Friday of the Third Week of Advent Isaiah 56:1-3,6-8 + John 5:33-36
Come, Lord, bring us your peace / that we may rejoice before you with a perfect heart.
The verse for today’s Gospel Acclamation asks the Lord to come and bring us His peace. Peace, of course, is a basic theme of our wishes and prayers during this time of year. But the Gospel Acclamation continues in a way that specifies why we want the Lord to bring us His peace: “that we may rejoice before you with a perfect heart.” This petition is not a basic theme of this time of year, but perhaps it ought to be.
By contrast, we might ask what keeps our hearts from being perfect to begin with? God gives a human person a heart so that she or he might love. A “perfect heart”, then, is a heart that loves as God loves. To be more specific, a “perfect heart” is a heart that loves God and loves one’s neighbor in the manner in which God loves. These two forms of love—loving God and loving one’s neighbor—are challenging for contrasting reasons.
It’s a challenge to love God because God is love, and His love for us in infinite. The immensity of God’s love challenges us, and tempts us to despair of loving as God loves. While finite human persons cannot love with the infinite love that God loves, we can love Him perfectly: with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength.
By contrast, it’s often a challenge to love our neighbor because our neighbor can be lacking in love. The smallness of our neighbor’s love challenges us, and tempts us not to bother with him. Why should we love our neighbor in a loving way when he has been unloving to us?
In both cases, it’s important to recognize that Jesus became flesh and dwelt among us so that we could love with a perfect heart. Jesus, in His preaching, miracles, and self-sacrifice on Calvary, reveals what God’s love looks like. Through prayer and the sacraments, God pours His love into our hearts so that we can imitate Jesus’ loving ways more perfectly.
Thursday of the Third Week of Advent Isaiah 54:1-10 + Luke 7:24-30
“‘Behold, I am sending my messenger ahead of you, he will prepare your way before you.’”
Jesus in today’s Gospel Reading quotes two Old Testament verses: Malachi 3:1 and Isaiah 40:3. Together, these two verses illustrate Jesus’ image of John the Baptist. They help us understand how John the Baptist stands in relation to Jesus. John goes first, but only to prepare the way that leads to Jesus.
As the first half of Advent concludes tomorrow, Jesus’ quotation in today’s Gospel Reading brings up an important principle of our Catholic Faith. We need to keep this principle in mind as enter tomorrow into the second, more intense half of Advent. That principle is intercession.
Many of our separated brethren dismiss the principle of others interceding between “me and Jesus”. Protestant leaders had statues and paintings of saints destroyed because they suggested that certain persons might be important in the process of bringing us to Jesus. The dismissal of the role of saints went hand-in-hand with the dismissal of the ordained priesthood, another important means by which human persons intercede for us in bringing us closer to Jesus.
So as the first half of Advent ends today—and with it, its focus upon St. John the Baptist—we ought to reflect on two points. First, what do I need to learn from St. John the Baptist, and how can he lead me to Jesus? Second, how can I imitate St. John the Baptist and lead others to Jesus by my own words and sacrifices?
Wednesday of the Third Week of Advent Isaiah 45:6-8,18,21-25 + Luke 7:18-23
“In the Lord shall be the vindication and the glory of all the descendants of Israel.”
Confusion sometimes arises from the question that John the Baptist in today’s Gospel Reading instructs his disciples to ask Jesus. People wonder: “Doesn’t this question—‘Areyou the one who is to come, or should we look for another?’—suggest that John the Baptist wasn’t really familiar with his cousin Jesus, and was even uncertain about the role of Jesus in the Lord God’s plan for Israel?” The answer, of course, is “No.” But why then does John instruct his disciples to ask this question?
By way of answering, we might point out that John isn’t sending his disciples for his own sake, but for theirs. John wants each of them to encounter Jesus and hear Jesus’ answer to the question as a sort of initiation into a relationship with Jesus.
However, one might in response ask a further question. “Why, then, did Jesus answer the disciples’ question by saying, ‘Go and tell John what you have seen and heard ….’?” The fact is that these disciples need for the time being to remain under the instruction of John the Baptist.
Jesus does not say to these disciples what He said to Peter and Andrew: “Come, follow me.” These disciples, like us during Advent, need to sit at the feet of John the Baptist and allow his message to sink more deeply into our hearts before we can be true disciples of the Lord Jesus.
CCC 496-507, 495: Mary’s virginal motherhood CCC 437, 456, 484-486, 721-726: Mary the Mother of Christ by the Holy Spirit CCC 1846: Jesus as Savior revealed to Joseph CCC 445, 648, 695: Christ the Son of God in his Resurrection CCC 143-149, 494, 2087: the “obedience of faith”
Ask for a sign from the Lord, your God; let it be deep as the netherworld, or high as the sky!
Signs, symbols, oracles, portents: man has since time immemorial sought assurance from God of His providential will. King Ahaz in the First Reading is going against the grain in refusing to ask “for a sign from the Lord”, especially since the Lord Himself directed Ahaz to do so. Yet in spite of the stubbornness of Ahaz, the Lord gives him a stunning sign: “that the virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall name him Emmanuel.”
This sign has three parts. The first is that “the virgin shall conceive”. This seems to be a paradox that goes against the very laws of nature. Yet God, who is the Author of all creation—both natural and supernatural—can work within His creation as He wills. What seems to us to be an act against the natural order can be an instance of God working supernaturally within the natural order. This particular act stresses that God is the Author of all life.
The sign’s second part is that the virgin shall “bear a son”, and the third that the virgin “shall name him Emmanuel”. These latter two parts reveal more to us about the particular life that God has created. God’s creation is the son of the virgin, and so he is human. As her son, he is named by the virgin. But the name she gives him reveals something extraordinary about this life, beyond the extraordinary means of his creation.
His name is Emmanuel, a Hebrew word which means “God with us”. This phrase encompasses a broad range of possible meanings. At its lower end, the phrase could mean simply that this human being named “Emmanuel” reminds us, or teaches us, of God’s presence in our collective midst. However, at the opposite end of this range of meanings is the teaching of the Gospel and Christ’s Church.
The person of Jesus of Nazareth, while truly the son of Mary—and so truly human—is also the son of God: “One in Being” with God the Father, as we profess. Jesus is fully human and fully God. Yet the Incarnation is but the prelude to the divine work that God will accomplish in Jesus at the end of His human life.
With that as a backdrop, we can reflect upon the Gospel Reading setting the stage for the Nativity. The Reading’s focus is Saint Joseph and his vocation as the foster-father of Jesus. Consider Joseph’s vocation in light of the two names by which his foster-child is described here: Jesus and Emmanuel.
The name “Jesus” means “God saves”, while “Emmanuel” means “God with us”. Taken together, they dispel two contrary beliefs: that God will save us only at a distance; and that God comes into our midst only to condemn us. Instead, these two names together confirm that God is with us in order to save us.
In Joseph’s dream, the angel of the Lord demands two things from Joseph. The first is not to “be afraid to take Mary… into [his] home”. The second is to “name [Mary’s son] Jesus”. Both commands imply acceptance. Generally, they imply acceptance of God’s providential Will. Specifically, they imply acceptance of Mary and Jesus as Joseph’s own. In spite of the apparent shame caused by Mary—because of her seeming infidelity—God calls Joseph to protect Mary as her husband, and to stand with her in accepting with patience the unfolding of God’s Providence.
In spite of Mary’s apparent betrayal of her betrothal to Joseph, God asks Joseph to name Mary’s son. This act itself, independent of the name Joseph would give the child, is significant. This act had legal significance within the culture of Joseph. By this act, Joseph would have been claiming the child as his own. In making this claim, Joseph undoubtedly would have invited shame upon himself, as many would have seen this act as an admission that he had fathered a child outside of a fully ratified marriage.
Part of the irony of this passage, then, is that Mary and Joseph, by their submission to God’s providential Will, foreshadow the life of Jesus. Mary and Joseph are scorned and cast aside as sinners precisely because of their faithfulness to what God wants to accomplish through Christ. We ought to expect this in our lives as disciples, as well.
Tuesday of the Third Week of Advent Zephaniah 3:1-2,9-13 + Matthew 21:28-32
“Which of the two did his father’s will?”
Like the one proclaimed on Thursday of the First Week of Advent [Mt 7:21,24-27], today’s Gospel Reading from the twenty-first chapter of Matthew focuses upon good works. Both of these passages contrast mere words with resolute works. Yet there’s a further similarity that’s even more important.
In the passage from Matthew 7, Jesus insists that for one to enter Heaven, one must do the will of God the Father. In today’s Gospel Reading, Jesus proclaims a parable at whose center is a father with two sons. The human father in this parable is a symbol of God the Father.
This focus of God the Father can help you see that it’s not your own human will that’s key in your life. The key is the will of God the Father. This is the same Father who within salvation history loved His erring children—those resembling the first son in today’s parable—enough to send His only divine Son to die for them. The Father “willed” that His Only-Begotten, the one who in all things does His Father’s will—even on Calvary—sacrificed His life for the sinful son, who is you and me.
Our Lady of Guadalupe Zech 2:14-17 [or Rev 11:19;12:1-6,10] + Lk 1:26-38 [or Lk 1:39-47]
Blessed are you, daughter, by the Most High God, above all the women on earth .…
Today’s Responsorial is not taken from one of the psalms, but from the Old Testament Book of Judith. The verses of the Responsorial, by which the Church praises Mary today, in their original setting praise the Old Testament heroine Judith. In the thirteenth chapter of Judith you can read of Judith beheading the Assyrian general Holofernes, thus freeing her people from foreign control. The praise that follows, which we hear in today’s Responsorial, is offered by Uzziah, the king of Judah.
Although the transposition of this praise to honor Mary makes sense when one reads the verses themselves, the original setting might give one pause. However, even the setting in which Judith receives praise offers insight into the vocation of Our Blessed Mother, especially as we honor her today under the title of Our Lady of Guadalupe.
In the first book of the Bible, after the fall of Adam and Eve, God curses the serpent and declares: “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; He will strike at your head, while you strike at his heel.” The Church has always heard these words as foreshadowing the advent of Christ and His mother Mary. It is through Mary’s vocation as the Mother of God that the power of evil is destroyed. As we ask the intercession of Our Lady of Guadalupe on behalf of the unborn and their mothers, we trust that her maternal love will transform our country and world into a culture of life.
Saturday of the Second Week of Advent Sirach 48:1-4,9-11 + Matthew 17:9,10-13
Then the disciples understood that He was speaking to them of John the Baptist.
Both the First Reading and the Gospel Reading of this morning’s Mass speak of the Old Testament prophet Elijah. His importance in the Old Testament is highlighted by the fact that he (along with Moses) appears with Jesus at the Transfiguration.
There are eighteen prophetic books in the Old Testament. Yet Elijah’s importance is highlighted by the fact that he’s also mentioned within the Wisdom literature of the Old Testament: in the case of this morning’s First Reading, in the Book of Sirach. In this passage, Elijah is brought to our attention not only because he has a prophecy for us to attend to, and not only because at the end of his earthly life he ascended to Heaven in a flaming chariot. Such is the holiness of Elijah that the person is “blessed” who “shall have seen [him] and who falls asleep in [his] friendship.”
In the Gospel Reading, however, Jesus mysteriously identifies St. John the Baptist with Elijah. While Jesus does not elaborate upon this identification, we know that Elijah and St. John the Baptist are both ultimately important for the same reason: because they foreshadow the advent of the Messiah. As we reflect upon the prophetic ministry of Elijah, we ask the Lord to allow Elijah’s words and deeds to motivate us to accept Christ when He comes.
Friday of the Second Week of Advent Isaiah 48:17-19 + Matthew 11:16-19
“But wisdom is vindicated by her works.”
There are many points that one might conclude from Jesus’ enigmatic statement that “wisdom is vindicated by her works.” Consider one point about wisdom, and another about wisdom’s works.
Wisdom can be considered from the perspective of God’s own nature, or in terms of what God freely chooses to do in salvation history. In the Catholic tradition, this consideration would be referred to in terms of the “immanent Trinity” and the “economic Trinity”.
What Jesus declares in today’s Gospel Reading ought to be considered in terms of God’s work of salvation history: creation, redemption, and sanctification. This is especially so in terms of wisdom being “vindicated”. The masterpiece of Saint Augustine of Hippo, The City of God, explores the vagaries of salvation history, which often seems to hold more troughs than peaks; more sin than grace; and more sinners than saints.
When it comes to salvation history, God certainly plays a “long game”. This ought to comfort those of us who waste so many years of our lives following our own interests rather than God’s. Saint Augustine explored this sad dynamic in his own life in another of his masterpieces, The Confessions. Fortunately for each of us, God loves us more than we love ourselves, and in Jesus is willing to make our sins His own so that His wisdom might prevail over our folly.
The Conversion of St. Augustine of Hippo by Fra Angelico
In the beginning, God had a plan. God’s plan was for mankind to live a blissful life in this world, and at the end of that earthly life, to rise body and soul into Heaven.
But mankind did not cooperate. You know how Adam and Eve brought sin into the world. They did not cooperate with God’s plan, and so God came up with a “Plan B”. In this “Plan B”, God would show His love for mankind by sending His only Son to earth, knowing that man would crucify this Son, yet also knowing that the Crucifixion of His Son would destroy the power of sin and death.
In God’s “Plan A”, one man and one woman were to begin God’s plan. They failed. Adam and Eve instead brought sin and death into human experience. Adam and Eve changed a human paradise into a valley of tears, full of suffering, doubt, and at time, even despair.
In God’s “Plan B”, one man and one woman were to begin God’s plan. These two obeyed. They fulfilled God the Father’s Will. And so through these two—Jesus and Mary—you now have the opportunity to live a life here below filled with hope and joy. Those virtues and all the rest of the virtues will be fulfilled in the perfection of Heaven if we cooperate with God’s grace to the hour of our death.
+ + +
Today the Church throughout the world celebrates the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Our Blessed Mother is the one creature in all of God’s Creation who obeyed God unfailingly. Our Blessed Lady is the one human person who has been completely open to accepting Jesus into her life. God knew that Mary would be such a woman before her life began. That’s why He gave her a gift at the moment that her mother, St. Anne, conceived her. God kept Mary from inheriting Original Sin, so that Mary would be the best possible mother for His Son.
We hear of Mary’s faithfulness in today’s Gospel passage. “Gabriel was sent from God… to a virgin betrothed to a man named Joseph… and the virgin’s name was Mary.” She asks how she, a virgin, can conceive. But God’s messenger assures Mary that God’s Son will be conceived in her womb by the Power of the Holy Spirit.
Mary’s virginal conception of Jesus reflects God’s omnipotence. God can create something out of nothing. In the beginning, God created the universe out of nothing. Similarly, in the nothingness of Mary’s virginity, God creates, and His Son is conceived as a human being in Mary’s womb. But these two acts of God creating out of nothing—God’s creation of the universe, in the beginning; and God’s creation of Jesus’ human body and soul, in the fullness of time—both foreshadow an even greater miracle on God’s part.
Likely you have heard the saying, “The wood of the crib is the wood of the Cross.” This saying isn’t literally—historically—true, but its truth lies in pointing out that Jesus’ conception and birth were a means to a greater end: that end being Jesus’ Death and Resurrection. As another saying puts it, “Jesus was born into this world, so that he might die from this world.”
Through Mary, God’s Son comes into the world to destroy sin and death. Jesus’ vocation is fulfilled more than three decades later, according to the same pattern by which God created in the beginning, and in Mary’s womb. God creates… out of nothing. So it is with the Death and Resurrection of Jesus. Human sin is a failure to love. Human sin is an absence of grace, an absence of love.
You and I, as human beings: how do we respond when someone doesn’t love us? In our sinfulness, we usually respond in kind. If someone gives us the cold shoulder, we do the same. We respond to an absence of love with a further absence of love. That’s how sin works: it spreads like a spiritual and moral cancer, destroying the love that God meant, in the beginning, for our human life to be all about.
Thanks be to God, God does not respond to sin as you and I do. If God did, then when we wandered far from Him, God would have (metaphorically) turned His back on mankind, and left us to wallow in sin, finally to die and exist forever separated from Him. Thanks be to God, God responds to the nothingness of sin by choosing to love. Down into the midst of a human race of sinners, God chose to send His only-begotten Son. On Calvary, in the midst of the nothingness of rejection, rebuke, scourging and mockery, Jesus offered His life for the forgiveness of sin. In the midst of the nothingness of sin, God “re-deemed” the world.
+ + +
Thanks be to God for His act of “re-creation”. Thanks be to Our Blessed Mother Mary for saying “Yes” to her part in God’s plan. And thanks be to God for preparing Mary to say “Yes” to His will for her life. Those are the three truths that the Church celebrates today on this Holy Day of Mary’s Immaculate Conception.
First, God from all eternity, knowing that man would reject Him, planned to re-create the human world through the offering of His Son. Second, God chose Mary to be the Mother of His only-begotten Son, and Mary chose perfectly to accept this vocation. Third, knowing from all eternity of Mary’s fidelity, God prepared Mary for her vocation be means of a unique grace: the grace that we call the “Immaculate Conception”, preserving her at the moment of her conception from Original Sin.
This gift was given to Mary not only for her own sake, but for the sake of her Son, and for the sake of all those who would become members of her Son’s Mystical Body, the Church. You and I celebrate Mary’s fidelity today because she is our Mother. We honor her as the first and best disciple of Jesus Christ. We also honor her because of the unique gift of holiness that God gave her through her Immaculate Conception. During this Season of Advent, Mary’s life shows us best how to receive Jesus into our lives.
The Immaculate Conception by Francisco de Zurbarán (1598–1664)
Reflections on the Sacred Liturgy 