Late Advent Weekday — December 17 Genesis 49:2,8-10 + Matthew 1:1-17
The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.
It’s obvious that today’s date—December 17th—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 17th, 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.
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
Reflections on the Sacred Liturgy 