The Third Sunday of Advent [B]
Isaiah 61:1-2,10-11  +  1 Thessalonians 5:16-24  +  John 1:6-8,19-28

“Rejoice in the Lord always!  Again I say, rejoice!”

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

CCC 30, 163, 301, 736, 1829, 1832, 2015, 2362: joy
CCC 713-714: characteristics of the awaited Messiah
CCC 218-219: God’s love for Israel
CCC 772, 796: the Church as the Bride of Christ

John the Baptizer is front and center in our Gospel today.  We might ask, “How is John the Baptizer an Advent figure?”  We don’t have little figurines of St. John the Baptist that we put in our crèche scenes:  he was a six-month old baby, of course, when Jesus was born.  In today’s Gospel passage, St. John the Baptist is a grown man, who’s not speaking about getting ready for the birth of Jesus.  So how is he an Advent figure?  What does his message tell us about our spiritual preparation for Christmas?

If we had to sum up John the Baptizer in one word, that word would be… “witness”.  Our translation of today’s Gospel passage uses a slightly different range of words:  “testimony” and “testify”.  But what do you call a person who testifies, or gives testimony:  is “testifier” a word?  I think the word “witness” sums up what we’re thinking about when we look at John the Baptizer, because you can use it in three different ways, to describe:  (1) who he is;  (2) what he does;  and (3) what he gives.

To give witness authentically, two things have to be true.  You have to know what you’re talking about, and you have to talk truthfully.

On the one hand, the witness that you’re going to give, you have to know to be true.  Sometimes we think of the verb “witness” as something passive, as if you were watching TV.  But to be a good witness in a court of law, you have to have actively witnessed the events in question:  you have to have seen what happened, in what order, and how.

Of course, even if you do know the truth about what happened, you have to be willing to testify, and to do so truthfully.  Imagine, for example, that you were standing on a street corner, and saw an accident between two vehicles.  You saw very clearly that it was the fault of the first vehicle.

But then the drivers get out of their vehicles, and you notice that the driver of the first vehicle is your grandmother.  Suddenly, the police pull up.  Do you go up to the scene of the accident, knowing that the police will ask for your name and a statement?  Or do you turn away from the scene, so that you won’t be called into court to give witness?  What motivates us to give witness, or not to give witness?

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John the Baptizer was not called to give witness about an event.  And neither are we.  John the Baptizer was called to give witness about a person:  the person of Jesus Christ.  For John the Baptizer to give authentic witness about Jesus, two things had to be the case:  (1) he had to know what he was talking about, and (2) he had to talk truthfully.

In terms of John the Baptizer knowing what he was talking about, we have to recognize that there’s a big difference between knowing facts, and knowing a person.  There’s a big difference between knowing—say—algebra, and knowing another person.  There’s also an important difference between knowing facts about a person—such as their date of birth, or height, or favorite color—and knowing the person personally.  To know a person personally, means to have a relationship with that person.

The same is true of each of us, if we are to be a disciple—a follower—of Jesus.  It is not enough to know about Jesus.  The devil himself knows far more about Jesus than you or I are ever likely to know (the devil, like all angels, is a creature of great intelligence).  To know Jesus personally, as His disciple, means to recognize Him for who He says He is:  the Way, the Truth, and the Life; the Lord and meaning of our world.  …  I guarantee you that the devil will never call Him those things.

To know Jesus personally means to know Him as our Lord.  But that’s not enough to give witness to Jesus.  Remember again John the Baptizer.

For John the Baptizer to give authentic witness about Jesus, the second thing that had to be the case was that John had to talk truthfully.  We might think that this is easy:  after all, I’m sure no one here has ever lied about the meaning of Jesus.  I’m sure that none of you ever said to someone at a party, “Jesus is not important to me.”  You’ve never told someone at the grocery store that “Jesus is just a person of historical importance, like Abraham Lincoln, or Martin Luther King, Jr.”  I doubt that any of you has ever tried to convince someone on your block that Jesus was just an inspiring guru, like Moses or Buddha, Confucius or Mohammed.  You’ve never said any of those things.

Unfortunately, none of those statements is the real problem today when it comes to talking truthfully about the meaning of Jesus.  Because the need “to talk truthfully” has two opposites.  That is, there are two ways not “to talk truthfully”.  The first is “to talk falsely”.

The second is “not to talk”, period.  And unfortunately, this is the way that most of us fail to give true witness to Jesus.  Whenever we pray the Confiteor at the beginning of Mass, what do we say to God?  “I have sinned through my own fault… in what I have done, and in what I have failed to do.”

But the last time that you were in the confessional, did you say anything about your call from God to give witness to Jesus?  When was the last time that you said to someone at a party, “Jesus means more to me than any other person in my life”?  When was the last time that you told someone at the grocery store that the teachings of Jesus offer the greatest possible happiness to every human person?  When was the last time that you asked someone on your block if they believed in Jesus?  Is it wrong to do so?

It is certainly culturally wrong.  The culture that surrounds us vilifies and ridicules those who bring their relationship with Jesus to bear on other relationships in their lives.  The culture that surrounds us reduces the meaning of loving Jesus to an interior, subjective feeling, rather than being a communal, objective truth.

In fact, Jesus wasn’t born into this world in order to be “one way among many”, or “one person’s opinion”, or an “alternative lifestyle”.

Jesus was born into this world to be, for every human being, the Way, the Truth, and the Life.  God calls us, as He called John the Baptizer, to give others joyful, truthful witness about the difference that Jesus makes in human life.

St. John the Baptist by Alvise Vivarini (c. 1442- c. 1503)

Thursday of the Second Week of Advent
Isaiah 41:13-20  +  Matthew 11:11-15
December 10, 2020

“And if you are willing to accept it, he is Elijah, the one who is to come.”

St. John the Baptist is a major figure of the early weeks of Advent.  On several of the weekdays in the week leading up to Christmas Day, the Church proclaims passages in which we hear of the Nativity of St. John the Baptist.  The Church, through these passages from St. Luke’s Gospel account, wants us to compare the nativities of John and Jesus in order to understand the connection between the two.

Today’s Gospel Reading is set during the public ministry of Jesus, who declares that John the Baptist “is Elijah, the one who is to come”.  How are we to understand this declaration?  The last book of the Old Testament can help us.  In Malachi 3:23 the Lord of Hosts proclaims:  “Now I am sending to you / Elijah the prophet, / Before the day of the Lord comes, / the great and terrible day”.

During Advent we might well identify “the day of the Lord” with the Nativity of Jesus.  But we ought to remember that Jesus was born at Bethlehem in order to die at Calvary.  The day of Jesus’ death on Calvary is more properly “the day of the Lord”, for on that Good Friday the Lord Jesus took upon His shoulders the sins of all mankind.  That day of Good Friday is “the great and terrible day” of which the Lord speaks in Malachi, and for which St. John the Baptist means to prepare us.

Wednesday of the Second Week of Advent
Isaiah 40:25-31  +  Matthew 11:28-30
December 9, 2020

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 Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary
Genesis 3:9-15,20  +  Ephesians 1:3-6,11-12  +  Luke 1:26-38
December 8, 2020

“Hail, full of grace! The Lord is with you.”

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 there 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.

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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.

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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.

Monday of the Second Week of Advent
Isaiah 35:1-10  +  Luke 5:17-26
December 7, 2020

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 points 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
December 5, 2020

… 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
December 4, 2020

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.

The Second Sunday of Advent [B]
Isaiah 40:1-5,9-11  +  2 Peter 3:8-14  +  Mark 1:1-8

In the desert prepare the way of the LORD!

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references to the Catechism of the Catholic Church cited for this Sunday 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 1042-1050: a new heaven and a new earth

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Baskin-Robbins used to advertise that they sold 31 flavors of ice cream.  You could have a different flavor every day of the month!  On the Baskin-Robbins website, the company states that since 1945, they’ve produced over one thousand, three hundred flavors.  It’s difficult to imagine that ice cream could come in that many different forms.

During the Season of Advent, one of the virtues that the Church sets before us—both for us to reflect upon, and for us to put into action—is the virtue of humility.  One of the potholes that we might fall into, however, is thinking that there’s only one form of humility:  that humility looks the same within each person.  It doesn’t!

The Season of Advent sets before us several models of humility.  During your daily time for prayer and reflection, you might over the next few weeks consider each of these models of humility, one at a time.  Each can help you meditate upon what changes you could make in your life in order to make your life look more like the lives of these models of humility.

Who are these models of humility?  The four chief models of Advent humility are:  St. John the Baptist, St. Joseph, the Blessed Virgin Mary, and Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.  Obviously that order is in order of increasing humility.  Yet the first of the four is first for another reason, also:  because we have to begin with the example of St. John the Baptist.

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Today’s Gospel Reading focuses upon John the Baptist.  This passage is the first eight verses of St. Mark’s account of the Gospel.  It’s telling that St. Mark chose John the Baptist to be the first person he describes in his Gospel account.  St. Mark describes John first, not Jesus, because we need John’s message in order to receive Jesus.

The message of John the Baptist is founded upon humility.  Everything about John speaks to humility:  from the place where he dwells—a desert—to his clothing—camel’s hair and a leather belt—to his diet of locusts and wild honey.  But John’s message is even humbler than his dwelling, clothing, and diet.  His message demands that those listening make themselves humble.

John’s message is a “baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.”  St. Mark the Evangelist goes on to describe this further:  how people “were going out to [John the Baptist] and were being baptized by him in the Jordan River as they acknowledged their sins.”

This act of humility—acknowledging one’s sins—is the first step to accepting the gift of Jesus.  Every year about this time, you hear the saying that Jesus is “the reason for the season”.  True enough.  But what’s the further reason?  That is to ask:  why was Jesus born in Bethlehem?  Why did God the Father send His only Child from Heaven down to earth?

Did God the Father send His Son to earth in order to teach?  There are many world religions that recognize Jesus as a great teacher:  on a par with other religious teachers such as Buddha, or Mohammed, or Confucius, they claim.  But God the Father did not need to send His Son from Heaven in order to teach mankind.  He’d been doing that for centuries through the prophets of the Old Testament.  God the Father could have dropped down copies of the Sermon on Mount from Heaven if He had wanted to.  Teaching was not the chief reason for God the Son to be born at Bethlehem.

The chief reason is summed up in a little saying:  “The wood of the crib is the wood of the cross.”  Or there’s another saying that expresses the same insight:  “Jesus was born in Bethlehem so that he could die on Calvary.”  “So that he could die.”  What God the Son, as God, could not accomplish from Heaven is to die in order to wash away both your sins, and the punishment that your sins merit.  That’s why if you won’t acknowledge your sins as St. John the Baptist demands, you won’t be able to accept Jesus as the gift that God the Father sent Him to be for you.

The Preaching of John the Baptist by Bartholomeus Breenbergh (1598-1657)

Thursday of the First Week of Advent
Isaiah 26:1-6  +  Matthew 7:21,24-27
December 3, 2020

“… 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.