Advent Week 2: Bringing Christ to Birth

This Advent, Call To Action has asked four different people to write a reflection on how they bring Christ to birth. While each is unique and personal, their words can expand our understandings and stir our own imaginations. This Advent let us ruminate with this question: how do I bring Christ to birth?

I was born in the age of Catholic Reform. The Second Vatican council had closed, and we as Catholics around the world were figuring out how to bring it to life. This was a time when communism was the enemy, and yet Catholics were defining ourselves by serving the poor – clearing the cobwebs that had taken place in my beloved church and seeding the principles that would become liberation theology.

Twenty years later I walked away from my faith as I witnessed a rebuff of Vatican II while also being rejected because of my sexuality and gender identity. Today, as a Latina butch lesbian, I bring Christ to birth by being true to the tenets of my faith, by living the principles of the man, Jesus, that Mary’s child became. I bring Christ to birth by returning to my faith of birth with a renewed commitment to live up to its values and their potential to bring us to the promise of justice as expressed by the Gospels of Christ.

Advent is a time for rebirth, for renewal and yet I still long for the recommitment of the Church to our core values. On the feast of Christ the King I sat at my local parish with my parents to listen to a homily about Satan and the corruption of the human life. I expected a homily tying Christ the King to his teachings, the current Syrian migrant crisis and our duty as Catholics to welcome the stranger, serve the needy and the state of US politics of rejection. Maybe some biblical quotes about Jesus and the Samaritan (John 4), maybe a quote from Mathew 21 about the cornerstone but no, I didn’t get any of those. I got a sermon about Satan’s ownership of our hearts about sex, and overall sin. I was sorely disappointed. I expect more from today’s Church.

Here we are, as Catholics, about to celebrate the birth of a refugee child, in a stranger land. Here we are, as citizens in a country of immigrants rejecting children from a war we, as Catholics have not rejected. Here we are as all of the above, remaining silent about embracing the rejected, the marginalized and not only reject but demonize those who we as Catholics should embrace. Here we are, at a Black Lives Matter moment, keeping silent when our words matter most.

I challenge those, in public life, in political life to rethink their Catholic values, to rethink the gospel of prosperity and to embrace their true Catholic values.

As the new Liturgical year recommences, and after a long journey, I commit myself to living up the values instilled in me by women committed to serving the philosophy of justice, men sacrificing to protect the needy and persecuted, to a child born to forgive the corruption of thought and deed we, the flock of yesteryear and today have embraced without conscience and still in the name of our faith.