(Isaiah 61: 1-2, 10-11; 1 Thessalonians 5:16-24; John 1: 6-8, 19-28)
The
great prophet Isaiah spoke most assuredly about God’s forthcoming work for the
glorification of Zion and salvation in Israel, and in today’s reading he portrays
one majestic figure yet to come:
I rejoice heartily in the LORD,
in my God is the joy of my soul; for, like a bridegroom adorned with diadem,
Who was Isaiah foreshadowing there? Whom did he have in mind when saying:
He
has clothed me with a robe of salvation, and wrapped me in a mantle of justice.
Above
all, who could he imagine to be:
Adorned, with a diadem …
Indeed,
with the diadem of the MOST
HOLY SPIRIT (cf.
61:1)
Isaiah
was not of course ‘imagining’ anyone, he was speaking under divine inspiration of
one of whom only God could authoritatively speak, Jesus, the Beloved and
Only-Begotten Son of God: incarnate, that is, clothed in, wrapped in, flesh
given Him by His immaculate mother, Mary the Flower of Israel, herself adorned with jewels,
that is, the privileges of her Immaculate
Conception.
And the ultimate
reason for all this rejoicing? It is indeed
a most sublime reason, pre-eminently worthy of such rejoicing, because it fulfils
and answers both the eternally-loving purpose of Our God and Father, and
mankind’s own deepest longing since being cast out of Eden and away from God’s
presence:
THE LORD GOD WILL MAKE JUSTICE
AND PRAISE SPRING UP BEFORE ALL THE NATIONS.
Notice, dear People of God, that PRAISE is associated with ‘justice’ essentially!! One fully justified instinctively rejoices
in the Lord, such a one cannot not-rejoice in the Lord!
And yet, when that promised Coming One -- Son of the Virgin
Mother -- was about to begin His work of
making ‘justice and praise spring up’, the greatest of all the prophets, John
the Baptist found himself confirming Isaiah’s prophecy by making use of much more
sober language in order to reveal with all clarity a truly disconcerting
reality:
I am the voice of one crying out
in the desert, make straight the way of the Lord; for there is One among you
Whom you do not recognize, the One coming after me, Whose sandal strap I am not
worthy to untie.
That is the setting for our
Advent preparations to welcome the Lord coming to His spouse -- Mother Church –
this Christmas, to make her more recognizable
as ‘a bride bedecked with jewels’.
Dear People of God, look all around you
this Advent time at the great majority of Christmas celebrations and you will
have no doubt about the truth of the Baptist’s words:
There is One among you Whom you do not recognize.
Why is Jesus
not recognized today by those, so many of them, who were formerly professing
Catholics or Christians? It is, to a
certain extent, because many have succumbed to the lure and enticements of
popular sin, or have fainted or despaired under the burden of personal and worldly
cares.
There is,
however, another cause for Jesus being unrecognizable for too many of our
fellows, be they merely nominal Catholics or Christians or just present-day
unbelievers, and that is because they
have long been out of touch with, and have become unaware of and
insensitive to, the real Jesus of Mother Church’s authentic teaching and apostolic
traditions.
Dear Catholic
People of God, as Catholics we are members of the original body
established by Jesus as His Church, on the foundations of His Personally chosen
and Spirit-endowed Apostles, to whom He uniquely said:
I
no longer call you slaves, because a slave does not know what his master is
doing. I have called you friends, because I have told YOU everything I
have heard from My Father. (John
15:15)
Moreover, He promised those original Twelve that:
The Advocate, the Holy
Spirit that the Father will send in My name — He will teach you everything
and remind you of all that (I) told you. (John 14:26)
Those original Apostles are thus the source of Mother Church’s doctrinal
teaching and traditions, and it is absolutely necessary that those
Apostolic memories of Jesus’ words --- addressed Personally and directly to
them as His friends for the good of further friends to come through their
ministry -- that those Apostolic traditions learned from Jesus’ very actions
and attitudes, and witnessed by their own eyes and heard by their own ears, remain
intact and appreciated in Mother Church today.
No one -- not even a Pope -- can sever us from Jesus’ love and guidance handed
down through the ages in those Apostolic
doctrines and traditions.
There are difficulties today for a faithless generation wanting to
justify itself and acquire worldly popularity: it tries to confuse
issues by subtly ‘updating’ certain texts of the Gospel, that is, by teaching
them in accordance with modern preferences while, on the other hand, simply
trying to consign to oblivion other authentic teachings that cannot be thus ‘updated’.
This is due to the fact that (as Jesus Himself said, John
14:17):
This is the Spirit of Truth, Whom the world
cannot receive, because it neither sees Him nor knows Him. You know Him,
because He abides with you, and He will be in you.
The world cannot receive the Spirit of Truth
because it does not, will not, believe in Jesus:
And
when He (the Advocate, the Spirit of Truth) comes,
He will convict the world in regard to sin, because they do not believe in
Me. (John 16:8–9)
The Apostles, on the other hand, know the Spirit of
Truth, because He already abides with
them as leaders of the future Catholic Church of Jesus, and will be in them individually, as faithful
disciples of and witnesses to Jesus their Lord and Saviour.
The season of Advent is a time of great expectancy, when devout
Catholics and Christians look forward to
the coming of the Lord; and being certain that His coming anew this Christmas
will be for our blessing, let us all beseech His most Holy Spirit to prepare us
to welcome Him with hearts and minds authentically attuned to Him in the
Apostolic purity of Mother Church’s authentic teaching and traditions.
We are also aware that at the appointed time -- we do not
know precisely when -- He will come in glory to judge the world, to triumph
over all His enemies and cast out Satan; and then, after having ultimately
established the Kingdom of God, He will lead all His faithful ones to worship
and rejoice in, the supreme Lordship of His Father. This is what St. Paul
explained when writing his first letter to his converts in Corinth:
As in Adam all die, even so in
Christ all shall be made alive. But
each one in his own order: Christ the first-fruits, afterward those who are
Christ's at His coming. Then comes the
end, when He delivers the kingdom to God the Father, when He puts an end to all
rule and all authority and power. For,
He must reign till He has put all enemies under His feet; the last enemy that
will be destroyed is death, for, "He has put all things under His
feet." (1 Corinthians
15:22-26)
This season of Advent is a time of joyful expectancy
indeed, but it is a Christian joy, sieved, as it were, through a
God-given awareness of his/her human weakness, ignorance, and personal
sinfulness; it is a most-truly Christian joy: gladdening-the-heart and also
humbling-the-mind of those called to become true children of God, loving Him in
all and above all, as Jesus Our Saviour would have us do by the Gift of His own
Most Holy Spirit.
And therefore, all true Catholics and Christians can share,
take part in, with all confidence and simplicity, humility and sincerity, that blessing
enshrined in Isaiah’s great oracle:
I rejoice heartily in the Lord, in my GOD IS THE JOY OF MY SOUL.
