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January 5, 2019Recently I was discussing medieval Catholic literature with some friends because, you know, I’m so cool and that’s the kind of thing cool kids talk about. One of the things we discussed was how saturated with Catholicism the worldview of the authors of that period truly was. Everything in the characters’ lives was centered around the Church and the liturgical life. Even the references to calendars and dates were structured around the liturgical seasons and major feast days. Nowadays if you told someone that you were going to plan a party sometime in Michaelmas or were celebrating the Octave of Christmas, they might have you committed. Even telling people that the “Twelve Days of Christmas” are the days after December 25 and not before, they might accuse you of out and out heresy.With all that in mind, it’s worth noting that this Sunday’s celebration of the Epiphany of Our Lord is one of the traditional dates that brings the Christmas season to a close along with the celebration of the Baptism of Our Lord. In the
Extraordinary Form calendar, the Christmas season extends until Candlemas, which is on February 2. Regardless of which one of these dates you choose to observe, it’s important to remember that the Church has never been of a mind to stop celebrating Christmas as soon as all the wrapping paper is thrown out and before the leftovers even have a chance to get cold. The joy of Christmas spills over into our liturgy for at least a few weeks after we have sung Glory to God with the angels and shepherds.
I say all of this to raise a point about what shapes our worldview in this day and age. If medieval Catholic authors were formed by the deeply Catholic milieu of their time, today we are molded primarily by our exposure to entertainment and media. Because billions of dollars are pumped into the things we see and hear every day, our opinions are largely dictated by the business interests of people who are out to make a buck. That’s why people tend to know more details about their favorite artists than they do about God, His Church, the Saints, or anything else that we treasure as Catholic disciples of Christ.
I know that writing a bulletin column about this imbalance in our Catholic imagination is not going to do much to stem the tide, but the way we all choose to live our lives can. If we endeavor to truly place our Catholic identity as the foundation of our lives, then we will see real change start to ripple out into our lives and the lives of our loved ones and, eventually, the world. But it starts with small changes that we choose to make in our lives. Reading about the saint of the day. Downloading an app that gives us a Catholic reflection on the Gospel each morning. Really taking the time to pray with our families. All these things are small steps away from a life that is shaped by popular culture and towards a life that is modeled after Jesus’ example lived out in the Church. If we resolve as a region to take these small steps together in the New Year, then perhaps by the time Epiphany rolls around in 2020, we will all be steeped in an even deeper love and appreciation for the joy of Christmas.
Merry Christmas,
Fr. McCullough