$70 Sneakers
- Gift of Old St. Nick
December 4, 2011, 2nd
Sunday of Advent
Isaiah 40:1-5,
9 II
Peter 3:8-14 Mark 1:1-8
First reading from Isaiah - a straight path for the Lord
“Comfort my
people,” says our God. “Comfort them! Encourage the people of Jerusalem. Tell
them they have suffered long enough and their sins are now forgiven. I have punished them in full for all their
sins.”
A
voice cries out, “Prepare in the wilderness a straight path for the Lord to
travel on! Clear the way in the desert for Him! Fill in every valley and level
off every mountain. Turn the hills into a flat plain, and make the rough roads smooth.
Then the glory of the Lord will be revealed, and all mankind will see it. The
Lord himself has promised this.”
Jerusalem,
go up on a high mountain and proclaim the good news! Call
out with a loud voice, Zion; announce the good news! Speak out and do not be
afraid. Tell the towns of Judah that their God is coming!
The word
of the Lord
Thanks be to God
Alleluia,
alleluia.
A reading
from the holy Gospel according to Mark
Glory
to you, Lord.
John - a voice crying in the desert
Here begins the
Good News about Jesus Christ, the Son of God. It is written in Isaiah the
prophet:
Behold, I am going to send
my messenger ahead of you to prepare the
way for you. He will be a voice crying in the desert, “Prepare the way
for the Lord, make a straight path for him to travel on.[1]”
So John appeared in the desert, baptizing people and preaching his message. “Turn away from your sins and be baptized,[2]” he told the people, “and God will forgive your sins.” Everybody from the region of Judea and the city of Jerusalem went out to hear John. They confessed their sins, and he baptized them in the Jordan River.
John wore
clothes made of camel's hair, and he wore a leather belt around his waist; he
ate locusts and wild honey. He announced to the people, “After me comes One who
is mightier than I. I am not good enough even to bend down and untie his
sandals. I baptize you with water, but He will baptize you with the Holy
Spirit.”
The
Gospel of the Lord.
Praise to you, Lord
Jesus Christ.
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Introduction
St. Nicholas & Pearl
Harbor
This Tuesday December
6 is the feast of jolly old St. Nicholas. The story of Santa Claus begins with him.
There are so many legends and caricatures of St. Nicholas that it’s hard to
believe he was a real person born in AD 270 in the southern coast of Turkey.
His parents were wealthy and devout Christians. Obeying the Lord’s injunction
to "sell what you own and give the money to the poor" (Mt. 19:21), Nicholas
used his inheritance to help the needy and sick. He was made Bishop of Myra, Turkey, while still a
young man, and attended the Council of Nicaea in AD 325. He died
on December 6, AD 343 in Myra. A story is told of a poor man with three
daughters who had no dowries, and so weren’t
marriageable. The legend goes that the needed money mysteriously appeared in
their home. Good old St. Nick had stuffed the money into the daughters’ stockings
hanging before the fire to dry. That led to the custom of children hanging
stockings in front of the fireplace for good old St. Nicholas to fill.
Then
on the day after St. Nicholas, December 7, we commemorate Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor Naval Base, Hawaii, in 1941. The next day after the attack, December
8, US President Franklin D.
Roosevelt in an address to Joint Session of Congress at 12:30.p.m. declared war on Japan. In the very first line of his speech
the President spoke those few famous words by which he characterized the horrific
attack: “a date which will live in
infamy.”
The Advent figure par excellence
John
the Baptist is the Advent figure par excellence. He’s always featured in the gospel reading for the Second Sunday
of Advent, whether the liturgical cycle is A, B, or C. John is an eccentric figure with his camel shirt and his diet of
locusts and honey. Yet people come from near and far to hear him preach, even
though he sugar-coats nothing as he preaches repentance. He’s direct and blunt,
as when, for example, he tells Herod outright: “It isn’t right for you to marry
your brother’s wife!” (Mk 6: 18) That ultimately cost the Baptist his head. (Mk
6:21-29) It’s no surprise then that the Baptist is never featured on Christmas
cards. Picture him on the front of a card, clothed with a camel shirt and
eating locusts and honey, and then imagine the message inside reading, “Repent,
you brood of vipers! Merry Christmas!”
Good imagery
In the first reading from Isaiah
a voice cries out, “Prepare the way of the Lord. Fill in the valleys and level
off the mountains.” That’s good imagery; it suggests the preparation
made for a visit from royalty in the ancient world. In the days leading up to the
official visit from the Pharaoh of Egypt, teams of workers were sent out to get
the roads in shape. They straightened out sharp curves and leveled off hills.
They filled in potholes and cleared away litter, so that the litter carrying
the Pharaoh might move on with dispatch.
When the Council of Nicea was held in 360
A.D. near what today is Istanbul, Turkey, bishops from Ireland attended. It took them almost a year to get there, because
they had to do it on foot. What’s more, there were no bulldozers to level off
the mountains and fill in the valleys. Once the bishops got to Nicea, they
stayed for eight or nine months, conversing with other bishops and theologians
from across the continent. We who have trains and planes, and perfectly paved
super-highways, can appreciate the imagery.
Hastening the day of His coming
On December 17, the Novena of Christmas
begins with the first of the great O
Antiphons recited at Vespers. The antiphon for the 19th
exclaims, “O Sprout from the stump of Jesse, stop your delaying and come!” All
the O Antiphons are filled with
Advent impatience, but this one is steeped in it. It seems to cry out, “O
Sprout from the stump of Jesse, for God’s sake hasten the day of your coming!
What in the world is keeping you?”
A rabbi, haunted
by indelible and personal thoughts (and perhaps experiences as well) of the
Holocaust, tells us what, indeed, is keeping the Messiah. He writes,
If more people in
the world were filled with love, compassion and tolerance, we would hasten the
day of the Messiah’s coming. I often kid my synagogue that I visualize the Messiah
about to be sent down to the world by G-d, but looking at all the violence,
hatred, inhumanity, especially in the name of religion, the Messiah beseeches G-d
to delay sending Him down to earth! We either hasten the day of His coming, or we
delay it.
A remarkable story
Every year at Christmas, we never tire of telling
Charles Dickens’ masterpiece - A Christmas
Carol. For weeks now in the Houston, TX, area, a Walt Disney version of A Christmas Carol has been featured on
TV a couple times a week. It’s a social commentary about how a nation feels and
speaks about its less fortunate people and its Tiny Tims. Every year at
Christmas, I never tire of telling a story which like A Christmas Carol is also a masterpiece. It’s a remarkable story about
a young man who, despite his very young age and pressure from peers,” leveled off
the mountains, filled in the valleys, and hastened the day of the Lord.” That
story, too, in its own way is a social commentary.
It happened
27 years ago this coming Tuesday, December 6, 1984 - feast of jolly old St. Nicholas,
- famous for his gift-giving. The temperature that day was only l0 degrees
above zero in Milwaukee. It was 3:30 in the afternoon.
The bus (filled with high school kids) was going west on Wisconsin Ave. It
stopped to pick up a woman who was tattered and torn. What’s more, she was
pregnant and had no shoes on her feet! Mind you, it was only 10 degrees above
zero, and the pregnant woman was barefoot! Some of the kids were laughing at
her, while others were simply at a loss about how to respond to such a strange
and unexpected situation.
One lad, who was only 14 years
old (that age when kids supposedly have no brains in their heads and are
utterly selfish), intuitively knew how to respond. When the bus arrived at 124th
and Bluemound Road and the lad was about to get off, a most
remarkable and indeed courageous thing happened: the
lad’s feet were bare
(except for his stockings), and he had his brand new sneakers in his hands, and
he approached the barefoot woman, and in front of
all his peers (some of whom were snickering) the kid said,
“Here, M’am, you need them more than I do!” Then he stepped off into the
icy cold winter with only stockings on his feet!
One
man writes,
I know the parents of that barefoot boy. He
was a student at Marquette High School, and his dad was (is) a hotshot trial
lawyer at Q&B. I called him up after reading the story in the newspaper.
When I found out it was truly his kid, I told the dad that if his son ever ran
for office of any kind, I’d vote for him. I also heard that his mother was
really ticked off when he showed up shoeless. The sneakers had been a big
purchase of about $70, and the kid had pestered his parents to buy them. The
mother’s immediate reaction was anger when he came home shoeless. But her anger
didn’t last long; it soon melted, and both his mom and dad were so proud of him
they nearly burst. What a story! Great stuff!
Great stories live on and on
In early December, TV and newspapers
are always looking for a really good Christmas story to relieve the bad news of the fast-departing old year—bad news like the Penn.
State sex scandal, the persistent 9 percent unemployment plaguing the nation, Democrats
and Republicans doing the work of their party instead of the people who put them
in office, Black Friday turning red as some Christmas shoppers are bloodied by
others rushing to get their hands on a good bargain.
In December of 1984, the Milwaukee Journal was
looking for a really good Christmas story to relieve all the bad news of the
fast-departing old year. The Journal
happily found the story it was looking for, in the barefoot boy who gave away his brand new sneakers to a pregnant
and barefooted woman on the feast of
jolly old St. Nick,. The Journal
splashed its prized story, even with a
picture of the lad himself, all over its
front page for Saturday, December 8. Then the following morning, Sunday,
December 9, the story went forth by UPI to the entire nation. Even President Reagan read it and sent the boy a letter of thanks. Then
on the 8th anniversary of the story, the Milwaukee Journal in its Sunday edition of December 20, 1992,
called attention to the fact the story had been included in a recently
published book entitled Courageous Kids.
That kid had filled in the valleys, leveled off
the mountains, and revealed the glory of the Lord. All mankind saw the glory of
the Lord revealed in this remarkable story as it was told in the Milwaukee Journal, the UPI and Courageous
Kids. And we continue to see the glory of the Lord revealed in it every
time we tell the story at this time of ”the
rolling year.” Great stories never die but live on and on. Great stories
possess an internal power which compels us to tell them and retell them.
Conclusion
A practitioner of innocence
The name of the courageous kid in this remarkable
story is Frank, and his patron saint is the remarkable St. Francis of Assisi. Someone
has said of the saint: “He was not a preacher of truth but a practitioner of innocence.” He
chatted with the birds of the air. He calmed down the ferocious wolf of Gubbio
who was terrifying the local folk. He bent down and kissed lepers, and he did
many other `flaky’ things.
The barefoot boy from Milwaukee,
like his patron saint, was also a “practitioner of innocence.” He resisted his peers and
the prevailing culture which urged him to put away his `flaky’ nonsense, and
keep his expensive $70
sneakers snugly tied to his feet, for the long icy
path of life that lay before him. If he had
kept his sneakers snugly tied to his feet, we would never have heard about Frank;
he would have slipped away into anonymity, as did all the other kids on the bus
that day. What’s more, if he had kept
his sneakers snugly tied to his feet, we would not have a good Christmas story
to lighten up the gloom of the fast-departing year of 2011.
[2] John’s baptism
symbolized a desire to be forgiven and be brought back into fellowship with
God. .Jesus' baptism with the Holy Spirit and fire brings that about.
