The Epiphany 2012

The Epiphany

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

Why do we love certain people more than others? … because of their goodness, perhaps, or their beauty? or might it be due to their understanding, sympathy, wisdom, strength, courage?  We could go on trying to find such reasons but to no purpose, for the point is that we love someone because of who they are, because of their unique personality, as known and experienced by us.  We cannot love someone who is personally unknown to us.  Although we can admire what we know or hear of another, nevertheless, such admiration can only become true love after having met, personally encountered, and, in some measure, learned to personally appreciate, the other.

Since that is undoubtedly true, don't you think it strange that Christians and Catholics speak so little about the beauty, goodness, wisdom and love, of God?  Ostensibly Christian witness, also, is too often couched in terms of an impersonal ethic: doing good to the needy and underprivileged; loving one’s neighbour and especially children; social involvement and comments in favour of international peace.  Worthy people usually, promoting, as a rule, admirable projects and good proposals, but all too often with little to suggest a committed Christian giving convincing witness – even when perhaps necessarily implicit and indirect -- to the Faith as a source of hope and joy, a power for personal fulfilment and eternal salvation, for true social justice, international cooperation and cohesion, and for human advancement.

However, the heavenly fulfilment to which we all aspire as disciples of Jesus will not be ours just because we have kept what acknowledged rules demanded of us or general expectations desired of us: the ultimate criterion for the Christian and Catholic appreciation of our whole life will be "Did you love (or sincerely try to love) the Lord your God with your whole mind, heart, soul, and strength?"   Without such personal love for the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, our Christian life can only be -- and inevitably appear to be -- bleak and formal, our Christian witness only lifeless and uninspiring; all in stark contrast to the words of the prophet Isaiah we heard in the first reading:

Arise, shine; for your light has come!  And the glory of the LORD is risen upon you. 

Christians -- above all we who are privileged to be Catholics -- should indeed shine out because we are called both to reflect, and make known, the glory of the Lord which has shone upon us through our faith in the Good News of Jesus.  We are not like our brothers, the Jews and the Muslims.  They speak of God: at times, they speak good, holy, and beautiful things about God; indeed the Jews speak of Him in ways very close, at times, to our own appreciation.   And yet, the Christian faith is so much more glorious than either Judaism or Islam: for we speak not only of the external glory of God, but of the supreme and unimaginably beautiful Personal beatitude of the Father, with His Son, in the Holy Spirit; a beatitude in which we can hope to share in and through Jesus our Saviour, Son of Man and God Incarnate.

We do not know God simply because He has spoken inspiring words through His prophets; nor do we praise Him just because He has reportedly done great and wonderful deeds; above all, we confess, love and worship God, as Father, Son and Spirit: the Father Whose voice is our most secret and original calling, and whose Presence will be our ultimate destiny; the Son Who took our flesh and became our Brother that He might show Himself as our Saviour, and Who, to this very day, continues to give Himself as flesh and blood for you and me to eat and drink in Mother Church, thereby enabling us to live with His life, by His Spirit; and the Holy Spirit Whom we love and praise, in Whom we trust and rejoice, since He is ever with us as our Advocate, our strength and comfort, our light and guide, our hope and our joy.

People of God, today's great solemnity of the Epiphany, the shining forth of God's glory, especially invites us to glory in the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, by telling us, in the words of the prophet Isaiah:

Lift up your eyes all round (that is, appreciate the Faith you profess and the Church in which you live); then you shall see and become radiant, and your heart shall swell with joy.

Jesus came to teach us with Him to recognize and in Him to appreciate the Father as a Person, His Father, our Father; He gave us His own Spirit -- comforting and encouraging our hearts, enlightening and strengthening our minds -- to form us in Jesus, and in His likeness, for the Father:

When He, the Spirit of truth, has come, He will guide you into all truth; He will tell you things to come. 

The Spirit also helps in our weaknesses; for we do not know what we should pray for as we ought, but the Spirit makes intercession for us with groanings that cannot be uttered.        (John. 16:13; Romans 8:26)

The Father is so personally committed to us that, having given His only Son for us, He speaks to each of us personally and most secretly that we might turn to Jesus and find our salvation in Him:

No one can come to Me unless the Father Who sent Me draws him; and I will raise him up at the last day.  (John 6:44)

He looks for, and expects in return, a similarly personal and whole-hearted response and commitment from us.  Jesus assures us that the Father wants to be our most perfect Father:

It is not you who speak, but the Spirit of your Father who speaks in you. (Matthew 10:20)

And He wants to be recognized and loved -- in Spirit and in Truth -- by children who will ultimately have learned to lay down their lives and confidently turn to Him, saying in deepest trust and self-abandonment: "Abba, Father"

Our Lord Jesus is indeed the Messiah foretold by the prophets; proclaimed by angels and manifested by a star at His birth; revealed by the Father at His baptism in the Jordan; He is, indeed, the Messiah come to change the water of our life into the finest wine.  And this wonderful Jesus Who died on Calvary for our individual sins -- yours and mine -- rose on the third day for the salvation of all; and from His throne in heaven now embraces us so closely to Himself that we live in Him and by His Spirit given to each of us at our baptism in Mother Church, and to be continually honoured and increasingly reverenced in us by our faithful living as her children, and, above all, to be most gratefully and lovingly refreshed and renewed by our reception of the Eucharist at Holy Mass.

And then, this Holy Spirit -- relating to each and every one of us individually – works His divine purposes in the secret depths of our minds and hearts forming and attuning us to recognize and appreciate His presence and urging us to respond to His inspirations.  Indeed, He is so personal to us that it is His task to lead each one of us to our own individual and personal fulfilment and perfection in Jesus for the Father.

People of God, Christians and even Catholics today are often afraid of the wonders of our faith.  Many, each according to their own make-up, want to imagine what they can easily accept or appreciate: some, a distant God Who demands, not personal communion and commitment in love, but merely the impersonal observance of laws, such as Sunday Mass, baptism, first Communion etc.; others like to fancy a God who is so like us as to be satisfied with actions serving no higher aims than those largely humanistic ideals of doing good to everyone so that we may all live in peace and prosperity.  They want to be able to tick-off the laws they have complied with, or tot-up the accepted good things they have done; and this, because they cannot bear to feel unsure of themselves, because they are afraid to trust totally in God’s merciful goodness and in His unknown plans and future purposes for us.

Jesus, however, came to lift His disciples up to heavenly glory, lift them up, that is, with Himself, from human nothingness and need, as experienced by Himself on Calvary, through selfless trust and unconditional love, to share with Him in the depths of divine charity where Father, Son and Holy Spirit are eternally and indivisibly one.  For we belong to Jesus, as St. Paul tells us, just as Jesus belongs to God; our relationship with God is that personal:

For all things are yours, whether (it be the Church) or the world or life or death or things present or things to come; all are yours, and you are Christ’s, and Christ is God’s. (1 Cor. 3:21-4:1)

There, in the Son, by the Holy Spirit, caught up into the mystery of the personal charity uniting the Most Holy Trinity, and echoing the songs of myriads of angels, you and I are called to personally share in the great, eternal, and unimaginable, ecstasy of praise to the glory of Him Who, as St. Paul (Eph. 4:6) tells us, is:

             The one God and Father of all, Who is over all, through all, and in all. 

Solemnity of Mary, the Mother of God

Solemnity of Mary, the Mother of God

(Numbers 6:22-27; Galatians 4:4-7; Luke 2:16-21)

In the second reading we heard St. Paul telling his converts in Galatia:

As proof that you are children, God sent the spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying out, “Abba, Father!”

Those words of St. Paul invite us today to consider how wonderfully the Spirit dwelt in the heart of Mary!   They show us, indeed, the magnitude of her blessing when we consider that the Spirit abided in and filled her whole being to such an extent that, whereas we are enabled by the Spirit, Paul tells us, to express our love for God with the word 'Father', Mary, on the other hand, was so devoted and open to God, that the Spirit dwelling with her was completely free to work most wondrously in her, enabling her to respond to God’s calling with a love of such total commitment and a trust of such selfless abandon that the angel’s message could come to total fulfilment with Mary’s ‘Fiat’, and she conceived in her womb the Divine Word Himself -- now Incarnate, the Father’s co-eternal Son -- now  Son of Man!   Indeed, such was the faith with which Mary responded to God’s word delivered to her by the angel Gabriel, that Jesus always and openly praised her for that above all else:

It happened that, as (Jesus) spoke these things, a certain woman from the crowd raised her voice and said to Him, "Blessed is the womb that bore You, and the breasts which nursed You!"  But He said, "More than that, blessed are those who hear the word of God and keep it!" (Luke 11:27-28)

"Who is My mother, or My brothers?"  And (Jesus) looked around in a circle at those who sat about Him, and said, "Here are My mother and My brothers!  For whoever does the will of God is My brother and My sister and mother." (Mark 3:33-35)

And, although in this respect the following teaching from one of the Cappadocian Fathers in the early Church is both beautiful and uplifting:

Whenever you receive Christ’s word within you, and let it live in your heart, and build it up with your thoughts as in the womb, then you can be called Christ’s mother;

perhaps the teaching of St. Augustine is more direct and inspirational:

Whoever believes with all his heart and is ‘justified by faith’ (Romans 5:11), he has conceived Christ in the womb.  And whenever ‘with the mouth confession is made unto salvation’ (Romans 10:10) that man has given birth to Christ.   Be you therefore overflowing with fertility in the spirit, and at the same time unchanging in the soul’s virginity.

We can also compare and contrast Mary with Moses who, as you heard in the first reading, brought great blessings down on Israel.  There, we were told how God would bless the Chosen People of the Old Testament through the use of certain words of priestly blessing that He gave to Moses for the use of Aaron the priest, his sons, and their descendants:

Speak to Aaron and his sons and tell them: “This is how you shall bless the Israelites. Say to them: The LORD bless you and keep you!   The LORD let his face shine upon you, and be gracious to you!  The LORD look upon you kindly and give you peace!   So shall they invoke my name upon the Israelites, and I will bless them.” 

Those are truly beautiful words used to confer a treasured blessing.  But consider how God the Father blesses us, and all who share with us in the New Testament covenant, through Mary and her Son.  For, Mary does not simply hand down, pass on, God-given words for occasional, though repeated, blessing in Israel; she receives and clothes with her own flesh and blood the One Eternal Word of God, and giving Him birth offers mankind its supreme blessing for all time and for eternity.  No longer simply a prayer invoking blessing for Israel, but God's gracious presence in Mother Church for the salvation of the whole world!

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love, having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace, by which He has made us accepted in the Beloved.  In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace.  (Eph. 1:3-8)

Holy Mary, you are indeed blessed above all women by God the Father, for you have given us the One through Whom and in Whom all the blessings of heaven itself are ours!

Again, in our Gospel reading we learned that those who searched for the Child found:

            Mary and Joseph, and the Infant lying in the manger.

So it is for all of us, today: in our search for Jesus, we find Him with Mary.  For, when Jesus was on the point of dying on the Cross of Calvary, He addressed all His future disciples in the person of John, the one apostle standing there at the foot of  the Cross, and told him to take Mary to his heart as his own Mother.  And so, Mary is no mere optional extra, and -- most certainly -- no unwarranted or unwanted complication, for Catholic spirituality.  For we recognize and appreciate that Mary leads each and every one of us to Jesus when we also recall that she is not simply  the model of the Church, but is the Church itself in its origins, and only in Mother Church can each and every one of us find Jesus truly and love Him fully:

            ‘Woman, behold your son!’   Then, to the disciple, ‘Behold your mother’

Finally, we also need to understand that Mary, who is, as it were, Mother Church’s conductor for the Holy Spirit’s lightning and a channel of countless blessings, is also our model and inspiration in our personal relationships with Jesus, in so far as the Scriptures tell us that she, our Mother, was always sublimely one with Jesus:

keeping all these things (that she had experienced and heard concerning Jesus),  reflecting on them in her heart.

There is to be found the supreme example and the ultimate guidance for anyone  longing and hoping to find God our most loving Father in and through Jesus:  imitate Mary by treasuring the Good News of Jesus handed down to us by Mother Church who, with her teaching of the Scriptures, illuminates our minds to understand and appreciate the promised Christ of God; and, through the economy of her sacraments, enables us to fittingly welcome and worship His very presence in our midst and receive Him with whole-hearted and personal love into our  individual hearts and minds.

As children of Mary, therefore, hear the Word of God proclaimed in Mother Church, with reverence and joy; treasure the goodness of His grace in your heart; and, above all, seek to respond – by the Spirit – to the Father, the Giver of all good gifts, with that wholehearted trust and gratitude to which Mary herself gave perfect expression when she said:

Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord. May it be done to me according to your word.   (Luke 1:38)

Let us close our considerations with heartfelt words of gratitude and praise for Mary, the Mother of Our Lord and Saviour, and His most loving gift to us:

You are the glory of (heavenly) Jerusalem, you are the great boast of (God’s Chosen People), you are the great pride of (all reborn in Christ)! … You have done great good and God is well pleased.  May the almighty Lord bless you forever!”  And all the people said, ‘Amen.’     (Judith 15:9-10)

So be it, today: Amen, amen!  Deo Gratias!!

Christmas Mass of Day

(Isaiah 52:7-10; Hebrews 1:1-6; John 1:1-18)

War was never far removed from the experience of Israel, and few indeed would have lived out their lives without having had some experience of its campaigns: not only those waged on foreign soil, but also those undertaken to repulse attacks on the homeland. Certain individuals might even have been caught up in a siege, when the enemy camped outside city walls wherein crowds -- swollen by refugees and suffering shortages of food and drink -- had to hold firm despite mounting hazards for public health and gradual draining of public confidence.  Someone might, indeed, even have personally experienced, or heard an eye-witness account of, an occasion like that pictured for us by the prophet Isaiah in our first reading where anxious watchmen on the look-out had observed a single figure in the distance, running towards them with vigour in his stride and joy in his bearing, a runner who -- when within hailing distance -- shouted out glad tidings of victory or news of relief forces, near to hand, bringing security and promising hope:

How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him who brings good news, who proclaims peace, who brings glad tidings of good things.

Isaiah even went on to picture for us others on the walls running to whatever sector where the messenger was said to be visible, in order to glimpse him for themselves, before breaking out into loud shouts, raucous singing, and perhaps even claiming they could already hear his voice:

Hark!  Your sentinels raise a cry, together they shout for joy, for they see directly, before their eyes, the Lord restoring Zion.

What news did the messenger bring?  Isaiah has him report the supreme message of good tidings and joy: "Your God reigns!"  Whereupon, having already seen and heard the excitement of those on the walls, the whole heaving population crowded inside the city walls bursts out, with one great sigh of relief and thunderous explosion of joy, into a paean of praise:

Break forth into joy, sing together, you waste places of Jerusalem!  For the Lord has comforted His people, He has redeemed Jerusalem.  The Lord has made bare His holy arm in the eyes of all the nations.

The ultimate reason for such exultation, was that a victory had been won or a danger averted: not an ordinary victory that might be reversed when armies went out to war again next season, but a victory of universal and eternal significance and validity, as Isaiah explains:

            The LORD has made bare His holy arm in the sight of all the nations;

a victory of such magnitude that:

            All the ends of the earth shall see the salvation of our God.

Now, why does Mother Church, in her great wisdom, put before us on Christmas Day’s high feast these words of Isaiah evoking past experiences of war?

Because she wants us to rejoice on this most wonderful day of Our Lord’s Incarnation with a joy so deep and heart-felt that it can only be evoked by the joy of those saved from death, of those from whose shoulders have been lifted heavy burdens of oppression and scorn, whose minds and hearts -- long terrorised by anxieties and fear -- have once again been able to experience some security and peace, and to entertain fresh hope.  All of which means that, to best appreciate our Christmas celebration and receive most fully the comforting of God through the ministrations of Mother Church, we must have a deep, indeed acute, awareness and appreciation of the unheard-of freedom and wondrous hope Mary’s new-born Child brings for mankind.  Our celebration today is, indeed, much, much, more than a cosy ritual with some traditional, sentimental, associations readily on tap.

For, all the torments of pain and suffering, of exploitation and oppression, being endured in the world today, all the greed, hypocrisy, and jealousy of society in general, and all the envy, selfishness and indifference of our individual lives, all, that is, that so ravages the peace and integrity of human experience, riddling it with countless regrets and endless anxieties, is the work and result of personal sin.  For sin is the most terrible enemy of mankind and indeed of the whole of creation, and only those who have come to recognize, and have the will to whole-heartedly reject, the evil that threatens them, can fittingly and fully embrace this Christmas feast, where the die is so beautifully and definitively cast against the power of sin.  For, in Bethlehem that night, sin was totally and absolutely excluded: for the shepherds were told of, and the angels acclaimed, a Child All-Holy, the very Son of God Himself, together with His spotless, maiden-mother; and we, like them, praise and glorify our divine Shepherd and holy Redeemer Who still comes ever-anew into our midst at this most holy season to receive the welcoming embrace of the Church, His Spouse and our Mother, whose true children no longer fear the devil’s former o’erwhelming power of sin and death, because they can now hope and aspire to mount with Christ His tree of life.

With such an understanding in our minds we can now allow the second reading to fill our hearts with the wonder of this occasion of which Isaiah the prophet spoke, and which Mother Church now invites us to share:

God, who at various times and in various ways spoke in times past to the fathers by the prophets, has in these last days spoken to us by His Son, Whom He has appointed heir of all things, through Whom also He made the worlds; Who being the brightness of His glory and the express image of His person, uphold(s) all things by the word of His power.

My dear brothers and sisters in Christ, Mother Church today announces this glorious news of salvation to us and invites, indeed urges and exhorts, all of us her children to respond with heart-felt joy and gratitude to her proclamation of the Gospel.  For she not only authoritatively proclaims God’s Good News, she infallibly shows forth the splendour of His Glory and the beauty of His Truth:

(God’s co-eternal) Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. 

How blessed are we who are privileged to hear such tidings of salvation!  For, as John said:

            No one (absolutely no one) has (ever) seen God at any time.

It is true, John allows, that God’s Law had been given through Moses to prepare God’s people, but God Himself was only clearly revealed and truly known when:

The only begotten Son, Who is in the bosom of the Father, declared Him; (for) grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.

You also heard, in our second reading, the following words so rich in significance:

To which of the angels did He ever say: "You are My Son, today I have begotten You"? 

Now this is the second and confirming reason for our great rejoicing at Christmas;  for to each and every one of us gathered here as true children of Mother Church and bearing faithful witness to Christ, God the Father is saying:

If you will hear (My) voice aright:  today I have begotten you.   I will be a Father to (you) and (you) shall be a son to me (a child of mine).

And that is the comforting spoken of by the prophet Isaiah when he said:

Break forth into joy, sing together, you waste places of Jerusalem!  For the LORD has comforted His people, He has redeemed Jerusalem.

Words still most appropriate and true today!  For, all of us whom the Father is now comforting and calling, all He has chosen in His Son, cannot fail to recognize that we, like those shut up in some threatened and besieged city of old, are indeed today in “waste places”: this world, even our own society, is evil to an extent that can disgust us; nevertheless, because it is our society, our world, it also draws on our heart strings, thus threatening to besmirch us with something of its own filth.  And, being in this condition, since we might fear this renewed coming of the Holy One of God to do battle with the evil and filth around us and within us, He comes as a Child, for He is well aware of, and full of compassion for, our weakness.  Moreover, surrounding Himself at His Birth with shepherds from the midnight fields He assures us that He Himself comes as Shepherd into our darkness in order to search out those of His sheep who have strayed and, disregarding the mud that may cover their feet and flanks, the thorns that may entangle their wool, He wills to take them up in His arms and carry them back to the flock which He is leading to that heavenly fold where the Father already awaits them, Himself looking expectantly into the distance to see His own dear Son, Jesus our Lord, at the head of the flock He is leading with joy towards the eternal pastures of salvation.

Therefore, the joy Mother Church would inspire in us needs to be a joy arising from the depths of the human heart and truly expressing and promoting human fulfilment; and that is why she has chosen her words from the centuries’ long history of Israel’s journeying along the way traced out for her by God.  But since the peace and hope supported and proclaimed by such joy are more than earthly,  they must bear witness to a little babe indeed, but One Who is divine, God’s Only-begotten Son, our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ Himself;   One, to be found wrapped in swaddling clothes, but also heralded by an Angel of the Lord, a visible display of divine glory, and the grateful song of a worshipping multitude of the heavenly host praising God for this Child Whose very Being, Person, and destiny proclaim: Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace to people of good will!

Third Sunday of Advent (B)

Gaudete

(Isaiah 61:1-2, 10-11; 1st. Thessalonians 5:16-24; John 1:6-8, 19-28)

Advent is a time of expectation … what are we to look for, what should we prepare ourselves to expect?

On reading today’s Gospel I was somewhat surprised at St. John’s version of the contre-temps between John the Baptist and the priests and Levites from Jerusalem, because John does not give us those words of the Baptist reported by all three of the Synoptic Gospels, saying that though he himself baptized with water, the One to Come would baptize with the Holy Spirit, and also -- according to Matthew and Luke -- with fire.

Now the cause of this omission is not something I do not want to discuss here, but the result of it might be significantly helpful for us today, for, undoubtedly, the mention of the Holy Spirit suggests supreme, sublime, power, while that of fire confirms the impression of power and colours it, so to speak, with one of threat.  John’s Gospel, on the other hand, simply reports the Baptist as saying:

I baptize with water; but there is One among you Whom you do not recognize, the One Who is coming after me, Whose sandal strap I am not worthy to untie.

There we have it: just pure expectation … indeed, tantalizing expectation because the expected One is already present, among them at that very moment -- someone wonderfully holy -- and yet, they are not seeing Him!!

And here, Mother Church, in her Spirit-gifted wisdom, comes to direct our expectancy this Advent, for she sets before us a most beautiful passage from the prophet Isaiah:

The spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me, because the LORD has anointed me. He has sent me to bring glad tidings to the lowly, to heal the broken-hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and release to the prisoners, and to announce a year of favour from the LORD and a day of vindication by our God.

According to that, we are expecting One the Lord has endowed with His Spirit to bring glad tidings to the lowly, bestow healing, restore liberty and grant freedom: all favours from the Lord in vindication of His people.  No threatening mention of power, nor one of destructive -- though purging -- fire …. Just Someone wonderful, coming peaceably with so much that is totally desirable and longed-for in those days and in our present state.

Now notice what joy, gladness, and blessing results for the recipients:

All who see them shall acknowledge them as a race the LORD has blessed.  I rejoice heartily in the LORD, in my God is the joy of my soul; For he has clothed me with a robe of salvation, and wrapped me in a mantle of justice, Like a bridegroom adorned with a diadem, like a bride bedecked with her jewels.  As the earth brings forth its plants, and a garden makes its growth spring up, So will the Lord GOD make justice and praise spring up before all the nations.

How wondrously does Isaiah who begins:

All who see them shall acknowledge them as a race the LORD has blessed

continue with words referring to but one … a woman most beautiful … as if he knew, prophetically, that indeed, only one, Mary the Immaculate, would be able to fully receive and possess all those blessings from the Lord.  Nevertheless, she represents us, and all faithful disciples of Jesus do indeed receive their measure of His blessings; of this Mother Church assures us with her choice of the second reading taken from St. Paul’s exhortation to his converts in Thessali:

Rejoice always; pray without ceasing; in all circumstances give thanks.  May the God of peace make you perfectly holy: (for He) the One Who calls you is faithful and He will also accomplish it.

Without doubt, I believe, all of us will wholeheartedly agree that Mary, our Mother, is indeed rejoicing in the Lord as depicted by Isaiah and in accord with all our readings today; but the question is, does she represent us therein, does our experience of the Christian faith and of life in the world today cause us heartfelt rejoicing as Mary’s true children?

Again, without doubt, it did and does bring such joy and happiness to God’s saints and Mother Church’s most committed members; again, it can bring and does offer such joy and happiness to all faithful disciples of Jesus and sincere members of the Church.  But why, indeed, do we come across so many lapsed or lapsing Catholics, hear so often of Christians, who are unsure disciples of Jesus, or dissatisfied with their experience of faithful living?

We should look again at Isaiah’s reading today, for he rightly foresaw and portrayed the great glory and abounding goodness and generosity of the One to Come; however, he also was prophetically endowed and enabled to appreciate that only a unique individual -- the Immaculate Mary of Nazareth -- would be able to receive and possess, would allow the Lord to freely bestow on her, all those heavenly blessings.  What then, hinders us and so many Catholics and Christians, from being faithful enough, willing enough, open enough, hungry and empty enough, to follow in the steps of our Mother, the handmaid of the Lord?

Let me just give you a short passage from a recent book about the experiences of one journeying in the Caucasus (the area of Grozny in Chechnya) where there are lots of Christian sects to be found:

Before going to church, Sergei explained how he would call on those in the community whom he thought he might have offended. He would ask their forgiveness.  It took time but he didn’t mind because he loved to talk and he was able to go to church happy.  “It’s difficult in those services because they’re so long.  They go on and on, for hours!  You stand and stand and you can hardly go on standing.  But then afterwards you come home and you feel not just clean in your soul but in your body as well and you’re all dressed up and your wife looks beautiful and everything else looks beautiful too.”

In our modern, affluent, Western society many do not experience their own Church-going as did Sergei: they seem to find regular Sunday observance a burden, even when they do not find it also a bore.  Perhaps this difference is because Sergei made “going to Church” something special: for him, it involved being at peace with others, and required that he take greater care with his dress for the honour of God.  Many members of our Western culture, on the other hand, having their minds filled with money matters and the many varied opportunities available to them for their enjoyment of it, easily find themselves not even noticing harm done to others in the general struggle for success; and, thinking that they are doing God a favour by attending Church on Sunday, would scoff at the very idea of what they would call “dressing up” to come before His Presence.

Now, that is not something I want to enter into here, but there can be no doubt that the joy and peace Sergei experienced after Church on Sunday was, as I said, in some way related to his efforts to make that day special; and that is in perfect accord with a dictum of St. John of the Cross: ‘where there is no love put love and you will find love’. 

Yes, People of God, during Advent the true disciple not only hopes for future joy, but can even aspire to experience, here and now, something of that joy which is described by the inspired words of the prophet Isaiah.

However, John the Baptist, giving clear testimony to the Lord, used words that express precisely why many contemporary Catholics find too little joy in their religious observance:

There is One among you whom you do not recognize, the One who is coming after me, whose sandal strap I am not worthy to untie.

John’s words: “there is One among you Whom you do not recognize” are, sadly, still too true for many Catholics and Christians, although in a manner somewhat different from that intended by John.  John was saying to the crowds on the banks of the Jordan, where he was immersing penitents in the waters flowing by, that they did not know, were not aware of, could not recognize, the Holy One standing in their midst.  Most Catholics and Christians today, however, do know, are aware of, Jesus, in that sense.  Where they fail in knowledge of the Lord however, is in the fact that they have no personal relationship with Him: their minds know of Him, but their hearts are not attuned to Him, nor are their lives lived with Him or for Him.  Their knowledge of the Lord in their midst is objective, not personal. 

Now, it is indeed necessary to know the truth of and about Jesus, because any relationship with Him has to be based upon reality open to our minds, which is why Mother Church insists that her catechetical, scriptural, and dogmatic teaching be based on accurate scholarship, backed up by philosophical and scientific truth, and exemplified by authentic Catholic and Christian spirituality.  Such true teaching about the reality of faith, however, is meant to enable us to aspire and attain to personal contact and living communion with the Lord in and through the Scriptures and sacraments of Mother Church, and the intimacy of personal prayer; for only such sincerity and commitment can lead to real love for, and joyful fulfilment in, the Lord Jesus.

In our modern sophisticated social structure, money and education are readily available, and consequently we are inclined to self-satisfaction; and, having no real, basic needs of a material kind, we easily imagine that we have no spiritual needs either.   Because our experience of the world seems to offer everything for relatively easy taking, many are unwilling to make efforts to satisfy spiritual needs of which they are almost unaware.  Therefore they do not search for Jesus: their Bible is rarely opened let alone studied; their reception of Holy Communion is routine and perfunctory; and since the house of God is no house of prayer for them Jesus is left in splendid isolation in the tabernacle. It is because of such things that the divine truth in the Church’s teaching, and the heavenly grace available through her sacraments, bring forth but little fruit in the lives of many.

However, it is lack of personal prayer that is the most fundamental failing in most nominally Christian and Catholic lives, and St. Matthew, quoting Isaiah the prophet, gives us the reason:

Gross is the heart of this people, they will hardly hear with their ears, they have closed their eyes, lest they see with their eyes and hear with their ears and understand with their heart and be converted, and I heal them.

Gross, coarse, are the hearts of too many to hear the Lord speaking with them, guiding and encouraging, admonishing and warning them. For a society where normality it too often considered boring, and excess routinely craved, where joy is inconceivable without pleasure and peace unbearable without excitement, there is no opportunity for the voice of the Lord to be heard, no possibility that He will be appreciated or understood; too little good soil into which the divine seed can fall and take root, no humble mind or longing heart where divine love can take hold and flower. 

People of God, seek Jesus more and more; Advent is a time for joy, peace, and hope.  His promises are true and His coming is at hand; it is we ourselves we must indeed attend to but not despair of, because He comes with gifts to offer: not to those worthy to receive them but to those wanting and willing to accept them; to those wanting and willing to turn away from themselves and embrace Him, to those able to forget self and serve their neighbour.

Rejoice always. Pray without ceasing.  In all circumstances give thanks, for this is the will of God for you in Christ Jesus. Refrain from every kind of evil.

He Who is to come shall come; he will not delay.  But my just one shall live by faith, and if he draws back I take no pleasure in him.  (Heb. 10:37-38)