The Fourth Sunday of Advent [B]
II Samuel 7:1-5,8-11,16  +  Romans 16:25-27  +  Luke 1:26-38

“Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord.  May it be done to me according to your word.”

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

CCC 484-494: the Annunciation
CCC 439, 496, 559, 2616: Jesus is the Son of David
CCC 143-149, 494, 2087: the “obedience of faith”

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Everywhere you look, Christmas already seems here.  Whether we see it in the decorations around us, the parties we have celebrated, or the gifts we have exchanged, the word “Advent” seems somewhat empty.  But as we draw closer to beginning the Church’s celebrations of the Christmas season, there is one more message that comes to us on this last Sunday of Advent—our time of preparation.

This message comes from an angel, and its words are not only for Mary, but for each of us to whom the angel speaks today through the Gospel.  St. Gabriel’s message tells us about a plan:  a plan God has for Mary’s life, and a plan that God has for the life of each one of us.  The purpose of this gospel passage is to show us how to accept in our lives this plan that God has for us.  The way that the gospel shows us to accept this plan is to imitate the Blessed Virgin Mary.  Let’s look more closely at what happens in this gospel passage, because what happens in this event of the Annunciation is what ought to be happening in the lives of each of us, and what must happen if Christmas is to have any meaning for us.

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The first important thing for us to notice in the Annunciation is that it is a dialogue:  the angel speaks, and Mary speaks.  The angel bring the message of God’s plan for Mary’s life:  “You shall conceive and bear a son, and give him the name Jesus.”  But this is not a matter of Gabriel offering dictation from God to Mary, for God is not a dictator.  God’s respect for Mary’s free will is absolute.  The message of Gabriel demands a response from Mary, and the second part of the dialogue is Mary’s response.

Mary responds in two ways:  she asks a question, and gives a reply.  First, the question of Mary is very important for us to consider, since it shows us that Mary is a woman of purpose.  She does not arbitrarily accept God’s will any more than God arbitrarily imposed it.  Mary’s question:  “How can this be?”  does not show us a woman who doubts God’s Will, but who ponders it in her heart.  The angel’s answer to her question does not change her mind, because she was always of one mind.  What her question shows is that her mind always searched for God as much as her will.

Throughout the life of each of us, there is some situation that has presented itself, which very possibly is from God, which challenges you to respond in a Christian manner.  The first thing that this scene of the Annunciation shows us is that we should not worry about pondering it over, about asking questions.  God does not dictate our actions to us; He demands that we ponder them in faith, asking the questions that need to be asked.

The second part of Mary’s response to Gabriel makes us realize that there was never any doubt about what Mary’s reply to God would be.  She proclaims, “Let it be done unto me according to your word.”  The angelic word of message gives rise to the human word of consent:  “Fiat”, meaning “your will is my response.”  Certainly Mary’s question had not prejudiced her reply.  After all, Gabriel’s answer to her question was to point out that her cousin Elizabeth, an elderly woman, was in her sixth month of pregnancy.  Gabriel was simply heaping one miracle upon another.  He may have made it clear that God was at work, but he certainly didn’t make it clear how or why all this was going on.  And yet, Mary’s response was the same:  “Fiat”, “your will is my will.”

If we turn our minds back to those situations that challenge our Christian faith, we realize that God does often respond to our questions– just not always in the way we would wish.  He can show us different signs that might convince us what His will is, but those aren’t necessarily going to explain to us why His will is what it is (and we should not expect them to do so).  We can ask questions of God to help us circle around or probe the questions in our minds, but once we are assured of what that will is, any hesitation becomes doubt.

Acting as Mary does in this scene, with complete faith, is an example for our own spiritual lives.  In many ways, through many messengers, in our prayer and through our interaction with others in daily life, we perceive God at work, making His plan for our life clear.  Is our reply to God just as clear, however?

This last message of the Gospel before the birth of Jesus is helping us to realize something very important:  as we search for God’s will, humility is the attitude we must have.  We can not come to savor the joy of Christmas without living out the humility of Advent.  Advent is a season of humble expectation.

We could use two examples to help us visualize this relationship between Advent and Christmas, humility and joy.  One is very secular:  the relationship between an employee and employer.  Someone who applies for a job is very respectful, humble before an interviewer.  He strives to put forward his best side.  Another example is much more sacred:  the relationship between a man and woman who are attracted to each other.  As a man and a woman court each other, they ask questions of each other, but in humility and respect.  They do not seek an explanation for the attraction that exists between them, for they know that the love between them is first and foremost a mystery.

So is the relationship between you and God.  Husband and wife rejoice in each other without fully understanding the mystery of love that exists between them.  The Church looks forward to celebrating the mystery of God made man which we will begin celebrating in just a few days.  As members of the Church, we hope to serve God as faithfully as the Virgin Mary did, as faithfully as man and wife seek to serve each other.

Our prayer then, in these last days of the Advent season should be a prayer of petition, asking God to help us grow in humility.  For if we have prepared a straight path into our hearts for the Lord to travel, we still must meet Him there with humility, for fear of offending Him.  After His journey from heaven to earth, where He seeks to dwell at the very center of our hearts, what sort of response would it be to meet Him there closed to the plan He has for our lives?

As we approach this altar now, to offer with Christ the Sacrifice of His Body and Blood, let us offer up together to the Father anything that would keep us from meeting the new-born Lord with humbleness of heart.  May Mary be our model of simple and gentle acceptance, hearing and heeding the plan He has for our lives.

The Annunciation by Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519)

Late Advent Weekday — December 17
Genesis 49:2,8-10  +  Matthew 1:1-17
December 17, 2020

The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.

It’s obvious that today’s date—December 17^th—begins the final week of Advent.  One week from today the Church will stand at the threshold of Christmastide.  What’s not so obvious is that the Church approaches this final week of Advent differently than the season’s first few weeks.  Beginning on December 17^th, the Gospel Readings at weekday Mass shift from scenes set during Jesus’ adulthood to scenes set before His birth.

Today’s Gospel Reading is the first seventeen verses of St. Matthew’s Gospel account.  The very first verse tells us what this passage is all about:  “The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.”  This genealogy of Jesus is different than the one recorded by St. Luke the Evangelist in Luke 3:23-38.  St. Matthew’s account of Jesus’ genealogy goes back in history only to Abraham, while St. Luke’s traces Jesus’ lineage back to Adam himself.

Nonetheless, the figures of David and Abraham help us understand the structure of the genealogy that St. Matthew records.  Today consider just the latter of these two persons.  The genealogy has three parts.  Abraham and Jesus stand at either end, revealing the most important truth of this genealogical record:  that Jesus fulfills what Abraham, “our father in faith”, could only foreshadow.  The shadows of the Old Testament are now giving way to the light of Him who soon will be born.

Wednesday of the Third Week of Advent
Isaiah 45:6-8,18,21-25  +  Luke 7:18-23
December 16, 2020

“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—‘Are you 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.

Tuesday of the Third Week of Advent
Zephaniah 3:1-2,9-13  +  Matthew 21:28-32
December 15, 2020

“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.

St. John of the Cross, Priest & Doctor of the Church
Numbers 24:2-7,15-17  +  Matthew 21:23-27
December 14, 2020

He guides the humble to justice, / he teaches the humble his way.

Today is the feast day of St. John of the Cross.  He died on this date in 1591.  It’s common for the church to celebrate the feast of a saint on the date of his or her date of death, inasmuch as the Church considers that date the saint’s “birthday into Heaven” (in Latin, the “dies natalis”).  Still, in the midst of Advent we could hardly have a more fitting modern saint to show us what it means to wait for the coming of the Lord with patience.

In the midst of turmoil throughout the Church in the sixteenth century caused by unfaithful Catholics and by unfaithful reformers, St. John of the Cross worked with St. Teresa of Avila to reform the Church from within.  In Spain these two saints would have had little contact with Protestants opposed to Church unity.  However, they unfortunately faced a great deal of direct opposition from unfaithful Catholics who were opposed to the reformation of the Church from within.  St. John and St. Teresa were members of the Carmelite order, and the reform that God brought to the universal Church grew in no small part from their reform of the Carmelite order.  Unsurprisingly, their reform efforts were met with by great opposition.  St. John of the Cross, for example, was unlawfully imprisoned by his fellow Carmelites for nine months in a cell only six feet by ten feet in size.  This imprisonment ended only because of his escape.

Reform always encounters opposition.  Authentic reform within the Church, such as the reforms led by St. John of the Cross, meets with opposition from those content with laxity.  False reform within the Church meets with opposition from those concerned with the Church’s authentic unity.  Authentic reform within the life of a member of the Church (such as yourself during Advent) meets with opposition from within oneself, where one encounters the stubbornness of one’s own vices and desire for comfort.  Check out from a library, download from the Internet, or purchase one of the writings of St. John of the Cross, and allow this great Doctor of the Church to teach you during Advent of the Dark Night through which we can see the Light of Christ.

Our Lady of Guadalupe
Zechariah 2:14-17 [or Revelation 11:19;12:1-6,10]  +  Luke 1:26-38
December 12, 2020

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.

Friday of the Second Week of Advent
Isaiah 48:17-19  +  Matthew 11:16-19
December 11, 2020

“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

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.