Baptism of Our Lord Year C 2016

BAPTISM of Our Lord (C)

 (Isaiah 42:1-4, 6-7; Acts of the Apostles 10:34-38; Luke 3:15-16, 21-22)

There was an atmosphere of tense expectancy among the crowds of devout Jews thronging to John by the banks of the Jordan: there was something about the man -- his solitary life-style, his ascetic demeanour and powerful words – all of which made him seem like one of the old-style prophets whom the present generation had only heard spoken of as belonging to what seemed a dim and distant past.   There was, however, something yet more fascinating about John the Baptist: an undeniably mysterious something which was causing many to think that he might possibly be the promised Messiah -- the Christ, as St. Luke puts it -- for whose coming devout Israelites had been praying for centuries.  Although John did his best to dampen such expectations of him, nevertheless, people who came crowding to him for baptism were so centred on his personality that they probably did not even notice the figure of one more young man quietly joining the queue moving forward for baptism.

However, with the approach of that young man John’s ministry was nearing its climactic fulfilment, and his true purpose and identity were about to be revealed: for that young man had once been brought (while still early in His mother’s womb) to John (himself then about to be born of his mother Elizabeth) for John’s pre-sanctification in view of his life’s work ahead and personal destiny.  And now that young man – Jesus of Nazareth – was appearing before John once again, being brought this time by the inspiration of His heavenly Father for both His own Personal commissioning and manifestation in Israel and for John’s fulfilment as supreme witness and faithful forerunner:

            He must increase, I must decrease.

Jesus, having long recognized and, since His ‘coming of age’ as a son-of-the-Law, openly declared God to be His most true and only Father, had come -- despite His youthful longing to be immediately doing His Father’s business -- to appreciate that His duty to Mary His mother, and to Joseph while still alive, required that He return with them to Nazareth: there, He grew in grace and favour before God and men to the fullness of His human maturity.  But His longing to be about His Father’s business was ever abiding and  increasing over the years as He waited and watched in all the circumstances of His daily life and professional work, above all, however, in His Personal prayer and participation in synagogue worship, for His Father’s call to Messianic work.

He had come to hear of John the Baptist’s prophetic activity and of its effect on many of Israel’s faithful, and He had begun to wonder if He should be there, where people were openly acknowledging their need of God, and where His Father was manifestly at work.  Oh, how He longed to seek out His Father’s traces and find out His will for Him!  And thus it came about: Jesus joined the crowd of God-seekers around John; listening and watching not so much for John -- His now publicly-acclaimed relative -- but for His own supremely beloved and, as yet publicly unknown, Father.

However, when that apparently indistinguishable young man was actually receiving John’s baptism a voice spoke from heaven and a dove descended upon Him: John saw the dove and perhaps heard the words spoken; the people however -- though they sensed the unique atmosphere of sacred presence -- saw and heard nothing humanly distinct, because the words from heaven were directed not to them but to the young man Himself:

When Jesus had been baptized and, (as He) was praying, heaven was opened and the Holy Spirit descended upon Him in bodily form like a dove.  And a voice came from heaven, "You are My beloved Son; with You I am well pleased."

Jesus had indeed understood His Father’s inspirations aright!!

John, for his part, was not unprepared for such a vision, since God had told him that:

One mightier than (he was) coming, Who (would) baptize (the people) with the Holy Spirit and fire.

As a result, John was eager and able to recognize Jesus when he saw:

            the Holy Spirit descend in bodily form like a dove upon (Him).

John might even have been permitted to hear those words addressed to Jesus by the voice from heaven, but such personal words from the Father to His only-begotten Son may have been too intimate and too holy for even one so exalted as John the Baptist to be allowed to overhear.  Consequently, we in Mother Church should recognize that we are wonderfully privileged to know not only what the Jewish penitents surrounding John and Jesus by the Jordan certainly did not know, but also what perhaps even John the Baptist himself was not allowed to hear; and that, of course, would be in perfect accord with the words Jesus was to speak later concerning John (Matthew 11:11):

Amen I say to you, among those born of women there has been none greater than John the Baptist; yet the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.

Nevertheless, whether or not he heard the words, John most certainly saw the Spirit descending like a dove on Jesus, and would have immediately recalled what the Scriptures told of Noah in the beginning (Genesis 8:10-12):

Noah again released the dove from the ark.  In the evening the dove came to him, and there in its bill was a plucked-off olive leaf!  So Noah knew that the waters had diminished on the earth. 

Likewise, when John saw the Spirit descend like a dove on Jesus it is quite possible that he was prophetically privileged to appreciate that mankind’s ancient servitude to sin was coming to its end and that they would be enabled to find, once again, acceptance and peace with God through this mysterious young relative of his, Jesus, now standing before him, dripping water and engrossed in prayer.  John knew well those words of Isaiah which we heard in our first reading:

Here is My servant whom I uphold, My chosen one with Whom I am pleased!  Upon Him I have put My Spirit; He shall bring forth justice to the nations.   He will not cry out nor shout, a dimly burning wick He will not quench, until He establishes justice on the earth; the coastlands will wait for His teaching.

Indeed, it was with such a One in mind that he himself had told the waiting people:

I am baptizing you with water; but One mightier than I is coming, I am not worthy to loosen the thongs of His sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.

The Son, with Whom the voice of the heavenly Father declared Himself  well pleased, was One with the Spirit in the glory of His Father; He was therefore able, as the Messianic leader, to receive the fullness of the Holy Spirit in His human nature and, indeed, would shortly ‘deploy’ that human fullness of Holiness and Power for the very first time by  means of a victorious encounter with mankind’s arch-enemy, the Devil, in the desert acknowledged to be the Devil’s very own dwelling-place, before entering upon His public ministry:

How can anyone enter a strong man’s house and steal his property unless He first ties up the strong man?  Then He can plunder his house.  (Matthew 12:29)

We learn from subsequent words of Jesus spoken shortly before His conclusive encounter with Satan on Calvary, with what dispositions He had received His baptismal endowment of the Spirit and had entered upon that initial contest against Sin-Personified at the beginning of His public mission (St. Luke 12:49):

I have come to set the earth on fire, and how I wish it were already blazing! 

Jesus received in His own humanity the fullness of the Spirit so that subsequently He might pour out that Spirit over humankind as God’s Gift in and through His Church.  For the hearts and minds of those true disciples who would have faith in, and give obedience to, Jesus could only be cleansed of their native sinfulness by such a Gift, Who, in His cleansing activity would indeed show Himself to be a Spirit of divine fire: purging, purifying, and preparing a new People of God, able to witness in the power of the Spirit to the name of Jesus Christ Saviour for the eternal glory of the heavenly Father and the salvation of mankind.

That ardent longing of Jesus to ‘set the earth on fire’ was, indeed, the very purpose for which, having risen from the dead, He expressly equipped His Church, the very work for which He confirmed His Apostles and commanded them to spearhead:

When the time for Pentecost was fulfilled, they were all in one place together.  And suddenly there came from the sky a noise like a strong driving wind, and it filled the entire house in which they were.  Then there appeared to them tongues as of fire, which parted and came to rest on each one of them. (Acts 2:1-3)

John the Baptist spoke of the work that Jesus’ baptism would accomplish when he declared:

He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.  His winnowing fan is in His hand to clear His threshing floor and to gather the wheat into His barn; but the chaff He will burn with unquenchable fire.

And that was how John, the greatest of Old Testament prophets, understood the image of fire.  However, that is an understanding we can and should appreciate more fully in the light of the subsequent work of Jesus here on earth and of His Holy Spirit in the life of the Church.   The Spirit would indeed ‘burn the chaff’, but first of all in the hearts of His chosen ones; and the greater their obedience and docility, the more they would allow Him a free hand in their lives, the greater would be the blaze of purifying love He would kindle and stoke up within them.  For the world at large, however -- for those stumbling and hurting themselves in the darkness of sin -- He would first of all show Himself to be the Spirit of Love and of Truth, a tongue of fire enabling the Apostles and prophets of Mother Church to tell forth the love of God and proclaim His Good News of peace for all men and women of good will (Matthew 10:20):

It is not you who speak, but the Spirit of your Father Who speaks in you.

People of God, let us learn from the baptism of Our Lord something of the nature of our vocation.

If the Spirit of Jesus is to be heard by the world around us, a deeply sinful world delighting in its own disfigurement … if He is to be heard and appreciated by them in the manner of that beautiful word-picture painted by the great prophet Isaiah (52:7) who said:

How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of the One bringing good news, Announcing peace, bearing good news, announcing salvation and saying to Zion, “Your God is King”;

if, dear People of God, we are to help our world encounter Jesus as He Himself wanted (Luke 4:18) to be found by them:

The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, because He has anointed Me to bring glad tidings to the poor.  He has sent Me to proclaim liberty to captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free;

then we must implore the Spirit of Jesus to work in us as fire, as  purifying fire in our very deepest selves, purging us ever more and more from our personal sinfulness, and enabling us to commit ourselves ever more whole-heartedly to Our Lord and His work.  That is the only spirit of sacrifice, the only testimony of fraternal love, that can make us true disciples of Him Who sacrificed Himself for the sins of the world.

We cannot trust in our own presumed zeal and good intentions as does the proud, post-Christian, society around us; for what is needed most of all today is not that we – whether as individuals or as a social body -- pass off ourselves as good people doing good things we have thought up for ourselves without needing to acknowledge any help from a supposedly authoritative and guiding God, but that the Spirit of Jesus is able to find a welcome in the hearts of humble men and women of our day, thanks to Mother Church’s authentic proclamation of the Good News of Jesus, and our own deepest prayers and most sincere endeavours to allow the Spirit of Jesus -- the ‘Gift’ of God and of Mother Church -- to work fully and freely in us, leading us along the ways of Jesus: ways of authentic self-sacrifice for the good of our brethren, and of humble gratitude and praise for the glory of our Father in heaven.                          

The Epiphany 2016

                       The Epiphany                                                             

 (Isaiah 60:1-6; Ephesians 3:2-3, 5-6; Matthew 2:1-12)

In the Eastern Church today’s solemnity of the Epiphany of Our Lord has precedence over Christmas, whereas for us in the West, Christmas Day is the greater celebration; and the reason for this diversity is that these two solemn celebrations are complementary

. 

At Christmas we celebrate God’s inconceivable humility and wondrous goodness whereby His only-begotten Son puts on human flesh, becoming Himself fully and truly human in His divine Sonship, in order to involve Himself with us totally – sin alone excepted -- for a right understanding and resolving of the mess into which we had got ourselves and our world by deliberate and wilful sinning against God and against our own humanity.   And that Christmas awareness of such amazing humility and goodness on God’s part batters at the foundations of modern pride by inviting and provoking us to humble gratitude and childlike trust. On Christmas Day we recalled the words of Elizabeth to Mary our Mother (Luke 1:45);

Blessed are you who believed that what was spoken to you by the Lord would be fulfilled 

and we too, as her true children, likewise renewed at Christmas the sincerity of our belief in Jesus the Lord and our Redeemer,  and the simplicity of our trust in all God’s promises for our salvation.

At the Epiphany, however, we rejoice in the divine glory manifested in the earthly life and being of Him Who, though coming as Saviour, deigns to be like us:

As an Infant, Who, like some uniquely wondrous lodestone, draws the heavens (planetary movements of those times being apparently confirmed by modern computer simulation) and the Magi (men guided by their learning in science and philosophy and deeply motivated by their sincere religious commitment) from lands afar, to His crib in Bethlehem;

At His baptism, when His humility before John opened the very heavens, calling forth a divine witness as the Spirit descended upon Him like a dove, and the Father proclaimed Him to be His own beloved  Son;

At the wedding in Cana, where as a passing guest He changed, at His mother’s instigation (!), water into rich and copious new wine; His power there being manifested and matched by His divine awareness, human generosity, and filial compliance. 

All these resplendent signs of His human majesty, glory, power, and compassion, give us unshakeable confidence that what He has promised, He can and will fulfil in and for His Church throughout the succeeding ages of her public proclamation and witness, and for all His true disciples as they try to live their personal lives according to His teaching and for the praise and glory of His most holy Name. 

For us, therefore, who are disciples of Jesus, there should be a more than worldly, human, joy when we celebrate the birth, the majesty and power, of Jesus, because His Kingdom is not of this world, as He Himself said.   As you all are well aware, though human joy appears most desirable, experience does -- at times -- show it to be equally unreliable; again, worldly joy can change some people into louts and hooligans even more easily than it makes others into happy and generous companions; and when circumstances change, such joy can quickly disappear, leaving behind it corrosive complaint rather than grateful and calm peace. 

Jesus the Lord triumphed for us by destroying sin and death in our flesh, and His renewed coming this Christmas season is a confirmation of His promise that He will share His triumph with all who put their faith, and find their joy, in Him, becoming one with Him through baptism and the Eucharist.  His victories are eternally valid; for, in His Resurrection human flesh has once again been restored to heaven and is now, indeed, at  the right hand of the Father in glory; and He, the Risen Son of Man, is both willing and able to triumph over the darkness of sin and ignorance, not only in the world around us, as was shown by His bringing to naught the schemes of that cunning and murderous tyrant, Herod.

Arise, shine; for your light has come, the glory of the LORD has dawned upon you. Though darkness covers the earth and thick clouds the peoples, upon you the LORD will dawn and over you His glory will be seen;

but also in our own very intimate, complicated, and shadowy, minds and hearts.

Just as at Christmas we rejoiced and renewed our humble and grateful trust in the promises made to us in Christ, in accordance with the teaching of St. Paul who most emphatically teaches us (2 Corinthians 1:20) that:

However many are the promises of God, their "Yes" (is) in Him; therefore the Amen from us also goes to God for glory;

even so now, on this feast of the Epiphany – a word which means the shining-forth, manifestation, of the glory of Christ – we should exultantly rejoice and stir up anew the confidence which heaven alone gives, as the prophet Isaiah proclaimed:

Then you shall see and be radiant, your heart shall throb and overflow.  For the riches of the sea shall be poured out before you, the wealth of nations shall come to you.

Grateful trust and sure confidence, humility and power, patience and vigour, joy and peace, each is so necessary for, and all are so beautifully complementary in, the fulfilment of our Christian vocation and personal calling, just as Christmas and Epiphany are equally essential for the fullness of our liturgical celebration and appreciation of Jesus, perfect God and perfect Man, coming to serve us as our total and unique Saviour.

And so, though the deep darkness of human sin is so evident in the world around, and even though our own souls may know something of its oppressive shadow at times, nevertheless, His glory will appear for those who firmly believe His promises and confidently commit their lives to His most loving, and supremely powerful, Providence.

Therefore, People of God, I urge you in this holy season to discover deeper peace by confirming your trust in Jesus’ promises, and to renew your confidence by stirring up your joy, as you celebrate His glory and power; for such are the signs given and the blessings offered us in this sublime culmination of the Christmas season which is today’s Epiphany. The multitude of angels sang:

Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to those on whom His favour rests! 

And the shepherds, having told their good tidings to all gathered around the Infant Christ, returned to their sheep in the fields:

Glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, just as it had been told to them.

Let all of us, too, dear People of God, sincerely pray that our celebration of the Epiphany today may give glory to God and further the exaltation of Holy Mother Church, through the comforting and strengthening of all those who are her true children.  Amen.    

Holy Family 2015

HOLY FAMILY (2015)

(Ecclelsiasticus 3:2-6, 12-14; Colossians 3:12-21; Luke 2:41-52)

“Son, why have you done this to us?  Your father and I have been looking for you with great anxiety.”  And He said to them, “Why were you looking for Me?  Did you not know that I must be in My Father’s house?”  But they did not understand what He said to them.

Let us first of all remark how the Holy Family exemplified the teaching we have heard in the two previous readings:  Mary herself showed honour and respect for Joseph in her words and attitude:

Son, why have you done this?  Your father and I have been looking for you with great anxiety.

Joseph, for his part, showed humble reverence and love for Mary by allowing her to speak first, thus finding immediate emotional relief in her sovereign maternal solicitude for her Son.

Jesus too, first of all recognizes and commiserates with Mary and Joseph’s concern with gentle words of sympathy:        

Why were you looking for me (upsetting yourselves so much)?

Then He proceeded to make clear, as best He could, what had been going on in His heart and mind recently:

Did you not know that I must be in My Father’s house … for none but my heavenly Father could possibly lead Me to absent Myself from returning with you in the caravan … surely you knew that?

The Boy Jesus – humanly speaking, He was still a boy in some most important aspects – possibly did not fully realize the impact of those words!  And yet, for the very first time He had called the God of Israel -- Whom they all, in accordance with Israel’s Law, had been on pilgrimage in Jerusalem to worship and honour in the Temple – His own, Personal, Father!

Those words I must be in My Father’s house are also seriously translated I must be about My Father’s business: neither translation excludes the other, neither alone can give the full meaning of Jesus’ words. 

Moreover, in the intimate inner circle of family life His words were also surprising, perhaps even disturbing, since they could have appeared to be in contradiction with Mary’s carefully chosen ‘adult’ words:

            Your father and I have been looking for you with great anxiety.

There had always been in the hearts and minds of Mary and Joseph – amid the wondrous amazement, gratitude, and countless joys Jesus gave them – a hidden anxiety about how best to bring up such a Child: One they had both taken, many years ago, to the Temple to present Him originally to God as Mary’s God-given son.  They had both endeavoured to live their lives in His sight and for His guidance, as true Israelites.  Without doubt, Mary’s every word and gesture as she lived her busy round of family, social, and religious duties bespoke her love of God and commitment to Israel’s faith, and she must – frequently -- have shared with her Son her most intimate thoughts and experiences of the great goodness, wondrous beauty, and awesome justice, of God.  Joseph, likewise, had his own indispensable role and function to fulfil: he had to be the man for this sublime Boy: teaching Him responsibility in His work for and relationships with others, above all with and for His mother.  It was by following Joseph’s example that Jesus learned how to love the person and appreciate the sensitivity of Mary, whilst at the same time fitting into the world of working men and gradually advancing in His God-given ‘favour’ among them.  Joseph would also have taken Him regularly (Sabbath, and market days Monday and Thursday) to the synagogue for readings and explanation of the Law and prophets, together with common prayers (Sh’ma – Hear O Israel, the Lord our God is One); and it was at the synagogue that Jesus learnt to hear and understand, to read and write, the holy language of His people. 

That teaching from Mary and Joseph, that early lived experience of faithful Jewish practice over the years of His hidden home life in Nazareth culminated in this pilgrimage to Jerusalem and came to its most beautiful first flowering in the short  period of three days when He was alone there in response to and communing with His ‘newly-experienced’ Father in heaven.

During those three days, what was the business that Jesus was about, engaged in, that He found so important and demanding? He was celebrating His new majority, adult-standing and responsibility before the Law, which enabled Him above all to delight more fully in God His Father: through participation in the Temple worship, and then sharing in the regular teaching and discussion sessions -- given, held, by scribes and elders in the adjacent Temple:

After three days they found Him in the temple, sitting in the midst of the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions, and all who heard Him were astounded at His understanding and His answers.

Notice that this love of the boy-become-man-according-to-the-Law, this love of Jesus for His Father in heaven was an intensely personal and deeply passionate love.  It was not a distant admiration and compartmentalized commitment, one that could be appreciated objectively and weighed in the scales against other loves and other, corresponding, commitments.  No!  It was a passionate and compelling love which brooked no compare.   This consuming love of the boy Jesus ‘for His Father’s business’ had been originally nourished by the teaching of His mother Mary, for she undoubtedly taught Him much about the Psalms of Israel and the words of the prophets calling for love and obedience toward God and fellow-feeling in community and society.  It was, however, above all her humility that was ever a beacon for Him Who would eventually sacrifice Himself for the sins of men.

This Child absorbed the teaching of His mother to such an extent that He understood the Psalms of which she spoke so well, far, far more than she was aware of!  He learnt to read the sacred Scriptures she honoured and treasured with such sympathetic awareness and profound responsiveness that they became for Him a personal communion with the Author of those Scriptures, a communion wherein the Boy ‘discovered’ Himself and was guided to that appreciation of His Father which the Scriptures themselves (Isaiah 55:11s.) foretold:

My Word that goes forth from My mouth shall not return to Me empty, but shall do what pleases Me, achieving the end for which I sent it.   

The Boy’s subsequent awareness and understanding of His adulthood -- His ‘bar mitsva’ acceptation before the Law; His experience of adult worship in His Father’s house, and listening to and participating in the glorification of Israel’s God ‘in the midst of teachers’; all this was greater than anything He had previously experienced.  He was enraptured ... experiencing for the very first time to the fullness of His youthful being, His own most Personal nature: Son – totally from and totally committed to – His only Father, in Heaven.  He quite literally could not turn from the overwhelming fullness of that divine experience to join the caravan with Mary and Joseph back to Nazareth ... He remained three days in Jerusalem.

However, this young Man’s sublime delight in and total commitment to His now to-be-openly-acknowledged Father was not quite the same thing as His adult ‘commissioning’ by the Father for His ultimate mission.  His human understanding was still developing and so -- as was fitting for One still subject in society to His earthly parents -- the words of Mary, with Joseph’s backing, had weight enough to call Him back to an objective appreciation of His obligations as ‘their’ child.   When such obligations would be removed, however, His delighting in, loving and communing with, His heavenly Father, would inevitably take over His whole life and claim His total and absolute commitment.  In the meantime, He had made clear the essential point:

Did you not know that I must be in My Father’s house ... about My Father’s work? 

It was by observing His mother Mary’s attitude and bearing that Jesus had learnt to respect Joseph as His earthly father; nevertheless, Mary and Joseph, when the time had come, were both taken totally unawares by Jesus’ behaviour at that year’s pilgrimage to Jerusalem for the Passover celebrations.  There had always been a certain silence, otherness, about Jesus … didn’t His disciples experience it as they used to walk together behind Jesus as they went about Israel with Him?  Words were not cheap with Jesus, nor were His thoughts, feelings, and emotions easily traceable and recognizable … He was ‘his own man’ as a common expression would put it.  But that is not correct, not accurate, enough, for Jesus was ‘God’s man’, above all and in all He was ‘His Father’s Son’.   However, we are told that He learned to control His enthusiasm, to listen more patiently and ever more attentively to and for His heavenly Father, and so:

He went down with Mary and Joseph and came to Nazareth, and was obedient to them.

Oh the humility of God made man!  He went back to family life in Nazareth and was obedient: He would calmly love and reverence His earthly parents as He awaited His Father to call Him, to ‘commission’ Him.  Learning ever more of God His Father, He continued to humble Himself before the men and women He served in His recognized work as carpenter with Joseph, to respect those among whom He dwelt, and in all such relationships to quietly encourage and confirm their awareness of God as He shared with them His understanding and Truth, His goodness and Love:

Jesus advanced (in) wisdom and age and favour before God and man.

Christmas 2015

CHRISTMAS

(Isaiah 9:1-6; Titus 2:11-14; Luke 2:1-14)

Dear People of God, our Christmas celebration evokes not simply emotional rejoicing but deep, existential, joy; because it answers our most desperate needs by revealing God’s Personal love, it initiates our release from self-destroying bondage, and it offers us hope of a future which -- though humanly inconceivable -- corresponds nevertheless to our deepest human aspirations and stirs up within us spontaneously pure and unprecedented delight.

The great prophet Isaiah lived and preached in Jerusalem some 750 years before Jesus.  He was well connected, having access to those in positions of authority and power in and around Jerusalem; however, God chose him to proclaim a message that was very different from people's expectations.  Listen to this:

For thus said the LORD – His hand strong upon me – warning me not to walk in the way of this people: "Do not call conspiracy what this people call conspiracy, nor fear what they fear, nor feel dread.  (Isaiah 8:11-13 NAB RE)

Now that sort of commission is not easy, indeed it would be frightening for most people.  Just imagine, would you want to proclaim a message you knew would offend important individuals and might stir up public anger because of popular prejudices?  What if you were to be labelled racist, sexist, old-fashioned, or intolerant for speaking out?  Well, although Isaiah might never have been labelled in such terms, nevertheless he was made unpopular because of the message given him to speak in the name of God against the mass of the people and against their leaders.

Therefore, if we can understand something of the reason why God sent Isaiah to proclaim in this way the coming of Emmanuel, we will also learn something about the attitude in which we should celebrate this wondrous season of Christmas, the Emmanuel season.  The Lord said:

Sons have I raised and reared, but they have rebelled against Me. An ox knows its owner, and an ass its master's manger, but Israel does not know, My people has not understood. (1:2-3)

In those times the father had power of life and death over his children and the duty of children was to honour and obey their father; to rebel against him, by word or deed could lead to death.  God was saying, therefore, that the ox and the donkey, stupid animals though they were, knew -- that is they loved, trusted, and obeyed -- their master; but Israel did not have the sense of even the ox or the donkey, for they were a rebellious people who would neither trust nor obey the Lord their God.

Don’t think that Israel was godless, however.  Far from it: every nation in those days had its own god, for the national god was part of the national identity.  Consequently, to keep up with the Jones’ so to speak, God’s Chosen People kept up the public worship of Yahweh, the God they alone worshipped among all the nations.  They offered Him all sorts of sacrifices of innumerable lambs and bulls, goats and doves. The seasonal national assemblies in their world-famous Temple at Jerusalem were distinguished from others around them by the accompanying music and incense, pomp and splendour: there were regular hours for official, public, sacrifice and prayer each day, while individuals and groups could meet to study the Law and the Scriptures, or to celebrate more private sacred meals together before their God.  All this devotion, however, was more apparent than real, for the hearts of God’s chosen People were not with their God: the rich sought and flaunted wealth and power, living lives of luxury with no concern for others, being too often drunkards prepared to sell each other down the river to feed their addictions; while the poor turned to idols and destroyed each other.  Listen to the Lord speaking to both factions:

Ah! Those who join house to house who connect field with field.  Ah! Those who are champions at drinking wine, who acquit the guilty for bribes … New moon and sabbath, calling assemblies --- festive convocations with wickedness – these I cannot bear.  Your new moons and festivals I detest.  When you spread out your hands (in prayer), I will close My eyes to you.

The people will be oppress one another … yes, each one their neighbour; the child will be insolent toward the elder, and the base toward the honourable.   (5:8, 22-23; 1:13-15; 3:4-5)

Israel, indeed, did not know her God; Isaiah, however, had personally seen the holiness of God in a majestic vision that had filled him with awesome reverence and fear:  

I saw the Lord seated on a high and lofty throne, with the train of His garment filling the temple. Seraphim were stationed above, each of them had six wings. One cried out to the other: "Holy, Holy, Holy, is the Lord of hosts! All the earth is filled with His glory!"   At the sound of that cry the frame of the door shook and the house was filled with smoke. (6:1-4)

That is why Isaiah was filled with zeal for the Lord; that is why, though he pitied his erring compatriots, he was nevertheless thoroughly disgusted at their practices.

The sickness of Israel was shown most clearly in the case of Ahaz, the King of Israel.  At that time he and his people were in great peril: local enemies were literally pressing him on all sides, and he was thinking of turning to the dreaded Assyrians for help! Indeed, he was thinking of making Judah -- God’s Chosen People! -- a vassal state of the mighty, pagan, Assyrian empire.  Therefore the Lord sent Isaiah to meet Ahaz, and the meeting was not to take place in the palace but at a spring called Gihon just outside the city.  

Isaiah delivered the Lord’s message to Ahaz, telling him not to turn to the Assyrians for help, but to trust in the Lord:

Unless your faith is firm, you shall not be firm. (7:9)

But the king wanted to see something striking, he wanted quick results, he could not just trust the Lord: ‘the Lord knows how long that might take’ we can imagine him saying to himself.  And so, at the spring Gihon, where the kings of Judah were traditionally crowned, where all members of David’s line had been given solemn promises by the Lord of Hosts, here was Ahaz -- their successor and himself one of David’s line -- proposing to ignore the spiritual promises of the Lord and to turn rather to the immediately tangible earthly power of the loathed and feared King of Assyria.

Before allowing Ahaz to go ahead with such a betrayal, the Lord, the God of Israel, offered him one last chance: not a verbal promise as had been given to David and Solomon his fathers; no, this time the Lord accommodatingly offered Ahaz something he could see and see quickly, a sign of his own choosing which the Lord would perform:

Ask for a sign from the Lord, your God; let it be deep as Sheol or high as the sky.

But would you believe it, Ahaz, the king, was even more of a hypocrite, even more insincere before the Lord, than so many of his people still flocking to the temple with their vain sacrifices, still spreading out their arms in ostentatious but empty public and personal prayers.  Ahaz, like them, pretending to be devout, said:

I will not ask, I will not tempt the Lord!  (7:12)

Isaiah was both astounded and frustrated:

He said, "Listen now, house of David! Is it not enough that you weary human beings?  Must you also weary my God? Therefore the Lord Himself will give you a sign: Behold, the virgin shall be with child and bear a son, and they shall name Him Emmanuel. (7:13-14, cf. Mt. 1:23)

To understand something of this sign, we must remember that the king in Israel -- the legitimate king, that is, of David’s line -- was protected by God’s promise, and therefore he himself was a sign to the people that God was with them.  That is why the king was most prominent in their worship, more prominent than the Temple priests; Judah was the Chosen People of God and Judah’s king of David’s line was considered to be a son of God, God’s prime instrument for His People’s well-being.

And so, the Lord’s sign was to be a child, a boy child to be named Emmanuel, “God-with-us”.  This child, however, was to be not a mere sign of God’s presence with His People, and most certainly not a lying sign such as Ahaz; no, this Child was to be in all literal truth, GOD-WITH-US.  It was as if the Lord were saying: “You, Ahaz, are no true king of My people, you are a disgrace.  I will give My people a true King, My own true Son: “God from God, light from light, true God from true God”; and this true King will be no descendent of yours Ahaz, you will have no part in Him for:

Behold, the virgin shall be with child and bear a Son, and they shall name Him Emmanuel. 

People of God, those are the historic roots of our Christmas celebration and from those roots we learn that, to celebrate Christmas fittingly, we must, first and foremost, trust God wholeheartedly.  We must not put our trust in money or power, nor our delight in earthly prospects or pleasures.  We, as Catholic Christians, are called to trust and delight in the Father Who is giving us His Son, the seal of all His promises to us.  And, in this holy season, we must renew our trust and confidence in Jesus’ own promise to His Church -- the one, true, Catholic Church -- to be with her to the end of time, guiding and preserving her in her struggle with and despite the towering powers of evil.

But there are other roots for our celebrations: roots thrusting deep into our very being, for we are indeed all of sinful stock.  The sins to be seen and heard of in our world today are so disgustingly gross and horrific, unfeeling and barbaric, one might think them inhuman, things that only the Nazis could do; but no, there was Stalin in Russia, Mao tse Tung in China, the killing fields of Cambodia, there are yet many others still all over the world: ISIL and present day terrorists, dictators, duplicitous leaders, exploiters, drug traffickers, even deviant mothers and fathers!!  So, though horrific, the sin of the world is not inhuman … it is resident in the human heart of men and women all over the world.  Indeed, it is resident in our own hearts and minds!  For, just as some of the  greatest saints have been able to say with the utmost sincerity, ‘There, but for the grace of God, go I’; so surely, each of us is, in various ways, aware of tendencies and proclivities capable of abhorrent developments lurking in the deep shadows of our ego!

Our rejoicing at Christmas, therefore, is real indeed, one with that of St. Paul:

I see in my members another principle at war with the law of my mind, taking me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members.  Miserable one that I am! Who will deliver me from this mortal body?   Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord.  (Romans 7: 23-25)

Jesus is coming to His Church anew this Christmas to renew His promises to her, and to give us her children the opportunity to express our gratitude, renew our confidence, and stir up our hope, for His future coming in glory.  Having been baptized as members of the Body of Christ we are assured that we are already children of God.  We have been promised an inheritance and a home, eternal joy and fulfilment, in the Kingdom of our heavenly Father.  We have been endowed with the Gift of the Spirit Who wills to lead us into all truth and enable us to become true children of God, delighting in the fulfilment of our calling.  No matter what our situation, no matter how difficult or dark the way may seem, we should never doubt that Jesus is coming this Christmas to help us in all our needs, and we can be totally confident that there is nothing which may oppress our lives or threaten our hopes, from which He cannot free us.

So, my dear brothers and sisters in Christ, rejoice greatly this Christmas, for we who are disciples of Jesus are privileged to welcome Him this day into our Church, into our hearts and lives, and indeed, into our modern world, anew.  St. Paul assures us that:

            However many are the promises of God, their “Yes” is in Him. (2 Cor. 1:20)

Jesus’ last gift to His disciples was Mary to be our mother, and we always remember what her cousin Elizabeth, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, said of her:

Blessed are you who believed that what was spoken to you by the Lord would be fulfilled! (Luke 1:45)

Therefore let us implore her to rejoice our lives by her prayers that will protect, nourish, and promote the faith-likeness of Jesus living in us: impoverished as regards our commitment to Him; unappreciated by our ignorance of and indifference to His plans for us; above all, so little loved by us, as repeatedly evidenced by our reluctance to hear Him and our failures to obey Him.

Hail holy Queen, Mother of mercy, Hail our life, our sweetness, and our hope.  To thee do we cry, poor banished children of Eve, to thee do we send up our sighs, mourning and weeping in this vale of tears.  Turn then, most gracious advocate, thine eyes of mercy towards us, and after this our exile show unto us the blessed fruit of thy womb Jesus, O clement, O loving, O sweet Virgin Mary.