This might be the richest, most beautiful story in all of Luke’s gospel, and, of course, only Luke knows it. That makes sense. It’s about Mary, after all, and another woman, and the hidden strength of those who are poor (like the child in Elizabeth’s womb).  Whew. It took us three years, but we are finally back to this profound gospel.

Think about this young girl. The mysterious angel has announced to her that she has been chosen to be the mother of God. And not only that, but to give her strength to believe, the angel tells her the extraordinary news that her aging, infertile cousin is now pregnant!

What does this loving young lady do next? She heads out immediately for the ninety-mile journey to the hill country of Judea to visit Elizabeth, and to stay with her to help her during her third trimester. And here’s where it gets really good. As she and Jesus—a tiny embryo in Mary’s womb—enter the house of Elizabeth and Zechariah, the six-month embryo in Elizabeth’s womb leaps for joy.

It’s the littleness of it all that gives it all away. Two women embrace, and the world is changed forever. And in that embrace, two tiny embryos touch, and the mighty power of God is unleashed. As Fr. John McKenzie, SJ, asked, “Could we believe that the promise God wove into our very souls might give birth to something big?” Out of the hidden smallness of Bethlehem rose the shepherd of all the world. We, the little of the world, wait, and trust. God is using our kernels of faith to build something to last until the end of time.

What little thing do you do each day that makes the world better?

Kathy McGovern c. 2024

Reflecting on Philippians 4: 4-7

Anxiety. Isn’t that the epidemic of our age? I read a story recently about a college student who couldn’t use her meal card because it had been torn, and she was too anxious to speak to the person in the office who could replace it. She wanted her mom to drive her meals to her dorm daily to save her from walking into the office and asking for a new card.

I have a feeling this story resonates with more people than we know. The challenge of looking someone in the eye and speaking to them is somehow so terrifying that those afflicted with crippling anxiety would rather isolate themselves than accomplish the normal interactions that are so vital to a happy life.

Compare this story to Paul’s letter to the Philippians, written around 62 AD, while Paul was in prison in Rome, awaiting execution. A Roman citizen, St. Paul knew that he would be spared the torture of the crucifixion with his Lord endured. Beheading was the normal mode of execution for those lucky enough to be citizens.

But still. He’s in chains in Rome. He knows that the next person at his door could be his executioner. And what does he write to his beloved little community in Philippi? Have no anxiety at all, but everything in prayer and supplication. From whence comes this serenity, this perfect peace?

That moment on the road to Damascus, of course, held him tight for the rest of his life. This is what I pray for all of us: that we might hold fast to the grace of our baptisms, and let that grace keep us in peace and strength.

How will you use this beautiful Advent season to allay anxiety?

Kathy McGovern ©2024  

Reflecting on Luke 3: 1-6

Ah, the tetrarchs of Rome. Remember them? Nope. Surely the High Priests have some inspiring words that have lived on in memory? Not really.

In the clamor and chaos of these “mighty rulers,” only one voice has survived the ages: the voice of the Baptizer. We can hear him even now, shouting in the wilderness to the throngs who’ve come to see this man with the garments of camel’s hair, eating locusts and wild honey. He preaches a baptism of forgiveness! And preaches HOPE to those who’ve walked in darkness for so long. What about him draws so many out to the dry, thirsty desert to hear him, and to be baptized in the Jordan River?

For that matter, fast forward just thirty years and listen to the words that St. Paul spoke to the Philippians so memorably: And this is my prayer, that your love may increase ever more and more. Think about that. He’s writing in chains in Rome (where he will eventually be beheaded), yet his warm letter to this little community is filled with HOPE that their work (and his) will be brought to completion in Christ Jesus.

Even Baruch, writing in the far exile of Babylon, is filled with HOPE that those “led away on foot by their enemies…will be brought back, borne aloft in glory.” We stop here to remember the hostages of October 7^th, and the 44,000 killed to avenge them.

The authors of these Advent readings commanded us to live in HOPE. Let’s take their strong words to heart. I will say that, in the cancer community, these things remain: faith, hope, and love. And the greatest of these is HOPE.

What HOPE do you share, through the witness of your life?

Kathy McGovern ©2024

Today’s world has many advantages over that of years ago. Take waiting, for example. Before huge cineplexes in every neighborhood, we used to have to buy tickets in advance, or wait in long lines for seats to movie openings. Remember Star Wars, anyone? Or, in more recent memory, the long waits for groceries during the empty-shelf COVID years?

On the other hand, it’s good to muster the discipline for some delayed gratification in life. Painful as it was, waiting for the bus or for a favorite TV show to return after the long summer break formed a certain character in us. I call on that character all the time when I’m waiting for a medication to work, maybe, or waiting for test results from the doctor.

I’ll bet you have daily challenges with that essential character trait, too. Are you waiting for those painful pounds to come off, for news from a loved one who is deployed, hospitalized, or just missing from your life? That kind of waiting is agonizing.

Or maybe your long wait is to overcome a resentment that’s had you in its grasp for decades. More likely, your wait is for healing for a child who is in the grip of depression, or an addiction, or has problems at school. That’s the most agonizing wait of all.

I have an idea. How about if every reader of this column around the country prayed for someone reading these words right now this Advent? Talk about waiting. We won’t know until we see Jesus who we were praying for and who was praying for us. Ready? I can’t wait.

How would you like your unknown prayer partner to pray for you?

Kathy McGovern ©2024

Reflecting on Luke 1: 39-45

Two silent, unborn children. One, newly conceived, has just made the ninety-mile journey within his mother’s womb to the hill country of Judea. The other, conceived to the shock and awe of the neighbors (and to his father, struck mute for the duration of the pregnancy), is now six months old in the womb of his aged mother, Elizabeth.

Mary arrives at Ein Karem. How will she ever express what she is experiencing? Will she be as wordless as Zechariah in the midst of The Mystery? It turns out the infant in Elizabeth’s womb does the talking for her. He—the pre-born child—is the first to announce the gospel, the first to recognize the Christ. He leaps, and then Elizabeth announces what her child already knows. Blessed is she who believed that the promise of the Lord would be fulfilled.

Mary and Joseph trusted. Elizabeth and Zechariah trusted. But it was God who first trusted, who created humankind, who gave us every beautiful thing, and then, in the greatest act of trust, gave us God’s own Son.

The author Elizabeth Stone wrote, “The decision to have a child…is to decide forever to have your heart go around outside your body.” In sending the Son, the Father decided to have his heart, forever after, go around outside his body.

That’s us. We are that heart, walking around outside the body of the Creator, destined to return to God. My favorite theologian, John Kavanaugh, SJ, wrote, “Mary believed the promise of God and, in doing so, gave birth to the promise.”

We who believe the promise must give birth to the promise. We are God’s heart, walking around. Glory to God in the highest.

How are you giving birth to the promise in the actions of your life?

Kathy McGovern ©2021

Reflecting on Luke 3: 10-18

My brother —a chronic loser of keys, coats, cars—has a great vision of how heaven will work for him. Upon arrival, St. Peter will take him to a long series of lockers. Looking down his Big Chief tablet, St. Peter will say, “Ah. Here you go.” Finding the combination for the padlock, he will open his locker, and there—hallelujah!—will come tumbling out every bus pass, gym shirt, ignition key, and bike lock whose infuriating absence made his life such a challenge.

That’s his heaven—not only the restoration of every lost item, but a map to show him exactly WHERE he lost it, so he can check that aggravation off his list.

Now, John the Baptist, whom I suspect had the inside track of how heaven actually works, might have envisioned that same scenario differently. When we arrive in heaven, it’s John who meets us, and he knows exactly where our locker is. “Ah, Kathy,” he’ll say, sadly shaking his head. “Here it is.” And out will fall the hundreds of extra coats, extra groceries, extra-long showers, and extra free time, that I squandered.

Then, CLACK, I’ll hear the gates of heaven closing to me, not to open again until I haul all my stuff out and find the people around the world who could have made much better use of it than I did. And with every loosening of my grip, I’ll notice myself feeling lighter, happier, until heaven reaches down to take me.

Oh, so THAT’S how it works! I’ll say. I forgot St. Luke’s most important point! Heaven is for the unencumbered! That makes it so much easier when you’re floating home to God.

What might be weighing you down as you grow closer to heaven?

Kathy McGovern ©2021

Reflecting on Luke 3: 1-6

Let’s all go to the Holy Land sometime. It will make today’s Gospel jump off the page and into our hearts. We’ll visit the home where John the Baptist was born to Elizabeth and Zechariah. We know about his miraculous conception, and about his mother’s kinship with Mary, the mother of Jesus, from the first chapter of Luke.

But then will come the question that no historian has been able to truly answer. How did John, whom Luke (and we, his readers) knows to be the cousin of Jesus, end up in the desert, ragged and relentless, proclaiming a gospel of repentance? St. Luke (the historian) likens his ministry to that unnamed desert- voice from Isaiah, crying out for us to prepare the way of the Lord.

The most convincing suggestion is that John had some connection with the Essenes, a desert community that was well know at the time of Christ. They, like John, lived humbly, and disdained the allures of city life (and the rulers of those cities). John would eventually come to the attention of one of those rulers, Herod Antipas, whom he condemned for his unethical and illegal marriage practice. We all know how that terrible story ended.

Or did it? Because I feel like I hear him, when I read stories of teenagers with access to AK-47s, or the one million pre-born children legally aborted in this country every year, or the lack of COVID-19 vaccines for the developing world, or the greed that animates so many of the global catastrophes every year.

I can hear him now, calling out for my own repentance. LISTEN! he thunders. YOU! Prepare ye the way of the Lord!

To what baptism of repentance do you feel yourself called?

Kathy McGovern ©2021

Today’s world has a lot of advantages over that of years ago. Take waiting, for example. Before huge cineplexes in every neighborhood we used to actually have to buy tickets in advance, or wait in long lines for seats to movie openings. Remember Star Wars, anyone? Or, in more recent memory, the long wait for the next Harry Potter book?

On the other hand, it’s good to muster the discipline for some kind of delayed gratification in life. Painful as it was, waiting for the bus, or for a favorite tv show to return after the long summer break, formed a certain character in us. I call on that character all the time, when I’m waiting for a medication to work, maybe, or waiting for test results from the doctor.

I’ll bet you have daily challenges to that essential character trait too. Are you waiting for those painful pounds to come off―they will, I promise―or for news from a loved one who is deployed, or hospitalized, or just missing from your life? That kind of waiting is just agonizing.

Or maybe your long wait is to overcome a resentment that’s had you in its grasp for decades. More likely, your wait is for healing for a child who is in the grip of depression, or an addiction, or has problems at school. That’s the most agonizing wait of all.

I have an idea. How about if, this Advent, every reader of this column around the country prayed for someone who is reading these words right now? Talk about waiting. We won’t know until we see Jesus who we were praying for, and who was praying for us. Ready? I can’t wait.

How would you like your unknown prayer partner to pray for you?

Kathy McGovern ©2021

Reflecting on Luke 1: 39-45

I received one of those lovely BELIEVE mantel plaques from a friend the other day. It looks so beautiful up there, surrounded by Christmas cards, our Advent wreath ablaze now with all four candles glowing. It’s not a suggestion anymore, I don’t think. BELIEVE is a mandate, an absolute demand of our whole self. To BELIEVE puts us right there with Mary herself, who BELIEVED that the promise of the Lord would be fulfilled.

On the First Sunday of Advent we all resolved to pray for an unknown reader of this column, recognizing that another unknown reader was praying for us. If you happened to miss that week’s reflection, it’s not too late. Right now, imagine someone out there who is reading this. That person needs your prayers. That person may have been praying for you these past Advent weeks.

BELIEVE that your prayers for an unknown reader are reaching heaven this very minute.

But getting back to Mary, her immediate departure from Nazareth to walk ninety miles to Elizabeth’s home is just fascinating.  She must have been very close to her cousin. Don’t you get the feeling that she was as thrilled to hear of her aging cousin’s pregnancy as she was amazed to announce her own?

I wonder if she rehearsed how she was going to explain to her cousin this most astonishing (and history-changing) news. Was she nervous when she walked into the house? Any apprehension she might have had flew out the window the second she arrived, because the pre-born John recognized the pre-born Jesus and leaped for joy.

Oh, and by the way, we don’t ever have to ask again when life begins.

In what ways do you feel the prayers of the unseen reader who is praying for you?

Kathy McGovern ©2018

Reflecting on Phil.4: 4-7

My Olympic sport is worrying. I’m the best who ever played the game. What makes me particularly versatile is that, the very second one worry is resolved, I can leap immediately to the next one, and the next one. It’s an arrogant way to live, if you think about it.

I never stop to give thanks when the first worry turns up solved. I call up the next one in the queue and begin massaging it, marinating it, simmering it over an endlessly warm burner. I look at every possible way things can go fatally awry. I’m pretty sure it’s up to me to keep the planets in their fixed orbits. When turbulence bounces the plane around I think I need to get up there and take over.

Have no anxiety about anything, says Paul. Easy for him to say? Well, let’s see. Prior to his imprisonment in Rome (the location of this letter, probably around the year 62), Paul had been shipwrecked, snake-bit, stoned with rocks, and left to languish in prisons in Caesarea and Ephesus. Then, the grossly unstable Emperor Nero of Rome started his persecution of the early church two years after Paul was imprisoned there.

One day—or was it night?—the Roman guards took Paul from his cell, and led him to the beheading block. Had he trembled in fear of this moment? Had he worried it to death all the years before it happened?

We know this: while in chains in Rome, St. Paul exhorted us to pray, and offer thanks, and tell God what we need. And then, he promised, the peace of Christ will guard us. I’ll bet it guarded him.

How is anxiety stealing my peace?

Kathy McGovern ©2018