DECEMBER 24 / 25, 2018
5:00 PM (EVE), 8:00 AM ORDINARY FORM (ENGLISH) MASSES
12:00 NOON EXTRAORDINARY FORM (LATIN) MASS (RUTHERFORD HOLY FAMILY)
The year was 1968, and it was known as “The Year the Changed the World,” or “The Year that Changed America.”
The very unpopular Vietnam War was underway – and increasing numbers of troops were being drafted. The US was in the middle of the Cold War as well as the Space Race with the Soviet Union.
Martin Luther King was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee – leading to riots in many major cities. Two months later, presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated in Los Angeles.
The Green Bay Packers won the Superbowl, and the Detroit Tigers won the World Series.
The most profitable movie of the year was 2001: A Space Odyssey; while Hey Jude was the hottest single of the year.
Indeed the people were changing, America was changing, and the world was changing.
On the shortest day of the year, Apollo 8 was launched out of Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. The second manned launch aboard a Saturn V rocket, with a three-man crew.
It was to be the first manned spacecraft to leave low Earth orbit, reach the Moon, orbit it, and return to Earth.
Three days after launch, orbiting the Moon, the astronauts saw for the first time … the Earth rising over the Moon.
They also took this opportunity to read 10 verses from the Book of Genesis, which began:
In the beginning, God created the Heaven and the Earth.
This of course led to multiple lawsuits from atheist Madeline Murray O’Hare – all three of which she lost through a failure to state a claim. I’m not sure if the astronauts having committed the offending action more than 230,000 nautical miles from any Earthly jurisdiction factored into it, but that’s my opinion.
The crew splashed down on December 27, and were named Time Magazine’s “Men of the Year.” Six months later, the US Postal Service issued a stamp commemorating this historic spaceflight.
Fifty years later, astronaut Jim Lovell, now 90 years old, commented that when they saw the Earth from the moon, so many hundreds of thousands of miles away, it struck him how fortunate we are to live:
on a planet that has the proper mass, has the gravity to contain water and an atmosphere, which are the very essentials for life," he said. "And you arrive on this planet that's orbiting a star just at the right distance — not too far to be too cold, or too close to be too hot — and just at the right distance to absorb that star's energy and then, with that energy, cause life to [exist] here in the first place.Today, of course, is Christmas. And the Gospel we heard proclaimed was from the beginning of St. John. Which, like Genesis, starts out:
In the beginning …While Genesis recounts the creation of all things … St. John’s Prologue recounts the re-creation of all things in Christ.
The coming of this one child – true God and true Man – in order to change us … so that we might change the world.
As we approach this altar to receive the Sacred Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity of Jesus Christ … let us pray that the birth of Jesus Christ, when viewed by us through the distance of two thousand year, may give us pause and recognize that He has come … not only to us … but for us … right here and right now … sacramentally in the Eucharist … in order to transform us from who we are … into who God calls us to become.
On behalf of our pastor and myself, and all the deacons … staff … and volunteers … here at St. A’s … have a Blessed and Merry Christmas. And may you know and experience the transforming power of Christ, born for us today.
