December 2024
Spirit of the Eagle
St. John the Evangelist ACC
Spiritual Tidbits & Rector’s Reflections for
December 2024 from Father Tim
The new Church Year has arrived as we celebrate The First Sunday in Advent on the first day of December. Along with the other three Advent Sundays (8th, 15th, & 22nd) we have the winter Ember Days (18th, 19th, & 21st), and the latter falls on S. Thomas, Apostle & Martyr (21st), which is a Day of Obligation. The Vigil of the Nativity (24th) and the Nativity of our Lord (25th) are followed by S. Stephen, Protomartyr (26th), S. John, Apostle & Evangelist (27th), and The Holy Innocents (28th) all of which are also Days of Obligation. We conclude the month with the Sunday after Christmas (29th). The question most heard by people of the world this month is, “What do you want for Christmas?” Or maybe, “What does [fill in Name] want for Christmas?” In our day and age, especially since the world has commercialized one of our most holiest days, we should be telling people what we don’t want for Christmas. Upton Sinclair once wrote, Or consider Christmas – could Satan in his most malignant mood have devised a worse combination…than the system whereby several hundred million people get a billion or so gifts for which they have no use, and some thousands of shop clerks die of exhaustion while selling them, and every other child in the western world is made ill from overeating – all in the name of the lowly Jesus? Sinclair was not even a Christian, he was an Agnostic, and a very observant one apparently. The dark and fallen legions, along with their worldly allies, do their best (or maybe ‘worst’ is the better word) each year to blind people to the real holiness and beauty of Christmas. Evil wants everyone in a Christmas spirit without the Christ-child. But a true Christian knows the Spirit of the Christ-child comes before the Christmas spirit. The Spirit of the Christ-child is eternal; the Christmas spirit arrives to disappear every year. The Spirit of Christ is a divine person, a Babe in the manger; the Christmas spirit is a product of worldly invention. The Christ-child is not to us as Xmas is to the world, here today and gone tomorrow. Rather, we will remain focused on the Christ of Christ-mass, and give all diligence to remembering the real reason for the season. ~ Father Tim
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Do you know someone celebrating Christmas without the Christ-child? Do they struggle with a ‘dark’ type of consumerism? Invite them to church this December where they can adore the Christ-child and hear Jesus say, “I am the light of the world. He who follows Me shall not walk in darkness, but have the light of life.” ~ Father Tim
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Because of the Incarnation, I salute all remaining matter with reverence. ~ Saint John of Damascus, 675-749, Christian Monastic, Teacher, & Doctor
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Do you know?
Do you know Saint John’s made a charitable donation to Dayton Family Resource Center in November? Do you know our Book of Life Club will be discussing the book Advent with Evelyn Underhill in December? Do you know The Usual Suspects will be discussing The Nativity Scriptures in our December Bible Study? Do you know we now have Cherub mounts in the Nave for items like Christmas greenery?
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Saint John December Ordo Kalendar
Sunday, the 1st of December, at 10:30 AM, Advent I Mass
Wednesday, the 4th of December, at 6:30 PM, Evening Prayer
Saturday, the 7th of December, at 9:00 AM, Morning Prayer & Advent Litany
Sat., the 7th of Dec., at 9:45 AM, The Usual Suspects, Bible Study, Luke I & II
Sat., the 7th of Dec., at 11:00 AM, Book of Life Club, Advent with Eveylyn Underhill
Sun., the 8th of Dec., at 10:30 AM, at 10:30 AM, Advent II Mass, Saint Nick Visit!
Wednesday, the 11th of December, at 6:30 PM, Evening Prayer
Sunday, the 15th of December, at 10:30 AM, Advent III Mass
Wed., the 18th of December, at 6:30 PM, Evening Prayer, Ember Wednesday
Saturday, the 21st of December, at 7:30 AM, Rule of Faith Meeting
Sun., the 22nd of December, at 10:30 AM, Advent IV Mass
Tuesday, the 24th of December, at 4:30 PM, Nine Lessons & Carols
Tuesday, the 24th of December, at 5:30 PM, Christmas Eve Mass
Wednesday, the 25th of December, at 10:30 AM, The Nativity of our Lord
Saturday, the 28th of December, at 9:00 AM, Morning Prayer
Saturday, the 28th of Dec., at 9:45 AM, Bible Study, Matthew I & II
Sat., the 28th of Dec., at 11:00 AM, Book of Life Club, Advent with Eveylyn Underhill
Sun., the 29th of Dec., at 10:30 AM, Sunday after Christmas Mass, Vestry Meeting
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Christianity, if false, is of no importance, and if true, of infinite importance. The only thing it cannot be is moderately important. ~ C.S. Lewis, 1898-1963, British Writer, Literary Scholar, and Anglican Lay Theologian
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God could, had He pleased, have been incarnate in a man of iron nerves, the Stoic sort who lets no sigh escape him. Of His great humility He chose to be incarnate in a man of delicate sensibilities who wept at the grave of Lazarus and sweated blood in Gethsemane. Otherwise we should have missed the great lesson that it is by his will alone that a man is good or bad, and that feelings are not, in themselves, of any importance. We should also have missed the all-important help of knowing that He has faced all that the weakest of us face, has shared not only the strength of our nature but every weakness of it except sin. If He had been incarnate in a man of immense natural courage, that would have been for many of us almost the same as His not being incarnate at all. ~ C.S. Lewis, 1898-1963, British Writer, Literary Scholar, and Anglican Lay Theologian
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December Birthdays & Anniversaries
Coraline Parker Bock – Birthday – December 3
Jim Barnett – Birthday – December 3
Fr. Timothy Butler – Birthday – December 4
John Timothy Maycock – Birthday – December 5
Paige Bock – Birthday – December 17
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Why should we want to worship Jesus well?
The Lord did not come to make a display. He came to heal and to teach suffering men. For one who wanted to make a display the thing would have been just to appear and dazzle the beholders. But for Him Who came to heal and to teach the way was not merely to dwell here, but to put Himself at the disposal of those who needed Him, and to be manifested according as they could bear it, not vitiating the value of the Divine appearing by exceeding their capacity to receive it. ~ S. Athanasius of Alexandria, 297-373, Bishop, Confessor, & Doctor
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Only the humble believe him and rejoice that God is so free and so marvelous that he does wonders where people despair, that he takes what is little and lowly and makes it marvelous. And that is the wonder of all wonders, that God loves the lowly…. God is not ashamed of the lowliness of human beings. God marches right in. He chooses people as his instruments and performs his wonders where one would least expect them. God is near to lowliness; he loves the lost, the neglected, the unseemly, the excluded, the weak and broken. ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 1906-1945, German Lutheran Pastor & Theologian
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Sharing Your Faith
Advent season, if not Christmas Day itself, is a time when many of us will read the birth narratives of Jesus in the New Testament with our families. Of the four evangelists, St. Matthew and St. Luke are the two who devoted a portion of their narrative to covering events surrounding the birth and early life of Jesus. As part of these narratives, genealogies of Jesus have come down to us in Matthew 1 and Luke 3, and the fact that they are not identical has often been a skeptical objection to the reliability of the gospels. After all, if they really were written by followers of Jesus (or one who knew said followers in the case of St. Luke), could the genealogies really diverge as wildly as they do? For example, was Joseph’s father Heli as Luke says, or was it Jacob as Matthew says?
There’s a couple possibilities. One rejoinder could be that Luke is following Mary’s genealogy whereas Matthew is following Joseph’s; Joseph could then be Jacob’s son by birth and become Heli’s by marriage to Mary. This isn’t impossible and it was held by some church fathers such as St. Hilary of Poitiers and St. John of Damascus, but, I don’t believe this is the oldest solution, due to some early hagiography. Mary’s parents have been venerated in multiple traditions; Sts. Joachim and Anna. Sometime in the second century, the Infancy Gospel of James was written, which is the earliest known mention of their lives. It would be very strange if early Christians were harmonizing the genealogies by saying one was Mary’s genealogy, while at the same time producing a detailed account of Mary’s birth to parents that are not mentioned in either one. This may not be insurmountable but it is at least a reason why I don’t take this option.
More reasonable in my judgement is that which Eusebius relates from the third-century writer Julius Africanus, in Ecclesiastical History 1.7: there was either a Levirate marriage (Deut. 25:5-6), or else an adoption, in which case Joseph would have been biologically the son of Jacob while legally the son of Heli. Such a divergence here would fit with an earlier divergence in the genealogies; Matthew follows David’s line through Solomon, and Luke follows David through Nathan. Note that all it would take is one such Levirate marriage or adoption to account for why the entire line from David to Joseph is different. Note further the difference in vocabulary between Matthew and Luke; Matthew says “and Jacob begat Joseph”, whereas Luke has (literally in the Greek) “Joseph of Heli”. Our Bibles have inserted “son of” into Luke’s generations to clarify (likely on the basis of Luke 3:24 using “son of”), but it is noteworthy that Luke does not specify that one man “begat” another, which could hint that he isn’t tracing biological ancestry. There may even be other possible solutions, and this is by no means everything there is to talk about concerning the genealogies, but this should be enough to get you thinking, and show that claims of contradiction are premature. ~ Chris Stockman
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Yes, in our world too, a stable once had something inside it that was bigger than our whole world. ~ Queen Lucy the Valiant, The Last Battle, Chronicles of Narnia
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The dogma of the Incarnation is the most dramatic thing about Christianity, and indeed, the most dramatic thing that ever entered the mind of man; but if you tell people so, they stare at you in bewilderment. ~ Dorothy L. Sayers, 1893-1957, English Novelist, Playwright, Translator and Critic
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The seeking of Jesus Christ and the quest for chivalry combined lead directly to one place only: Anglican-Catholicism. Courage, honor, courtesy, justice, and a readiness to help and defend the weak and the poor. Welcome to the Anglican Catholic Church. ~ Father Timothy Butler