Third Sunday of Advent - “Rejoice!”

Readings: Isaiah 61: 1-2, 10-11; Luke 1: 46-55; 1 Thessalonians 5: 16-24; John 1: 6-8, 19-28

Today is Gaudete Sunday, named after the Latin word “Rejoice!” or ‘Be joyful!’ Joy is or expresses a sense of well-being, a fullness of blessing, gratitude, confidence, assurance, celebration, and may be more exuberant or peaceful depending on the person and situation. Joy in some way takes you out of yourself and focuses your attention on another. You cease to become pre-occupied with yourself and are occupied joyfully with another.

Joy certainly involves emotion but can it be spiritual? There are plenty of references in the psalms to people being joyful owing to their relationship with God. Joy flows from God's presence to them - and them to him. It is the pleasure that God takes in people, and in acting on their behalf and blessing them.

Is there such a thing or quality as Christian joy? Paul thought so and lists it as one of the fruit of the Holy Spirit (Gal 5: 22). As we read today, Paul thought it important enough to encourage the Thessalonians: "Always be joyful! (1 Thes 5:16)"

Real Christian joy is based on Christ's Risen presence to us which transforms everything if we let it. He comes to us with his blessings and the joy he takes in us. Advent is a time for us to come more and more into the presence of God who comes to us anew. The Lord says to us: "Rejoice in my presence. I am present to your hearts - to your deepest self where I dwell. Do not overlook this or turn away. Let me also be present to your mind, your conscience, your conduct. Let my presence grow and be fully manifest. Grow in my presence and in your presence to me - by your joyful and loving attention and trusting surrender to me and my will." This is close to the advice of the section of Paul’s letter to the Thessalonians that we read today. This joy in God flows to and from the joy we see in goodness around us, in others or the world, both of which come from the goodness of God. Joy increases the more things are seen in a divine light, the more we orientate ourselves and our priorities towards God and let the joy that comes from God be our strength. But we can seek joy in the wrong things. Jesus, and Scripture generally, indicate that such joy does not last.

Mary in her Magnificat (today’s psalm) expresses the joy of someone whose life is focussed on God. Today’s gospel with its call by John the Baptist to repent and make our paths straight for God and its challenge that, like John, we realise how small we are before God also tells us how to be joyful. I think John the Baptist would have endorsed the following anagram of J-O-Y for what our priorities ought to be – had he only known English! According to it, our priorities need to be: J - Jesus firstly; O - others, secondly; and Y - yourself, last. Then we will be ready for the Lord. We will also be able to rejoice in him now and always!

Second Week of Advent - Saturday - 'Elijah has already come'

 Readings: Sirach 48:1-4,9-11; Psalm 80; Matthew 17:9.10-13

John the Baptist must have cut a strange figure in his day. No matter how many and various the attempts to sanitise his image, he is for many of us, an extreme character. Yet, he is a character who fulfils a vital role in salvation history. But however ‘obvious’ he may have been, the disciples in today’s Gospel could not immediately equate John with another, equally extreme figure of scripture, Elijah. Elijah, ‘whose words were a flaming furnace’, and who was destined to return and ‘to turn back the hearts of fathers to their sons.’

Following Jesus down the mountain after his Transfiguration, the disciples ask him; “Why do the scribes say that Elijah has to come first?” Jesus replies: “I tell you that Elijah has come already and they did not recognize him but treated him as they pleased.” Like the scribes, the disciples presume that the literal Elijah, who was translated into heaven, would return as forerunner to the Messiah. They do not immediately see John the Baptist as a ‘type’; one who would precede the Messiah in the spirit and power of Elijah, and prepare the way for his coming (Malachi 3:1, 4:5).

The disciples initial blindness to this fact is echoed in the wider people, Israel; ‘they did not recognize him’. Not only did they not recognize him, but he was treated cruelly and killed for his pains. Like Christ he was destined, ‘to suffer at their hands’. With Jesus to explain, the disciples were to understand all this, unlike the ‘scribes’. A clear implication for us is whether we are to be disciples or scribes. Are we to grasp the message of Christ and prepare earnestly for his coming or are we to reject his words and ultimately him. Further to this we can indeed, try to be ‘types’ of John the Baptist, and make others ready for Christ’s coming. We can try to share in the Baptist’s ministry and, ‘make straight the way of the Lord’ (John 1:23) However, in doing so, we must be prepared for others to see us as strange and extreme, and be prepared for the cruelty and rejection of the world should it come.

Second Week of Advent - Friday - 'Wisdom is justified by her deeds'

Readings: Isaiah 48:17-19, Ps 1, Matthew 11:16-19

If you want to live as part of a happy community, usually it's a good idea to try to fit in and not cause offence to other people – don't rock the boat. This principle governs much of our day to day behaviour, and within reason, this is no bad thing, but today's Gospel reminds us that this cannot be an ultimate principle. John the Baptist, who went out into the wilderness and preached a message of repentance, definitely didn't fit in, and Jesus, who ate and drank with tax collectors and sinners, certainly caused offence.

What is at work here is divine wisdom. Jesus says 'Wisdom is justified by her deeds.' The ultimate guiding principle to our actions must be love of divine wisdom. If we show sorrows for our sins by fasting and try to live lives of purity, we might not fit in with the rest of society, but we will be open to divine wisdom. Likewise, befriending people who don't follow Church teaching may be a cause of scandal – we may find ourselves being accused of selling out or supporting sinful behaviour – but this fear of scandal cannot be a reason for hostility towards such people. If we are to be open to divine wisdom, we must also be willing to share it. It is our greatest gift. Trying not to rock the boat may be an expression of love of neighbour, but all too often, we are motivated by purely selfish motives – we don't want people to think we are weird and we want to be respected and loved. Let us therefore pray that our hearts may be truly open to the divine wisdom, the Word of God, who became Incarnate in Jesus Christ.

8th December - The Immaculate Conception - "Just another difficult dogma?"

Readings: Genesis 3: 9-15, 20; Psalm 98; Ephesians 1: 3-6, 11-12; Luke 1: 26-38

To summarise the question of a commenter on a previous year’s Godzdogz post on this feast, what’s the point of the Immaculate Conception? Isn’t it just another of those impossible things which Catholics, like the Queen of Hearts in Alice in Wonderland, have to believe before breakfast?

Well, first of all, we should make sure we’re clear what we’re talking about: far too often, people talk of the ‘immaculate conception’ when what they really mean is the Annunciation or the Virgin Birth – in other words, the conception and birth of Jesus without an earthly father. In fact, however, the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception is something completely different, teaching that Mary, uniquely among human beings since Adam and Eve (other than her Son), was free from sin from the first moment of conception. If it is an impossible thing, it’s an impossible thing that those who would deny original sin believe to be true of everyone!

What if we do accept the notion of original sin, though? What is the significance of Mary’s Immaculate Conception? Well, we must remember that the Immaculate Conception was not an isolated event, but the beginning of a life entirely without sin, a life entirely in accordance with God’s will. In saying that Mary was free from sin from the first moment of her conception, we are saying something about the primacy of God’s love over sin and death; that same love which we see revealed when the Son of God dies upon the Cross, we see too in its power to preserve the Mother of God completely from the stain of sin.

The Incarnation of God’s Son is the way in which God restores us to his friendship, which we lost with the sin of the first human beings, and it is also the way in which he reveals that he has done this; the Immaculate Conception of Mary, in turn, is one way in which we see the difference ‘fullness of grace’ (cf. Lk 1: 28) makes – that grace which Jesus offers to us all. For we should not forget that, in defining the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, Pius IX made it clear that it was ‘in view of the merits of Jesus Christ, the Saviour of the human race’ (Apostolic Constitution Ineffabilis Deus) that Mary was conceived without sin. In this special grace of Mary’s, this complete freedom from sin for the whole of her life, we see something of what life will be like in heaven for all whom, through the merits of Christ, God calls his friends.

So no, the Immaculate Conception is not just another difficult dogma we have to believe as a sign of our obedient submission to the faith: rather, it presents us with one aspect of the amazing truth of the power of God’s providential love for the whole human race.

Second Week of Advent - Wednesday: ‘Come to me, all who labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.’

Readings: Isaiah 40: 25-31 Ps 102 Matthew 11:28-30

In today’s gospel Jesus tells us: ‘learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly of heart, and you will find rest for your souls.’ The implication seems to be that in lowliness of heart, in humility, we find peace and rest. In my experience most people intuitively grasp this point from their own experience. One of the things we notice when we reflect upon the stresses and anxieties of our life is that often, not always but often, the root cause of our distress is that we are trying to be something that we are not. To put this another way, we create tension in our lives when we try to be the person that we want to be, or the person that others think we should be, rather than the person that God created us to be. A humble person is one who knows the truth about themselves, a person who has a realistic vision of who they are, and who God is calling them to be. Humility, then, does not mean thinking negatively about oneself. On the contrary, it means thinking accurately about oneself and our relationship with God.

The paradigm of our relationship with God is the Trinity itself. In our first reading the prophet Isaiah is at pains to emphasise that we must recognise God alone as almighty, and that as such we are utterly dependent on Him. At the same time we must recognise that this almighty God loves us more than we can possibly concieve and even sent us His Son and His Spirit that we might share in His life. Christ's humility, Christ's peace, flowed from his knowledge of God and his knowledge of Himself. Because Christ saw the truth he knew that he was loved. When we live with and in Christ through the Spirit, we share in the mutual outpouring of love of the Trinity. We can gain a taste of this peace, this rest, this Divine life here on earth: but it comes to its completion only in the vision of God in heaven.

Humility, then, is the recognition and acceptance of the truth of who we are, and the recognition and acceptance of the truth of our relationship with God. The opposite of humility, Pride, must therefore be a rejection of this truth. Pride is fundamentally an attempt to live independently from God, an attempt to live by our own strength. Often Pride is driven by fear, a fear of taking a risk, a fear of becoming a disciple of Christ. Sometimes Pride is motivated by a desire for autonomy, a refusal to submit to God’s authority in particular areas of our life. Sometimes Pride is driven by a lust for power, a desire to become a kind of god, a rival to God. Pride is ultimately the root of all sin so it is worth reflecting seriously upon what lies behind our sins in this pentitential season. St Augustine famously declared at the beginning of his Confessions that our hearts are restless until they rest in God. We exhaust and wound ourselves when we struggle to live apart from God. Obedience to Christ may mean taking on a yoke, but it is a yoke that He has made for us, one that fits us and suits us, one that will lead us into ever deeper love of God and neighbour.

Second Week of Advent - Tuesday: it is not the will of your heavenly Father that one of these little ones be lost.

Readings: Isaiah 40: 1-11; Psalm 95; Matthew 18: 12-14

We grow up as Christians with many images of God (and Christ) that we find in the Gospels and the Epistles relating God to the Church. Some of the most common ones are: the corner stone to the edifice, the vine and its branches and many others. One image of God that people might forget is the one of the Good Shepherd. A good shepherd attends to his flock (as a shepherdess does to hers). The First reading starts by these very encouraging words:”Comfort, give comfort to my people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and proclaim to her that her service is at an end, her guilt is expiated; Indeed, she has received from the hand of the LORD double for all her sins.” The Gospel is concluded by words even more consoling”…it is not the will of your heavenly Father that one of these little ones be lost.” What marvellous words to listen to during Advent! It is consoling to know that our God loves us and takes care of us. So, we should not fear God. It would be sad to spend our lives living in fear of a God who created us out of love.

Countless people in the Church are afraid of God because they see themselves as nothing else but sinners. This mind-set influences every action they perform. They would spend their entire life seeing sin and punishment everywhere. But as they would not be able to avoid sinning – in my mother tongue Kinyarwanda it is said that a saint sins seven times in one day – they would spend their whole life in terror and self-hatred. They forget that the God who will judge them is also a caring God, full of gentleness towards God’s people, just as a shepherd cares about the flock. Are usually children terrified by the idea that their caring parents are going to punish them? The fear of punishment might even lead to deceit and thus to more sins.

It happens that non-Christians accuse Christians of not being happy people. They experience that terror displayed by some Christians and rightfully make their conclusions. This is because some Christians expect the king who is to come to be merciless. Today’s readings remind us that our King is a Good Shepherd and is different from others kings. “That imagery [of kingship] is meant to keep the human kings in check” (Schneiders, S. God is more than two men and a bird. US Catholic, May 1990. 20, 22-27. p. 23). Christ who is being born on Christmas is gentle and humble. He chose to be born among sinners because he knew they needed someone to help them live their lives with the joy of knowing that he understands their limitations. That is why he gave us the image of a gentle and caring shepherd, who goes to look for the stray sheep.

Today, let us pray that we may understand that God is Love and that our lives are not a difficult course created by God to test our fidelity. May Christ, our expected king, bring us that hope and happiness he used to give to all those who met him.

And as we celebrate St Nicholas today, I would like to wish a happy feast to our brother Nicholas Crowe OP. May he continue to be inspired by the humble and generous saint.

Second Week of Advent - Monday: "Friend, your sins are forgiven you."

Readings: Isaiah 35: 1-10; Psalm 85; Luke 5: 17-26

Would you be comfortable waging your salvation on the strength of your faith? Is your faith strong enough to save you? The Gospel presents these questions often. At some point in our lives, we will each have to answer. Hopefully, each of us is ready to respond with an emphatic “Yes!”

However, would we be as zealous, as sure of the strength of our faith, if someone else’s salvation rested on our faith?

The men who lower the paralytic through the roof in the Gospel of Luke recognize the importance of acting on their faith. The crowd is too dense. They cannot get the paralytic to Jesus. If they wait too long, these men may never have a chance to save their friend. Yet, they do not let this obstacle stand in their way. When Jesus sees this man lowered through the roof, he does not cite the paralytic’s faith as he heals him. Rather, Jesus sees the faith of these men who let nothing stand between God and someone in need of God’s healing.

It can be easy for us to put ourselves on the line in a grave situation. Often times, we consider self-sacrifice a way of growing in our faith. If we fail at first, then we acknowledge our failure, repent, and continue in the life of faith. But when we realize that our faith and actions impact the wellbeing of others, we open ourselves up to the reality of our Christian vocations.

Our faith in God is not a gift solely for our benefit. We do not follow Christ isolated from other people on our own private paths. The grace of God must be diffusive, coming from God, through us, to the world. For this reason, the Church exhorts us toward the Sacraments and public witness, not only that we may grow in faith, but that we may also bring the gift of faith to others.

As we continue our Advent meditations, let us contemplate how our faith impacts the lives of others. I do not doubt the awe one experiences when hearing Jesus say, “Your faith has saved you.” But, as a member of the Body of Christ, I think such an experience reaches its zenith when Jesus also says, “Your faith has saved others.”