Homily for the Third Sunday of Advent

December 15, 2019
St. Patrick’s Cathedral
Fort Worth, Texas

Isaiah 35:1-6a, 10
Psalm 146:6-7, 8-9, 9-10
James 5:7-10
Matthew 11:2-11

What do you want for Christmas? Perhaps, you have been asked this question recently and with urgency. Yet, today in this cathedral and after listening to our readings of this Liturgy, I ask a more pressing question. What do you want for Advent? There aren’t many days of Advent left so the question is even more important for our ongoing conversion.

The Protestant minister and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who was imprisoned by the Nazis because of his resistance to their oppression, once described Advent in this manner, “A prison cell in which one waits, hopes, and is completely dependent upon the fact that the door of freedom has to be opened from the outside is not a bad picture of Advent.” John the Baptist prophesies to that truth in our Gospel reading today by sending his disciples from the dark of his prison cell to Jesus, the Light of the World, who can open the door of his cell and every cell. Jesus responds by instructing John’s disciples to give witness to what they see in His works and report them to John. They see that those blinded by darkness now see in the light, the light of day, the light of freedom, the light of truth. They rejoice.

What do we want for Advent? Do we want an open door to our prison cell of sin and fear — the door that we cannot open ourselves but that can only be opened by God’s gift of grace? Once the prison door is opened, what shall we do with our freedom? Do we come into the light of Christ, or do we stay in the dark of prison? Do we really want an open door, or do we prefer a revolving door where we can hide in the darkness but have enough light so that our eyes made dim by complacency and mediocrity are not hurt by the light of discipleship with Christ?

Today is Gaudete Sunday. Today our Liturgy calls us to rejoice in hope. John the Baptist prophesies and is the watchman for hope. Mary, who is full of grace, is filled with hope. Hope has as its object God Himself, not simply the many other gifts that God offers, but rather the gift of God Himself. Hope requires the reliance on grace in our relationship with God as Mary’s relationship is filled with grace.

To be honest, we prefer assurance over hope. We frequently seek the assurance that God’s okay with us and that we are okay with God. We want to be assured that our lives are acceptable to God so that we can be comforted that God will assist us in opening our own doors of prison when we want to open them. Assurance offers us only a utilitarian and distant relationship with God. We don’t have to change our way of life when we think we have assurance.

Hope brings about conversion. Hope engenders in us an ongoing relationship of dependent trust upon God watered by the conversation of prayer. If we only require assurance of our salvation from God, we soon act like we don’t need God unless He is useful to us. We prefer assurance that we are okay with God so that we don’t have to bother Him and then He will leave us alone, too. The height of our expectation of God becomes mutual coexistence but not love. If this the way things fall between God and each of us, it soon becomes the way that things fall between each of us and our spouses, between each of us and our children, between each of us and our families, and between each of us and the Church. We remain in our prison cell pretending that we can open the door if we so desired.

Hope recognizes that God does want to bother with us, opens the door of our prison of sin, and invites us to step into the light of the world, the gift of His Son. Advent is the season when God leads us out of the darkness of our demand for assurance into the light of hopeful trust. What do you want for Advent?

Second Sunday of Advent

December 10, 2017
St. Mark’s Catholic Church
Denton, Texas

Isaiah 40:1-5. 9-11
Psalm 85
2 Peter 3:8-14
Mark 1:1-8

To talk about a beginning is to convey that one has an end in mind, with some degree of detail. That is the case with the beginning of the Gospel of Mark that we read today. Mark’s Gospel is a short book, the shortest in length of the Gospels, and it ends somewhat abruptly with a brief account of the discovery of the empty tomb.

Mark ends his Gospel with an implied emphasis upon what is to come after the encounter with the mystery of the empty tomb of Jesus — that Christ has conquered sin and death by His Resurrection. Mark’s abrupt ending of his Gospel directs us to begin the Gospel in each of our lives, and more importantly, in our life of communion lived as the Church until Christ comes again to judge the living and the dead and to establish His eternal Kingdom.

The Season of Advent offers us two key figures in relation to Christ and to each of His comings. First in importance is the Blessed Virgin Mary who is instrumental in Christ’s first coming through her saying “yes” to the Will of God that she would become Christ’s mother — the Mother of God, the Mother of our salvation. Secondly, is the figure of St. John the Baptist, who is prominent in today’s reading from the Gospel of St. Mark.

John the Baptist announces the coming of Christ. He preaches a Gospel of repentance and radical change of heart because the coming of Christ is the final say that God has in conquering finally sin and death. The announcement made by John the Baptist is that God will reveal Himself fully and completely in Jesus Christ — there will be no more revelation because there can be no more revelation — God is, so to speak, laying all of His cards on the table — game, set, and match.

The Gospel reading that the liturgy offers us today is truly significant for our preparation in Advent for Christ’s coming. It is the beginning of the Gospel of Mark — which Scripture scholars tell us with a good degree of certitude was the first written, despite its being placed second in the order of the canon after Matthew’s Gospel. What Mark emphasizes in using the word “beginning” is that the entire work is the beginning of the story of Jesus, not just this particular part of Mark’s narrative. The story continues into the life of the early Church, and we as the Church continue the gospel by our life shared together as the Church today.

The Greek word for “gospel”—“evangelion” is found in the reading from Isaiah for this second Sunday of Advent. It is used to announce the good news of a victory of God by bringing to end the exile of His People. The term conveys a military victory. God has vanquished in battle the forces of evil and division in order to bring his people home. The Lord is revealed in this reading from Isaiah to be a warrior who will fight for His people against their enemies and oppressors. God is also revealed to be a shepherd who will comfort and guide His people into safety. Thus, Mark’s story of Jesus will reveal Him as one who will bring an end to the reign of sin, evil, and death by victory in battle over them and shepherd His people into safety.

So, John the Baptist goes into the wilderness, the place where Israel first became a people after God’s victory over the forces of slavery in Egypt. The wilderness is the place where Israel first came to discern and to hear God’s victorious voice leading them to the Promised Land. The wilderness is the place where they can only trust God and not their own unaided merit to lead them to the Promised Land — to God’s Kingdom. The wilderness is the place where we encounter and receive God’s Grace. John the Baptist calls out from the wilderness to the people of his time to prepare for the coming of Christ to conquer finally evil, sin, and death through His cross and resurrection.

John the Baptist cries out the Gospel — the good news of God’s victory in battle over sin and evil — to us today in the wilderness of secularism and postmodernism. He calls us to prepare for Christ’s second coming through repentance, prayer, and acts of mercy and consolation. He reminds us that the fullness of the Truth is Jesus Christ and there is no more to be revealed. His proclamation of the good news of God’s final victory helps us to discern our way as the Church in the wilderness of contemporary times that inflict upon us so much confusion, selfishness, and violence — but which have already been vanquished by Christ — game, set, and match.

First Sunday of Advent

December 3, 2017
St. Patrick Cathedral
Fort Worth, Texas

Isaiah 63:16b-17,19B; 64:2-7
Psalm 80
1 Corinthians 1:3-9
Mark 13:33-37

The season of Lent begins on Ash Wednesday with an admonition to each of us to "turn away from sin and be faithful to the Gospel." The Liturgical Year begins with Advent which starts today, not with our own turning away from sin, but rather with our attention to God’s turning toward us "to come and to save us." God saves us fully in Jesus Christ who came the first time to save us, and will complete His mission of salvation when He comes again to establish His Kingdom, of which we long to be a part.

Advent is about our paying attention to God’s initiative and our being alert to His Grace offered to us in seeking us out to save and to redeem us. It’s about our hopeful expectation and waiting for Him.

We too often understand waiting in our contemporary world as wasting time. Our contemporary understanding prompts us to fill such time with surfing the net, playing games on our phones, hunting with our remote controls — in a word, to fill the silence of waiting with noise and distraction. The devil’s objective is to distract us from the silence where God reveals Himself to us and where we should be paying attention for God’s coming. So, it’s understandable that the contemporary world attempts to snatch Advent from us with the noisy and cultural demands that lure us into frenetic activity. Silence is needed for prayer. Without silence, our prayer soon becomes reduced to a list of wants that we present to God; we then subsequently abandon the act of attentive listening in prayer. Prayer ceases to be a conversation when silence is absent from us; prayer then can become a monologue or even an unfocused rant.

Just as silence enables prayer; noise provokes violence. It should not be surprising that so much of what passes currently for conversation in political discourse and in news reporting has become harsh and inflammatory of the violence that dominates us in our contemporary world. The conversation that we have with God in silence prompts us to become alert to His loving and selfless priorities for us that soon become, through a change of heart in us, our own priorities for our loved ones. As Cardinal Robert Sarah notes, "God’s first language is silence. Everything else is a poor translation. In order to understand this language, we must learn to be silent and to rest in God." Advent is the opportunity for us to come to this understanding.

During these days take time for silence, just a few moments each day, alone or as a family, or with a group of friends. Ask God, as Isaiah does in today’s reading, to return to us and not to let us wander. So, as the shopping music attempts to indoctrinate us with the ideology that "we need a little Christmas, right this very minute!" Let’s silently petition God for the grace of a little Advent given lovingly to us in His own good time.