginning of Mass. In my neighborhood parish, all of the people’s responses are to the slow and aching tune of “O Come O Come Emmanuel”. This song, perhaps the greatest and most known Advent song ever, is a clumsy fit for the Lamb of God prayer and the Great Amen. It sounds hokey and contrived, but this parish has been doing it for many years now and I’m probably the only one that doesn’t like it. Meh. That’s life as a crotchety fuddy-duddy.

This is backwards to how the world sees the time before Christmas. To the world, the Christmas season starts somewhere around mid-October and builds piece by piece until Santa’s big scene. First it starts with the Christmas decorations (and candy!) in the aisles of Walmart. Then a few days later, at least 2 radio stations have switched to the all-Christmas-songs format. By the week before Thanksgiving, there’s several houses in the neighborhood with animatronic reindeer in their yards. When Christmas actually arrives, the only people still looking forward to the day are under 8 years of age. Everyone else just wants Christmas to be over already.

The Church does the opposite. She takes away little bits from Mass and from the celebration. It leaves you longing and hungry for more. The absence makes your heart grow fonder. When Christmas finally arrives and the choir proclaims out the joyful strains of GLORIA IN EXCELSIS DEO!, you want to stand on your pew and scream out every note along with them! Proclaim your joy to the world!

The world is sick of Christmas by then, they’re probably the last ones who want to hear about all your joy. “Joy” is not having too much stuff to take back to Walmart on Boxing Day.

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How exactly do you keep Christ in Christmas? Got any plans yet? I’m over 1300 words in this post. Has that been enough time for you to make any plans?

May I make some suggestions? While you’re filling out your Christmas lists, make sure you figure in some cash for charity. Or if you’re one of those people with something even more precious than money: time. Why not spend a little bit of it doing the Lord’s work? Or spending it in prayer. Or doing some prayerful reading. Or when you’re downloading tunes to your iPod, find something spiritually edifying to prepare your mind for Christ. The internets are full of good sermons, lectures, prayers and song. Sure, working out to an Archbishop Sheen recording isn’t the same thing as listening to the Karate Kid soundtrack, but it’s got to be at least twice as good for your soul.

Me, I’m trying something new this year. Something that is kind of brave for a guy like me.

I’m going to practice a fast from Monday through Saturday during Advent.

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Fasting is a very old practice. Christians have practiced it for centuries and Jews have practiced fasting for centuries before that. It is a process of doing without, of denying yourself. It is a penitential practice, an act of reparation, a chance to set yourself straight for the Lord.

The mechanics of keeping a fast are very simple: you are allowed one full meal a day, with two smaller meals that, together, do not add up to be a meal. There is no snacking between those periods. Fasting is not the same thing as starving, but it does require some discipline and some self restraint. If you’ve ever met me, you might guess that I am not the kind of person who spends a lot of time thinking about discipline and restraint around the refrigerator. This is going to be a challenge.

I should note that fasting is not a diet plan. I guess that for my one meal of the day, I could eat bacon-wrapped cheese sticks covered in a porterhouse steak. Not that bacon-wrapped cheese sticks covered with a porterhouse is a typical meal (oh, would that it were!) or anything. I’m just illustrating the point that fasting is designed to be hard. It is supposed to be a time of self-denial. It is a supposed to be a time of doing something for someone other than yourself– in this case, Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

Why no fasting on Sunday? Because every Sunday is like a miniature Easter, a celebration of Jesus’ triumph over the grave. It’s confusing to offer penance during a celebration. So on Sundays, I’m eating for Jesus. Now THAT is joy.

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In the old days, Catholics had certain periods of the year called “Ember Days”. The indispensable website Fisheaters writes of Ember Days:

Four times a year, the Church sets aside three days to focus on God through His marvelous creation. These quarterly periods take place around the beginnings of the four natural seasons 1 that “like some virgins dancing in a circle, succeed one another with the happiest harmony,” as St. John Chrysostom wrote.

These four times are each kept on a successive Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday and are known as “Ember Days,” or Quatuor Tempora, in Latin.

The Ember Days were eliminated from the calendar once the Church glazed down the calendar after the Second Vatican Council. Those ember days were times of fasting and abstinence (i.e. no meat), and I’ll refer you again to Fisheaters for the details. Advent’s Ember Days came just before Christmas and were the final bit of preparation for Christmas.

Fasting beyond those three days was a matter of private devotion and not required by the Church. These days, the same is true. Fasting beyond the (seemingly) 2 or 3 days of whole year is a private practice that people can do if they are so inclined. And I am so inclined.

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I don’t really know what I expect to gain out of forgoing my shredded wheat in the morning and some midday leftover meatloaf. Other than periodic abstinence from meat, I’ve never really tried to link my stomach to my soul. But I’ve been looking for a spiritual “slump-buster” lately and need to try something new. Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam. Remember: the fastest way to a man’s heart and whatnot.

And that’s what I’m really looking for: how am I going to make straight the pathway in my heart? How I am really going to search for Christ in Christmas? I think this year, I’m going to do something that I can’t really quantify on a wish list or a car bumper. I’m going to do something solely for the sake of Jesus Christ.

O Come O Come Empanada Emmanuel.

Prepare to meet him away in that manger.

Psalm 99
A psalm of praise.
Sing joyfully to God, all the earth: serve ye the Lord with gladness.
    Come in before his presence with exceeding great joy.
Know ye that the Lord he is God:
    he made us, and not we ourselves.
    We are his people and the sheep of his pasture.
Go ye into his gates with praise,
    into his courts with hymns:
    and give glory to him. Praise ye his name:
For the Lord is sweet, his mercy endureth for ever,
    and his truth to generation and generation.

A good number of atheist Americans are going to go to their mother’s house today to eat turkey and watch the Detroit Lions lose another football game. And they are going to, ostensibly, give thanks.

But to whom, exactly, are they giving thanks? Heh heh.

I’ll tell you this: I am thankful for a good number of things, people and experiences in my life. And I give thanks to the Lord for all of it.

Enjoy your turkey today. And make sure that when you’re thanking your mom for dinner, you thank God for bringing it to your table.

Now will you please pass me the cornbread dressing? Now that’s good stuff.

“Glory” is a hard term to pin down, exactly. Oh, its definition is straightforward enough: worshipful praise, honor, and thanksgiving, but “glory” is one of those words whose definition doesn’t really match its meaning. Even the old Catholic Encyclopedia, whose discussion of all-things-Catholic is encyclopedic kind of dodges the phrase, saying: “This word has many shades of meaning which lexicographers are somewhat puzzled to differentiate sharply. As our interest in it here centres around its ethical and religious significance, we shall treat it only with reference to the ideas attached to it in Holy Scripture and theology.” Still, things are called “glorious” (or, regrettably, inglourious), some people seek to glorify, and St. Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 10:31 that everything we do, we are to “do all to the glory of God.”

And we confidently use the term, admitting that any one of us may have a substandard understanding of how, exactly, we’re to give glory to God. Yet so it is.

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A few years ago, Major League Baseball pitcher D.J. Carrasco was a member of the Kansas City Royals. He pitched for my hometown team from like 2003 to 2005 with mediocre success. But for a while in early 2005, Carrasco looked like a surprisingly good pitcher on a team that had precious few players who could be called “surprisingly good” at anything. One game in that season really stands out in my memory, a Tuesday night game in June of that year when the ‘Boys in Blue trumped the San Francisco Giants 8-1 in an interleague game, snapping a skid of losing 8 or 9 road games in a row. After the game, I remember his on-field interview with the TV crew where they ask the player how it felt to win and whatnot– and Carrasco said something that really stuck out. I’m paraphrasing here, but Carrasco commented that he went into every game just pitching for the “glory of Christ, Jesus” and that he did “all things for Him.”

With that, he smiled ear to ear, and walked off camera.

Back in 2005, I was more interested in following this rotten baseball team than I was interested in following Jesus, so I rolled my eyes and turned off the television. That team was rotten. In 2005, the Kansas City Royals won 56 games and lost 106. They had 3 different managers that year, including one who decided to shower in the locker room with his clothes on because he thought it would pump up his losing club and hiring another who would go on to lose more games than any other manager in baseball history. But I digress.

One of my good friends hates it when atheletes give God credit for their victory. “God is undefeated” he likes to say. He’s right, of course. You never hear the game losers say they lost the game because God loves the other team more than them. But I think that I’ll give D.J. Carrasco the benefit of his statement, because he didn’t say that Jesus won the game for them. But rather that he pitches for Jesus.

Are you laughing yet? Go ahead and snicker; it sounds lame. After all, Jesus probably has more important things to worry about than mediocre pitchers tossing 87 MPH fastballs for His glory. But if I can stand back from my own snark for a moment, I have to quietly admit that now a few years later, I finally understand what Carrasco meant when he said he pitches for Jesus. Carrasco was recalling St. Paul’s words to “do all to the glory of God.”

I haven’t spent very much of my life do things that glorify the Lord. In fact, most of my adulthood has been rather inglorious. But the nice thing about living another day is the opportunity to do the next one a little different than the last.

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Starting about three years ago, I began thinking that I needed a career change. I’d just left one decent little job in banking to a new decent little job in local government. But none of the pieces were really fitting correctly. And so with a little prayerful reflection and some wise counsel from friends and family, I decided to do something dramatically different– and I entered night school to get my teacher’s license. It took a little time to get going (and some academic backtracking from some… inglorious academic decisions), but now I’m on the verge of finishing my license to teach high school social studies. I quit my job about 2 months ago so I could do my student teaching (the last part of my license) and to do the reporting that follows it. We’ve gone without my income for a while now. No, I don’t have a job lined up yet. Yes, I am fortunate enough to have a temporary gig that should start sooner or later. No, the job market isn’t very good for teachers right now– especially in my subject area. Yes, I think that will improve. No, I can’t coach football. And no, I’m not worried about that.

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Do you have a favorite chapter in the bible? I didn’t until about 2 years ago when one just really jumped out to me. Yes, I have a favorite chapter of the Bible. I like Matthew 6 quite a lot– and for a variety of reasons.. It really speaks to me. Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ just finished the main part of the Sermon on the Mount and directs the next part to the disciples. There are basically 4 parts to the chapter:

First, Jesus gives specific directions about how to conduct yourself when you are in prayer. It’s that part about going into a closed room and not making a big deal out of it. It’s a reminder that when we pray, it’s a moment between us and God, not us and other people who watch us and God. I think about this line a lot during Lent. For the last couple of years, I’ve given up meat altogether during Lent– and I wanted EVERYONE to know how hard it was. But that’s a no-no; if I’m doing it for the Lord, then I can leave everyone else out of it.

Next in Mt 6, Jesus gives us His prayer– the Our Father. This may come as a surprise, but yes, the Our Father isn’t something that someone just made up. The words come from Christ Himself. Catholics pray these words of Christ every day in every Catholic Mass. The prayer isn’t long, just a couple of sentences. But it has so much to teach.

Third in the Chapter, Jesus gives his disciples– and everyone else listening– a stern rebuke about their priorities in life. “For where thy treasure is, there is thy heart also.” He says that so many people say that they want to live good and holy lives, but when you look at the things they spend their time and money on, it’s hardly focused on living a good and holy life. “No man can serve two masters. For either he will hate the one, and love the other: or he will sustain the one, and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon.” Eek. Funny how in our modern age, over 2000 years removed from Christ’s earthly life, we’re still going into the office on Sundays, skimping at the collection plate, but ordering dessert after dinner, and remembering the parish food drive when you notice that other people have dropped off their food for that month. And just so this doesn’t sound accusatory, I’m writing these words about me. *sigh*

But the last part of Mt 6 has calmed a lot of my fears lately. Especially that part about me quitting my job and not having a permanent gig ready. Christ says this:

Behold the birds of the air, for they neither sow, nor do they reap, nor gather into barns: and your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are not you of much more value than they? And which of you by taking thought, can add to his stature by one cubit? And for raiment why are you solicitous? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they labour not, neither do they spin. But I say to you, that not even Solomon in all his glory was arrayed as one of these. And if the grass of the field, which is today, and tomorrow is cast into the oven, God doth so clothe: how much more you, O ye of little faith?

Be not solicitous therefore, saying, What shall we eat: or what shall we drink, or wherewith shall we be clothed? For after all these things do the heathens seek. For your Father knoweth that you have need of all these things. Seek ye therefore first the kingdom of God, and his justice, and all these things shall be added unto you. Be not therefore solicitous for tomorrow; for the morrow will be solicitous for itself. Sufficient for the day is the evil thereof.

Mrs. WRC and I have a little money saved up (not a lot, but we’re treading water) that has allowed me to quit a safe and stable government job with a state guaranteed pension so that I could be a full time student for a short while. It’s a little scary, I must admit. We’ve got a mortgage on the WRC estate. But this decision to go into teaching is a little more than a decision to make a career change. It was a decision to change my life so I could do something that can truly glorify the Lord!

So I’m doing it. I’m teaching for Jesus, from here on out. I never did any other job for any other person than myself before, but this time is something new. Christ and I have a deal, actually. Through some particularly hard parts of going back to school, I’ve asked him to hold my hand in some rough patches. And some nights when I’m doing homework until the wee hours so I can get it finished on time, or when I’ve had to drive all over town to arrange a video camera, or get a form signed by a teacher who is on campus 2 days a week, or when I’ve got to get a background check and a medical checkup submitted to the state by 4:00 on a Tuesday, but the campus medical center is closed that day because the main nurse and the substitute nurse are both sick at the same time and I’m zipping through traffic on my lunch break to get it all done before I miss the deadline… well heck. He’s walked me through every minor trial and tribulation along the way.

You may be unimpressed. After all, lots of people deal with lots of deadlines or late night homework, and most people that really want to get their license handle these little obstacles without difficulty. Fine, I don’t care. I’m giving Him the credit (and some worthy patrons that I’ve taken along the way: St. Gregory the Great, St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Teresa of Avila and St. James… if you’ve been praying and asking any of those four for intercession, sorry. They’ve been pretty much working for me full time lately). I’ve had too many little minor miracles in the last 3 years to believe that this is all my doing.

But I’m not worried about finishing my license (report is due next week, I take one last test in a couple upcoming weeks). It’ll happen. I’m not worried about finding a job, either– that’ll happen sooner or later too. Consider the lillies of the field! Maybe I am being silly or naive. Maybe. But if so, then I’ll be silly and naive to glorify the Lord. I’m not doing this just for myself or my patient and forgiving wife. I’m doing it for Jesus.

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The Jesuits have a little phrase that runs through my head from time to time. Jesuits are an order of priests– like monks, except not really monks. But they have this phrase that sticks in my craw. “Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam”. It means “For the Greater Glory of God”. There’s a lot of ways to apply the phrase, often abbreviated AMDG, from building rich and elaborate churches that are dedicated to God (which incidently, puts Christ’s words in Mt 6 into practice about where your treasure and heart is), or reaching out to the needy and doing it for Christ’s sake, or for making every piece of your life serve to glorify the Lord. Johann Sebastian Bach dedicated all his work “AMDG”, and Edward Elgar followed this practice on his masterpiece “The Dream of Gerontius”. And so likewise do I dedicate my new life’s work Ad Majoriam Dei Gloriam. I like the little phrase. I like it so much that I’ve added it at the bottom of http://www.WhollyRoaminCatholic.com. It’s a good reminder.

I will probably struggle with this as a teacher. Some days will certainly be inglorious and the job may send me to the confessional from time to time. So be it. Jesus didn’t say the job would be an easy one. If I have to offer it up, then I will. And if I have to do my turn in the confessional, then I’ll do that for the greater glory of God, too.

I don’t know much about glory, really. I can’t give you a good definition, and I think the dictionaries don’t really do the concept justice either. But I know what I need to do so I can make my life point to Christ’s.

Here’s to hoping I have that courage. But that’s another post altogether.