Sunday Homily 12-12-10, 3rd Advent
Readings: Isaiah 35, 1-10; Psalm 146, Lord, Come and Save Us; James 5, 7-10; Matthew 11, 2-11.
Intro to Readings
Remember what I had said on the First Sunday of Advent, it is a time when the Church turns towards not just the coming of Jesus at Christmas but gives greater focus on the Second coming of Jesus at the end time. We can see this very clearly in our readings today. It is a common theme; “when is the world going to end?” “what will be the signs?” For the Jews there was an expectation that it was when all wrongs would be made right.
The second reading is interesting. It is a letter from James. There has been much speculation on who this James is. The apostle James or the James mentioned as the ‘brother of the Lord’. We just don’t know and there are different supporters for each position. The letter is more like a sermon than a typical letter from the time. The main purpose of the letter seems to be to warn the hearers of the danger of having just an abstract faith. Faith must be implemented in every action of our lives. It can become too easy to make it theory and nothing more.
The responsorial psalm is worth thinking about carefully. It too picks up the same theme of the results of God’s activity in human lives!
Homily
This past week the Church celebrated two big feasts, on Wednesday it was the Immaculate Conception and then today Our Lady of Guadalupe. Certainly a big week for Mary. The Immaculate Conception is a statement about Mary’s birth, namely that she was conceived to be free from sin. I am not too sure what to make of that statement, but it is the Church’s way of honoring her as the mother of Jesus. As we get closer to Christmas I would like to spend a few minutes reflecting with you on what Christmas might mean for us today.
I remember many years ago reading a book on Quantum Mechanics and it was examining the question whether light traveled as a wave or a particle!! A great book! The feast of the Incarnation, namely God becoming human, is one of those events beyond our ability to understand. I am sorry to have to keep saying it but God is way outside our ability to comprehend.
The Jews were smart when they basically adopted the use of the name Yahweh without the vowels, in other words a name you could not say. It sounds like something JK Rowling dreamed up for the Harry Potter world! And yet our faith has gone to the trouble of coming out with proclamations about God in great detail. One of the great blessings of both Luke and Matthew’s infancy stories about the birth of Jesus is that they are very easy to understand, which is what makes Christmas a wonderful event! We can all relate to a baby’s birth, in fact we have all gone thru one!!
The insight I have had this past few weeks was that since God is outside of time, then that event, God becoming human, even though it was an event in our experience that happened over two thousand years ago, since God is outside of time, it is an event which is always happening for God! Look around you. God is present in each one of us. We have been given clues by Jesus of this: remember “where two or three are gathered” or “as often as you did it for one of these”.
In Jesus’s response to John’s disciples he tells them to go back to John and tell him what they see, and there is almost a direct quote from our first reading from Isaiah about the blind seeing etc. Remember last Sunday John sharing about his Jesuit friend Fr. Larry Gillick. His blindness was taken away by his Jesuit colleagues who read to him and helped him so that he could pass the exams! Maybe that is how the blind see!!
This Christmas, as we go about our busy days, trying to get too much done in too little time, pause! Not only are the people you meet bringing God into your life, but you are also bringing God into theirs. It may be that you will have an opportunity to help the blind see, the lame walk, the deaf hear and the poor have the good news preached to them.
Picture 1: Mass begins
Picture 2: Eleanor with her grand dad
Picture 3: Dillon lighting the candles
Picture 4: Our Father
Picture 5: Ben & Amanda
