Wednesday of the Second Week of Advent
Isaiah 40:25-31  +  Matthew 11:28-30

To whom can you liken me as an equal?

Today’s First Reading from the fortieth chapter of Isaiah proclaims the unique majesty of the Lord God.  This proclamation highlights the radical distinction between the Creator God and each of His creatures.  In Isaiah we hear God ask a rhetorical question.  “To whom can you liken me as an equal?  says the Holy One.”

This question evokes the rhetorical question posed by one of God’s greatest creatures:  Saint Michael the Archangel.  The name “Michael” is literally a question:  “Who is like God?”  It’s not a coincidence that St. Michael is the angel who thrusts down into Hell Satan and all the evil spirits [see Revelation 12:7-9].  After all, Satan and the other fallen angels were thrown down from Heaven for believing that they were like God in His majesty and power.

By contrast, God the Son, who is equal to God—indeed, who is God—in every way, did not deem equality with God something to be clung to [see Philippians 2:6].  The humility of Jesus’ Incarnation at the Annunciation is complemented by the humility of the surroundings at Bethlehem.  Yet these forms of humility are but preparations for the humility of Calvary, where the Creator God dies in order to offer His creatures the chance of eternal life.

The Third Sunday of Advent [A]
Isaiah 35:1-6, 10  +  James 5:7-10  +  Matthew 11:2-11

references to the Catechism of the Catholic Church cited for today by the Vatican’s Homiletic Directory:

CCC 30, 163, 301, 736, 1829, 1832, 2015, 2362: joy
CCC 227, 2613, 2665, 2772: patience
CCC 439, 547-550: Jesus performs messianic signs

The desert and the parched land will exult; the steppe will rejoice and bloom.

Born and reared as a Kansan, I have always loved traveling throughout the state.  As I have had the chance to travel through other parts of the world, however, I have had to admit that the beauty of our state is not exactly the same as the beauty of other parts of God’s green earth.  The beauty of our state is simple, subtle, and understated.  It’s no wonder that when the first explorers came to this area, their report to those back east labeled this part of our continent “The Great American Desert”.

However, the beauty of Kansas is a lot like the beauty of Advent.  Both are rooted in the virtue of humility.  There are many virtues through which we grow in our spiritual lives, but each virtue has its proper place, and humility is the virtue of those journeying through a desert.

After all, the spiritual life on earth is itself a journey.  We begin that journey the moment we are conceived, and end that journey only beyond the door of death.  In between those moments of conception and death stretches a long path along which we exercise virtues such as temperance, fortitude, justice, prudence, faith, and hope.  Each virtue offers some spiritual fruit for us to appreciate, some spiritual fruit to nourish us as we travel along that path that often winds through territory that is like a desert:  barren and filled with trials and suffering.

But all of these virtues, and everything that’s good in our lives, leads ultimately in only one direction.  Every virtue leads us in the direction of the goal of life:  that perfect love which is called charity, or in Latin, caritas.  Saint John tells us that this love is the very nature of God:  God is love, he says simply [1 John 4:8].  Saint Paul tells us that this love is the greatest virtue, without which every other virtue is empty and meaningless [see 1 Corinthians 13].

This perfect love is the goal of our lives:  we hope to live in the Presence of this perfect love forever in Heaven.  This perfect love is also the goal of our lives here on earth.  The only thing that we should ever worry about trying to do well is loving God and our neighbor:  the great command of our Lord Jesus.  This doesn’t necessarily mean doing great things.  Even though it is the greatest virtue, love can be profoundly simple.  Perfect love can express itself through very simple acts, as the Little Flower teaches us.  Perfect love can even blossom in the midst of what seems like a desert of suffering.

Nonetheless, despite the fact that this perfect love is the goal of both daily life and our entire earthly life, we sometimes have to return to the basics.  Advent—this season of plainness and of the desert—offers us a chance to rediscover what Saint Augustine called the foundation of all other virtues:  the virtue of humility.

As the foundation of all other virtues, humility is a virtue that we cannot ever outgrow.  If we think we can, we probably find it easy to sing the old song, “Lord, it’s hard to be humble when you’re perfect in every way.”  In fact, all of the other virtues of our moral and spiritual life grow out of the “spiritual soil” of humility.  Humility is laying ourselves bare:  it’s really nothing more than honesty about who we are and where we figure in the scheme of things, which is to say that we are nothing without God.

This is why Advent is a penitential season.  We seriously examine our consciences, go to Confession, and are reconciled with God and neighbor because only by admitting how much we are in need of God’s grace can we be ready to accept God the Father’s gift of His Son.  And only with this virtue of humility as a foundation can we hope to draw others into the sweep of God’s love.  If we allow ourselves to be loved by God and admit what a beautiful thing that love is, we want others to share in that love.  But you cannot force God’s love, or throw His love, into the lives of others.  The only way for people to be drawn into the mystery of its simple beauty is by starting with humility.

Tuesday of the Second Week of Advent
Isaiah 40:1-11  +  Matthew 18:12-14

“… it is not the will of your heavenly Father that one of these little ones be lost.”

It’s always comforting to think of the Good Shepherd.  But why does the Church evoke this image today on a weekday of Advent?

In today’s brief Gospel Reading, Jesus speaks to the motive of His Incarnation.  While there have been theologians who have speculated that the Son of God would have become human even had mankind never sinned, in the actual course of salvation history, man did sin.  In response to man’s sin, God could have freely chosen to abandon His fallen creature.

Instead, God chose from Heaven to act like a Good Shepherd.  He descended from the perfection of Heaven in order to enter a world of sin and darkness.  The sacrifice of His whole self—Body and Blood, soul and divinity—within that world reflects the love of God’s divine nature, which through the Incarnation you and I have the chance to enter into for eternity.

Monday of the Second Week of Advent
Isaiah 35:1-10  +  Luke 5:17-26

The desert and the parched land will exult; the steppe will rejoice and bloom.

In today’s First Reading from the thirty-fifth chapter of Isaiah, “the desert” is a focus.  This focus is apt for the first two weeks of Advent, when St. John the Baptist is so often at the forefront of the scripture passages we hear.  The desert, after all, is where John the Baptist dwells.  In the desert he carries out his ministry of preaching and baptizing, both of these for the sake of repentance.

Yet in spite of the desert’s connection with solitude and penance, and as fruitful as this point can be for our Advent meditation, today’s First Reading describes the desert for a different purpose.  Isaiah describes the desert for the sake of illustrating, in a phrase, the “reversal of fortune” that the Lord’s merciful love will effect when He comes.

The desert is a place where little to nothing grows.  Yet when the Lord come, “the parched land will exult”, “will bloom with abundant flowers, and rejoice with joyful song.”  This is not the only reversal of fortune that Isaiah foretells in this passage.  Through the Lord’s power “the eyes of the blind be opened, the ears of the deaf be cleared”, and “the lame leap like a stag”.  The Lord brings life to what seems dead, as the birth of Jesus offers hope for new life to fallen man.

Saturday of the First Week of Advent
Isaiah 30:19-21,23-26  +  Matthew 9:35—10:1,5,6-8

… they were troubled and abandoned, like sheep without a shepherd.

This morning’s Gospel Reading bears imagery that foreshadows Lent, the Sacred Triduum, and Eastertide.  Catholics instinctually understand that Advent prepares Christians for Christmastide, and that Lent prepares them for Eastertide.  Less understood is that Advent and Christmastide, considered as a single block of time, prepares Christians for Lent and Eastertide.

The evangelist tells us that the crowds were “like sheep without a shepherd”.  Jesus, of course, is the Good Shepherd [see John 10:11,14].  His noblest act of shepherding took place on Calvary, when He sacrificed His life for His flock.

Jesus’ vocation of Self-sacrifice on Calvary is the chief reason why God the Father sent His Only-Begotten to earth.  It’s important not to lose sight of this during Advent and Christmastide.  God the Father sent His Son to be both shepherd and sheep.  Indeed, He shepherds us by becoming one of the sheep:  by being born as one of us, so that on the Cross He could offer to the Father the sacred humanity He received from the Blessed Virgin Mary.

Friday of the First Week of Advent
Isaiah 29:17-24  +  Matthew 9:27-31

The Lord is my light and my salvation.

Advent corresponds roughly with the final weeks when the day grows shorter (at least, in the Northern Hemisphere).  There’s a great deal of imagery in the scriptures and liturgies of Advent that relates to the human struggle with darkness.  For example, the feast day of Saint Lucy—whose name comes from the Latin word for light, and whose feast is celebrated in many countries with a brilliant display of candles—falls close to the midpoint of Advent.  On the following day the Church celebrates the feast of St. John of the Cross, a Doctor of the Church whose writings explore the “dark night of the soul”.

The refrain to today’s Responsorial is:  “The Lord is my light and my salvation.”  To reflect upon the Lord God Himself as “light” is infinitely more significant than reflecting upon the earth’s annual descent into darkness, or even upon the human darkness that one experiences while undergoing spiritual purification and growth in the divine virtue of faith.

The notion of the Lord God as light transcends any other notion of light that human persons experience.  One way to appreciate this difference is to notice how Psalm 27 continues its description of the Lord.  This Lord whom the Psalmist has just described as “light” is the object of the Psalmist’s sight.  Consider how unusual that is.

In ordinary human life, light serves to illuminate physical objects.  A man would be thought odd if he stared at a light bulb, and reckless if he stared at the sun.  But in Psalm 27 the Psalmist describes the Lord as the focus of his sight:  “One thing I ask of the Lord; / this I seek: / To dwell in the house of the Lord / all the days of my life, / That I may gaze on the loveliness of the Lord / and contemplate his temple.”  One might consider these verses as the Old Testament’s clearest description of what the Church calls the “Beatific Vision”.  To be a saint in Heaven is to gaze forever at the Lord, who is pure light.

Thursday of the First Week of Advent
Isaiah 26:1-6  +  Matthew 7:21,24-27

“… only the one who does the will of my Father ….”

The Apostle Paul is sometimes quoted in order to create a false division between faith and good works.  St. Paul makes clear—so it’s said—that salvation in Christ is based upon faith alone.  Good works play no role—so it’s said—in reaching salvation.

Against such misappropriation of St. Paul’s words we have the explanation of Jesus in today’s Gospel Reading.  “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the Kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven.”  Should we take Jesus’ reference to someone saying, “Lord, Lord” and equate it with faith, which some say alone bears salvation?  One might argue that point, and it’s a point worth debating.

However, one cannot doubt that Jesus in today’s Gospel Reading is making a sharp contrast.  Nor can one doubt that when Jesus declares that only the one who does the will of His Father will enter the Kingdom of Heaven, Jesus is speaking about the performance of good works.  At the same time, we ought to be precise about Jesus’ words about this point:  in order to be good works, works must be done according to the will of God the Father.  Not just any old good works will do.

Finally, we ought to note something about those who say to Jesus, “Lord, Lord”.  Jesus doesn’t say here, and the Church does not teach, that salvation is reached by good works alone.  Note whom Jesus is speaking about when He declares:  “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the Kingdom of heaven.”  He is speaking about a general set of people:  all those who say to Jesus, “Lord, Lord.”  Within that set, there is a smaller sub-set.  Among those who say to Jesus, “Lord, Lord”, only those who also do the will of God the Father will enter the Kingdom of Heaven.

During this holy season of Advent, then, our good works can help us not only prepare one day to enter Heaven, but also to celebrate Christmastide fittingly.  This celebration begins with allowing the newborn Christ to bring us from Heaven a bit of His divine life.

St. Andrew, Apostle
Romans 10:9-18  +  Matthew 4:18-22

“And how can they hear without someone to preach?”

There are many things about a man entering the seminary that are misunderstood.  One important point that many people do not understand is that a man enters the seminary in order to continue to discern the calling that the Lord has made to him.  He does not enter the seminary because he has already made a decision to be a priest.

The Lord calls out to every young man, “Come after me….”  What differs from one man to another is the phrase that follows “Come after me….”  For some, the words that follow are “Be my faithful disciple, and serve me wherever you go in the world.”  To others, Jesus says those words by which we hear him calling Simon and Andrew:  “Come after me, and I will make you fishers of men.”  The prayer that a man offers while in the seminary asks the Lord for help in clarifying just which call it is that the Lord has made to him.

“Fishers of men.”  This is a metaphor, of course:  one that speaks to Simon and Andrew, whose lives as adults had been given to the livelihood of being fishermen.  Regardless of the livelihood which they had chosen for themselves, the Lord’s words mean “Come after me.  I chose you to be the servants of my Church.”  No matter the Christian, and no matter the vocation to which the Lord calls him or her, the root of each vocation is service.

The Second Sunday of Advent [A]
Isaiah 11:1-10  +  Romans 15:4-9  +  Matthew 3:1-12

references to the Catechism of the Catholic Church cited for today by the Vatican’s Homiletic Directory:

CCC 522, 711-716, 722: the prophets and the expectation of the Messiah
CCC 523, 717-720: the mission of John the Baptist
CCC 1427-29: conversion of the baptized

“A voice of one crying out in the desert, / Prepare the way of the Lord ….”

St. John the Baptist figures prominently in the Scripture passages that we hear during Advent.  Of course, when St. John the Baptist speaks within these passages, he is an adult.  He is the voice who prepares people for Jesus’ coming.

But John and Jesus were born only six months apart, so when John speaks about Jesus’ coming, he’s not speaking about the coming of Jesus’ birth at Bethlehem.  In what way, then, does John’s preaching about Jesus’ coming connect to what the Season of Advent is all about?

We might say that the Season of Advent requires us to wear bifocals.  We need help to shift our focus because there are two distinct objects for us to look at during Advent, and they stand far apart.  (In fact, Advent also bears a third focus, but in this reflection, consider just the first two.)

We are tempted during December to look only for Jesus’ coming into the world at Bethlehem.  The seasonal music and art that surrounds us narrows our focus to look only for the arrival of the baby Jesus within our fallen world.

Yet Jesus’ coming at Bethlehem was—merely, we might dare to say—a preparation.  Jesus’ entrance into human history through His conception and birth were the condition that makes possible the fulfillment of a larger purpose.  Jesus came into our fallen world so that He could come into each fallen soul in a unique manner.

Of course, God is all-powerful, so He can accomplish any goal He wills by any means He wills.  God could have, for example, redeemed and sanctified fallen man without having to send His Son down from Heaven.  God could have (metaphorically) snapped His fingers in Heaven, and man would have been redeemed.

Instead, the Father chose to redeem and sanctify fallen man by means of the conception, birth, death, and resurrection of His Son.  God chose not to redeem and sanctify man from an infinite distance, but up close.

Jesus’ coming at Bethlehem makes possible the coming of Jesus that John the Baptist proclaims.  At the start of this Sunday’s Gospel Reading, the evangelist notes that John was preaching in a desert.  The point of John’s preaching is summed up by the first word recorded by the evangelist:  “Repent!”  Fallen man’s primary need is to repent.

The historical, geographical desert where John preached symbolizes the state of fallen man’s soul.  The soul of fallen man is dry and barren.  Little grows in a desert, and in the fallen soul the virtues cannot flourish as God designs.

Nonetheless, God wills to enter the desert of the human soul in the flesh.  John entered an earthly desert as a voice crying out, but the Word became flesh so that He might dwell in the desert of the fallen soul, and from within redeem and sanctify it.  The Word made Flesh, when He is admitted into a human soul, makes divine grace and human virtues flourish there.  Perhaps that is why on the morning of the Resurrection, the disciple Mary mistakes the Risen Lord for the gardener.

This line of reflection may seem to be taking us far from the spirit of Advent.  In fact, it points out the trajectory across which Advent points our attention, towards the second focus of the season.  Advent and Christmas, as paired seasons, are the Church’s preparation for Lent and Easter.  Christ’s birth at Bethlehem makes possible His death on Calvary.  Even now during Advent, the Church focuses our attention on this over-arching trajectory through John’s preaching.

The connections between these pairs of seasons—Advent/Christmas and Lent/Easter—reveal one reason why Advent is a penitential season.  The preaching of John the Baptist—both its setting of a desert, and its command to repent—is another reason why Advent is a penitential season.

Of course, we go to Confession not chiefly to confess our sins, but chiefly to receive absolution.  Nonetheless, confession must precede absolution, and repentance must precede confession.

Jesus’ coming into our world at Bethlehem is a miracle of human history, changing the world for all time.  But Jesus’ coming into the soul of a sinner to redeem and sanctify him is a miracle of grace which bears eternal consequences.  The journey of a human sinner into eternally abiding within the presence of God begins with a single word:  “Repent!”