One-page synopsis: Advent I (A)  Homily on Mt 24:37-44

Introduction: Today we begin our yearly pilgrimage through the events of our history of salvation starting with the preparation for the birthday celebration of Jesus and ending with the reflection on his glorious “second coming” as judge at the end of the world. We are entering the Advent season. Advent means coming. We are invited to mediate on Jesus’ first coming in history as a baby in Bethlehem, his daily coming into our lives in mystery through the Sacraments, through the Bible and through the worshipping community and finally his Second Coming at the end of the world to reward the just and to punish the wicked. We see the traditional signs of Advent in our Church: violet vestments and hangings, dried flowers on the altar, and the Advent wreath. These signs remind us that we have to prepare for the rebirth of Jesus in our hearts and lives, enabling him to radiate his love, mercy, compassion and forgiveness around us.

Scripture lessons: In the first reading, the prophet Isaiah describes his vision of all nations making a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, affirming their Faith in the one true God. Today’s Responsorial Psalm (Ps 122), is a joyous hymn originally sung as pilgrims journeyed to the Temple in Jerusalem.  They prepare us for our yearly pilgrimage.

In the second reading Paul exhorts the Roman Christian community to get ready to meet Jesus in his Second Coming by discharging their duties properly and by freeing themselves from their former pagan tendencies toward excessive drinking, sexual promiscuity, jealousy and rivalry. We, too, are challenged to make spiritual preparations for Christ’s birth in our lives.

In today’s Gospel Jesus warns us of the urgency of vigilant preparation on our part that we may meet him as the judge both at the end of our lives on earth and on the day of the Last Judgment when he comes in his glory. Jesus reminds us of how the unrepentant and ill-prepared evil people were destroyed by the flood in the time of Noah and how a thief would break in and plunder the precious belongings of an ill-prepared house owner. Using the additional examples later, Jesus repeats his warning for us to be vigilant and well-prepared all the time, doing the will of God by loving others.

Life message:  We need to be alert and watchful while spiritually preparing for Christmas by offering our daily work to God for His glory, by practicing more self-control in resisting our evil habits and inclinations, by seeking reconciliation daily with God and our fellow-humans, and by asking God’s pardon and forgiveness and extending our unconditional forgiveness to those who have hurt us. Let us begin each day by praying for the strength and power of the Holy Spirit to prepare ourselves for Jesus’ rebirth in our hearts and lives.

I ADVENT [A] (Nov 27) Is 2:1-5; Rom 13:11-14; Mt 24:37-44 

Anecdote # 1: Unheeded warning: Early Sunday morning, June 30, 1974, a hundred young people were dancing to the soul-rock music at Gulliver’s in Port Chester, on the border between New York and Connecticut. Suddenly the place was filled with flames and smoke. In a few minutes 24 were dead, burnt by fire, suffocated by smoke, and crushed in the exit passage by the escaping youngsters. According to the Mayor of Port Chester, the dancing crowd ignored the repeated and frantic warnings given by the band manager when he noticed the smoke. Today’s second reading passes on to us the warnings given by St. Paul, and today’s Gospel gives the warning to be vigilant and prepared given by Jesus.

#2: Doomsday paranoia: The Jehovah’s Witnesses frightened gullible followers at least 3 times during the last century with their “end of the world” predictions – in 1914, 1918 and 1974.  It was in 1978 that the media flashed the shocking news of the mass suicide of 914 men and women from the U.S.A. They belonged to a doomsday cult called the Peoples Temple, in Jonestown, Guyana and they committed suicide at the command of their paranoid leader, Rev. Warren (Jim) Jones. In 1988 Edgar Whisenant, a NASA engineer, used his mathematical skills to set a date for the return of Jesus. He wrote a book called, 88 Reasons Why the Rapture Will Take Place in 1988. In the same year Rev. Colin Deal published a book titled Christ Returns By 1988 – 101 Reasons Why. A very popular book in 1989 was 89 Reasons Why the World will End in 1989. It was in 1995 that the landmark apocalyptic thriller novel, Left Behind, first of a series of 16 books by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins (Left Behind, Tribulation Force, Nicolae, Soul Harvest, Apollyon, Assassins, The Indwelling, The Mark, Desecration, The Remnant, Armageddon, and Glorious Appearing 4 new ones) began hitting Christian bookstores. Since then, over 62 million copies of the Left Behind series and its related books have been sold, generating $650 million. In October, 2005 a big-budget film, Left Behind, based on this novel series, was released and shown in all Evangelical Christian parishes. The film Omega Code, released in October 1999, was an independent movie funded by the Trinity Broadcasting Network, the largest Evangelical Christian TV network in the U.S. It was promoted by a team of 2,400 U.S. Evangelical pastors.  The plot involves a portrayal of the , when “born again” and "saved" Christians, both alive and dead, are supposed to fly up in the air to meet Jesus on his Second Coming.  Omega Code was rated in the top 10 grossing movies for October 1999. This is how modern man reacts to the end of the world.  Today’s readings remind us that we should be well prepared and always ready to meet Jesus at all times, either at the end of our lives or at the end of the world, whichever comes first, without getting panicky.

Introduction: The readings in the early Sundays of Advent always carry forward the "end of the world" theme from the last Sundays of the previous year, the 33^rd Sunday in Ordinary Time and the Feast of Christ the King, the 34^th and final Sunday of the Liturgical year. This links each ending year with the one following it. Today is the first Sunday of Advent, the “Sunday of Hope” in God and His Son, Jesus Christ, through whom God has promised to save and redeem His people. Today we begin our yearly re-enactment of the drama of our salvation, starting with the mystery of the Incarnation (Christmas) and culminating in the celebration of Christ’s ultimate victory (Christ the King). It is our yearly pilgrimage through the scenes and events of our history of salvation.  Advent is a time for looking both backward and forward.  We look backward as we prepare to celebrate the historical birth of Jesus. At the same time, we look forward to his Second Coming, as we prepare ourselves to welcome him into all areas of our lives during the Advent season.  In the Eucharistic Acclamation we profess our faith in Jesus’ Second Coming: "We proclaim Your Death, O Lord, and profess Your Resurrection until You come again"; and in the Creed we proclaim our belief that “He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end.” One Bible scholar has estimated that there are 1,845 references to Christ’s second coming in the Old Testament and 318 references in the New Testament. We see the traditional signs of Advent in our Church: violet vestments and hangings, dried flowers on the altar, and the Advent wreath. We light a candle on this wreath each Sundayuntil all four are lit.   These signs remind us that we are waiting for the rebirth of Jesus in our hearts and lives in love, mercy, compassion and forgiveness.

In the first reading, Isaiah (2:1-5) reports his vision of all nations gathering on Mount Zion, as described also by Micah (4: 1-3), using the image of pilgrimage. The prophet looks forward to the time when the Covenant between God and His people will be extended to all people, and the Temple in Jerusalem will be the worshipping place for all mankind, so that all may live in peace and harmony with God and their fellow-humans. In the late eighth century BC, God's people were already divided into a northern kingdom called Israel, and a southern kingdom known as Judah.  Israel had fallen under Assyrian rule, while Judah and its capital Jerusalem were in danger of being conquered by Babylon.  In the vision of Isaiah, however, Judah is shown as the place to which all nations will come for “instructions in righteous living.” (Zion in Jerusalem was the holy mountain where Solomon's Temple had stood).  The result will be universal peace.  The Lord will mediate all disputes among nations, and "they shall beat their swords into plowshares." The prophet reveals to his audience the radical notion that God might love other nations in addition to Judah. The Responsorial Psalm (Ps 122) is a joyous hymn originally meant to be sung as pilgrims journeyed to Jerusalem, the site of the Temple, the dwelling place of God on earth. As we sing the Psalm today, it invites us to look longingly toward Christmas, the feast that celebrates the Incarnation of God among us.

The second reading (Romans 13:11-14) is Paul’s exhortation to the Roman Christians showing them how to bring about Isaiah’s vision of peace. Because of its concentration on the Parousia, or the Second Coming of Jesus, the Christian  community was neglecting its actual day-to-day duties. The Jewish Christians among them lived according to the Law of Moses, a moral code which even pagans admired.  But the Gentile Christians were not yet fully free from the “orgies, drunkenness, promiscuity and lust” of their pagan days.  Hence, Paul advises them: “Conduct yourselves properly.” He warns them against “orgies and drunkenness...promiscuity and lust.” He condemns their “rivalry and jealousy” and advises them to get ready to meet Jesus at his Second Coming.  Paul believes that Jesus' Second Coming will be a day of salvation only for those who are already acting in a proper manner.We, too, must act as pilgrims, entering wholeheartedly into our yearly pilgrimage through salvation history, leaving behind whatever might hinder our progress, and accepting whatever hardships our journey might entail.

Exegesis: The context: Matthew’s audience was mostly made up of Jewish converts to Christianity. These Christians were ridiculed and ostracized by their Jewish friends who had not accepted Christ as the Messiah, and they wondered why some Jews were selected to become Christians and others not. To clear their doubts, Matthew quotes Jesus in today’s Gospel, suggesting the apparently arbitrary nature of the election on the last day. Just as at the time of the Deluge, Noah and his small family were spared while others perished, so shall it be at "the end." The emphasis on the unpredictability of election may have helped Matthew's Jewish Christian audience to deal with the fact that many of their fellow-Christians were recently despised Gentiles. This apocalyptic section of Matthew’s Gospel begins with Jesus' prediction of the destruction of the Temple, and goes on to Christ's   Second Coming, and the signs preceding both.  Jesus answers the disciples by giving them signs of the end of the age (24:3-8), foretelling persecutions (24:9-14), and recalling thesacrilege prophesied by Daniel (24:15-28).  Jesus also tells the Parable of the Barren Fig Tree (24:32-35), in which he warns his disciples to be alert and prepared.

The need for preparedness: The consistent warning in today’s Gospel text is that we should be prepared for the coming of the master.  Our text indicates that the end will seem to be a peaceful and normal time, with people eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, and working in their homes or businesses.  In this routine normal life, it might be easy to forget the "coming of the Son of Man."   In a reference to the story of Noah, Jesus says that the sin of the people was placing too much emphasis on the normal cares and necessities of life.  They were too concerned with eating and drinking – just as we are during the Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's holidays.  Jesus reminds us that there is something more important than feasts or weddings: the Son of Man will come to us unexpectedly, either at our death or at the end of the world, and that could be at any moment.   Since God will show up without an appointment, we must be prepared at all times.

The “Rapture.” The reading from Romans contains a disputed reference to the so-called "rapture," an event in which, it is supposed, some people will be taken up from life on earth directly into the air to meet the returning Christ.  This concept of “dispensationalism," proposed by Rev. Nelson Darby an Irish Anglican lawyer -pastor  in A.D. 1800, is a misinterpretation, however.   The belief in the Rapture is rooted in the fourth and fifth chapters of 1 Thessalonians, which are placed into an elaborate chronology of "end-time" events based on other passages from Revelation, Daniel, and Matthew 24. In this scheme, the Rapture was called the "day of the Lord" which would come like “a thief in the night" (1 Thess. 5:2). After this secret removal of believers would come the rise of the Antichrist and the placement of the "Mark of the Beast" on his followers during seven years of Tribulation.At the end of those seven years, the second coming of Christ and Armageddon, the final battle between good and evil, would take place. The passage in Matthew (24:40-41), does, indeed, talk about some people being "taken" and some being "left behind,” but the word for "taken" (paralambanomai) means, not "to go up" but rather "to go along with.”  It isn't a magical word about the “born again and saved” people floating up in the air as many of our Protestant brothers believe.  It is much more like Jesus' words to the apostles by the Sea of Galilee:  “follow me” or “come along with me."

We need to be alert even while we work: The man working in the field and the woman working at the mill will be “left", because they won’t leave their work.  True enough – work is important.  We need to provide food and shelter for ourselves and our families.  But there is something more important than our work: the coming of the Son of Man. God will arrive unexpectedly. We don't know when a thief might break into our house, so we are prepared for him at all times.  We lock our doors and windows.  We leave a light on when we're gone. We put in an alarm system. We insure our possessions.  We do these things now because a thief could come at some unknown time.  Hence, even during this busy Christmas season we must keep our daily life centered on Christ.

How do we prepare for the unexpected coming of the Son of Man?  In Jesus’ parable, we have an example of the proper and improper methods of waiting.  The faithful slave who, with sincerity and good management, has faithfully carried out his master's instructions to ensure the welfare of his fellow-slaves (20:26-27), is always ready for his master's coming. In contrast, the wicked servant is primarily concerned with power, food and drink.  The master is the image for Jesus.   To be prepared for his coming (Matt. 24:3, 36-43), we must be obedient to the Divine will, which means that our actions must serve the community.  The question we might ask is: "Am I being faithful and wise in caring for others while waiting for Christ's return?"  The text reminds us that our preparation for the Incarnation of our Lord is only one aspect of our Advent preparation, and not necessarily the most important.  Let us remind ourselves of our need to be prepared for our Lord’s return in judgment without "doomsday paranoia" on the one hand or complacency on the other.

Life messages:  1) An Advent project: How to be alert and watchful in the spirit of today’s Gospel.  Every morning when we get up, let us pray, “Lord, show me someone today with whom I may share your love, mercy and forgiveness.”  St. Teresa of Calcutta (Mother Teresa), once said, "Whatever you do in your family, for your children, for your husband, for your wife, you do for Jesus."  Every night when we go to bed, let us ask ourselves, “Where have I found Christ today?”  The answer will be God’s Advent gift to us that day. By being alert and watchful, we’ll be getting an extra gift:  Christ himself.  There is a saying about being saved which goes back to St. Thomas Aquinas: "Without God, I can't.  Without me, He won't."

2) We need to be wakeful and watchful: We are so future-oriented that we frequently forget the present entirely.  We spend too much time trying to protect ourselves against future misfortunes.  We save for a rainy day, to get married, to buy a home, to send the children to college, to retire in comfort and to protect ourselves against future misfortunes with varieties of insurance.  But we need to be more spiritually wakeful to prepare for our eternal life.  Let us make this Advent season the time of such preparation.

JOKE OF THE WEEK: #1: Shirt over the wings: Grandma Martha was scolding her little grandson on his failure to go to church on a Sunday. “You will never get into Heaven the way you are going today,” she told him. “Well, Granny, the reason that I don’t go is I got a problem. I can’t for the life of me figure how I’m gonna get my shirt on over those wings I’ll have on my way to Heaven.” “Never mind about shirts,” said the grandma. “The question in your case is how are you gonna get your hat on over those horns which the bad boys get when they are taken to hell?”

 #2: End of the World News Reactions: God finally had had enough and decided to end the world. However He wanted to warn the people. He decided to call the three most influential people of the world.  He therefore summoned Barak Obama, Xi Jinping(President of China), and Bill Gates into one room and told them of His plan, and asked them to go out and inform the world. President Obama immediately appeared on CNN news and told the U.S., "I have good news and bad news.  The good news is that God congratulated me for standing for religious and moral principles.  The bad news is that He is going to end the world and I won’t be able to complete my second term and bring back full prosperity to our country.” Jiang Zemin went to the Communist network and told his people: "I have bad news and worse news.  The bad news is that, despite what we have taught all these years, there IS a God. The worse news is that He is upset.  He is about to end the world." Bill Gates turned to the Internet and informed the world: "I have good news and better news...  The good news is that God thinks I am one of the three most influential people on earth... The better news is that Microsoft need not upgrade its WINDOWS any more.

3) Search Google: One Sunday after Church, a mother was talking to her young daughter. She told her daughter that, according to the Bible, Jesus will return to earth some day. "When is he coming back?" the daughter asked. "I don't know," replied the mother. "Can't you look it up on the Internet?" the little girl asked. [Jeff Totten, "The Lord's Laughter,”Joyful Noiseletter (Jan. 2004), p. 2.]

Advent I [A] Sunday Homily: One-page Summary(L-19)

Introduction: Today we begin our yearly pilgrimage through the events of our history of salvation starting with the preparation for the birthday celebration of Jesus and ending with the reflection on his glorious “second coming” as judge at the end of the world. We are entering the Advent season. Advent means coming. We are invited to meditate on Jesus’ first coming in history as a baby in Bethlehem, his daily coming into our lives in mystery through the Sacraments, through the Bible and through the worshipping community and finally his Second Coming at the end of the world to reward the just and to punish the wicked. We see the traditional signs of Advent in our Church: violet vestments and hangings, dried flowers or plain green plants and the Advent wreath. These signs remind us that we must prepare for the rebirth of Jesus in our hearts and lives, enabling him to radiate his love, mercy, compassion and forgiveness around us. 

Scripture lessons summarized: In the first reading (Is 2:1-5), Isaiah describes his prophetic vision of all nations making a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, affirming their Faith in the one true God. Today’s Responsorial Psalm (Ps 122), is a joyous hymn originally sung as pilgrims journeyed to the Temple in Jerusalem.  They prepare us for our yearly pilgrimage. In the second reading (Rom 13:11-14),, Paul exhorts the Roman Christian community to get ready to meet Jesus in his Second Coming by discharging their duties properly and by freeing themselves from their former pagan tendencies toward excessive drinking, sexual promiscuity, jealousy and rivalry. We, too, are challenged to make spiritual preparations for Christ’s birth in our lives.

In today’s Gospel(Mt 24:37-44),  Jesus warns us of the urgency of vigilant preparation on our part that we may meet him as our Judge both at the end of our lives on earth and on the day of the Last Judgment when he comes in his glory. Jesus reminds us of how the unrepentant and ill-prepared evil people were destroyed by the flood in the time of Noah and of how a thief would break in and plunder the precious belongings of an ill-prepared house owner. Using the additional examples later, Jesus repeats his warning for us to be vigilant and well-prepared all the time, doing the will of God by loving others. 

Life message:  We need to be alert and watchful while spiritually preparing for Christmas by offering our daily work to God for His glory, by practicing more self-control in resisting our evil habits and inclinations, by seeking reconciliation daily with God and our fellow-humans, and by asking God’s pardon and forgiveness as we extend our unconditional forgiveness to those who have hurt us. Let us begin each day by praying for the strength and power of the Holy Spirit to prepare ourselves for Jesus’ rebirth in our hearts and lives. 

I ADVENT [A] (Dec 1) Is 2:1-5; Rom 13:11-14; Mt 24:37-44  

Homily starter anecdotes # 1: Unheeded warning: Early Sunday morning, June 30, 1974, a hundred young people were dancing to the soul-rock music at Gulliver’s in Port Chester, on the border between New York and Connecticut. Suddenly the place was filled with flames and smoke. In a few minutes 24 were dead, burnt by fire, suffocated by smoke, or crushed in the exit passage by the escaping youngsters. According to the Mayor of Port Chester, the dancing crowd ignored the repeated and frantic warnings given by the band manager when he noticed the smoke. Today’s second reading passes on to us the warnings given by St. Paul, and today’s Gospel gives Jesus’ warning to be vigilant and prepared for his coming as our Judge.

#2: Doomsday paranoia: The Jehovah’s Witnesses frightened gullible followers at least 3 times during the last century with their “end of the world” predictions – in 1914, 1918 and 1974.  It was in 1978 that the media flashed the shocking news of the mass suicide of 914 men and women from the U.S.A. They belonged to a doomsday cult called the People’s Temple, in Jonestown, Guyana, and they committed suicide at the command of their paranoid leader, Rev. Warren (Jim) Jones. In 1988, Edgar Whisenant, a NASA engineer, used his mathematical skills to set a date for the return of Jesus. He wrote a book called, 88 Reasons Why the Rapture Will Take Place in 1988. In the same year Rev. Colin Deal published a book titled Christ Returns By 1988 – 101 Reasons Why. A very popular book in 1989 was 89 Reasons Why the World will End in 1989. It was in 1995 that the landmark apocalyptic thriller novel, Left Behind,(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left_Behind)  first of a series of 16 books by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins. In chronological order, these are:  The Rising, The Regime, The Rapture, Left Behind, Tribulation Force, Nicolae, Soul Harvest, Apollyon, Assassins, The Indwelling, The Mark,         Desecration, The Remnant, Armageddon, Glorious Appearing, and Kingdom Come. They were published from 1995 to 2007.  Over 62 million copies of the Left Behind series and its related books have been sold, generating $650 million. In October 2005 a big-budget film, Left Behind (https://youtu.be/MUOODCHc-XU)n, based on this novel series, was released and shown in all Evangelical Christian parishes. The film Omega Code, released in October 1999 (in time for the Millennium?), was an independent movie funded by the Trinity Broadcasting Network, the largest Evangelical Christian TV network in the U.S. It was promoted by a team of 2,400 U.S. Evangelical pastors.  The plot involves a portrayal of the rapture, when “born again” and "saved" Christians, both alive and dead, are supposed to fly up in the air to meet Jesus on his Second Coming.  Omega Code was rated in the top 10 grossing movies for October 1999. This is how modern man reacts to the end of the world.  Today’s readings remind us that we should be well prepared and always ready to meet Jesus at all times, either at the end of our lives or at the end of the world, whichever comes first, without getting panicky.

Introduction: The readings in the early Sundays of Advent always carry forward the "end of the world" theme from the last Sundays of the previous year, the 33^rd Sunday in Ordinary Time, and the Feast of Christ the King, the 34^th and final Sunday of the Liturgical year. This links each ending year with the approaching one. Today is the first Sunday of Advent, the “Sunday of Hope” in God and His Son, Jesus Christ, through whom God has promised to save and redeem His people. Today we begin our yearly re-enactment of the drama of our salvation, starting with the mystery of the Incarnation (Christmas) and culminating in the celebration of Christ’s ultimate victory (Christ the King). It is our yearly pilgrimage through the scenes and events of our history of salvation.  Advent is a time for looking both backward and forward.  We look backward as we prepare to celebrate the historical birth of Jesus. At the same time, we look forward to his Second Coming, as we prepare ourselves to welcome him into all areas of our lives during the Advent season.  In the Eucharistic Acclamation we profess our faith in Jesus’ Second Coming: "We proclaim Your Death, O Lord, and profess Your Resurrection until You come again"; and in the Creed we proclaim our belief that “He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end.” One Bible scholar has estimated that there are 1,845 references to Christ’s second coming in the Old Testament and 318 references in the New Testament. We see the traditional signs of Advent in our Church: violet vestments and hangings, no flowers, only green plants in the Sanctuary, and the Advent wreath. We light a candle on this wreath each Sunday until all four are lit.   These signs remind us that we are waiting for the rebirth of Jesus in our hearts and lives in love, mercy, compassion and forgiveness. Let us remember that Advent is at once a celebration of the Christ who was, who is and always will be. In other words, Christ has come once, he will come again; indeed, he has never left, but is continually present in his Church.

The first reading, Isaiah (2:1-5) explained:  Isaiah reports his prophetic vision of all nations gathering on Mount Zion, as described also by Micah (4:1-3), using the image of pilgrimage. The prophet looks forward to the time when the Covenant between God and His people will be extended to all people, and the Temple in Jerusalem will be the worshipping place for all mankind, so that all may live in peace and harmony with God and their fellow-humans. In the late eighth century BC, God's people were already divided into a northern kingdom called Israel, and a southern kingdom known as Judah.  Israel had fallen under Assyrian rule, while Judah and its capital Jerusalem were in danger of being conquered by Babylon.  In the vision of Isaiah, however, Judah is shown as the place to which all nations will come for “instructions in righteous living.” (Zion in Jerusalem was the holy mountain where Solomon's Temple had stood).  The result will be universal peace.  The Lord will mediate all disputes among nations, and "they shall beat their swords into plowshares." The prophet reveals to his audience the radical notion that God might love other nations in addition to Judah. The Responsorial Psalm (Ps 122) is a joyous hymn originally meant to be sung as pilgrims journeyed to Jerusalem, the site of the Temple, the dwelling place of God on earth. As we sing the Psalm today, it invites us to look longingly toward Christmas, the feast that celebrates the Incarnation of God among us.

The second reading (Romans 13:11-14) explained:  In this reading, Paul’s exhortation to the Roman Christians shows them, and us, how to bring about Isaiah’s vision of peace. Because of its concentration on the Parousia, or the Second Coming of Jesus, the Christian community was neglecting its actual day-to-day duties. The Jewish Christians among them lived according to the Law of Moses, a moral code which even pagans admired.  But the Gentile Christians were not yet fully free from the “orgies, drunkenness, promiscuity and lust” of their pagan days.  Hence, Paul advises them: “Conduct yourselves properly.” He warns them against “orgies and drunkenness...promiscuity and lust.” He condemns their “rivalry and jealousy” and advises them to get ready to meet Jesus at his Second Coming.  Paul believes that Jesus' Second Coming will be a day of salvation only for those who are already acting in a proper manner. We, too, must act as pilgrims, entering wholeheartedly into our yearly pilgrimage through salvation history, leaving behind whatever might hinder our progress, and accepting whatever hardships our journey might entail. 

Gospel exegesis: The context: Matthew’s audience was mostly made up of Jewish converts to Christianity. These Christians were ridiculed and ostracized by their Jewish friends who had not accepted Christ as the Messiah, and they wondered why some Jews were selected to become Christians and others not. To clear their doubts, Matthew quotes Jesus in today’s Gospel, suggesting the apparently arbitrary nature of the election on the last day. Just as at the time of the Deluge, Noah and his small family were spared while others perished, so shall it be at "the end." The emphasis on the unpredictability of election may have helped Matthew's Jewish Christian audience to deal with the fact that many of their fellow-Christians were recently despised Gentiles. This apocalyptic section of Matthew’s Gospel begins with Jesus' prediction of the destruction of the Temple, and goes on to Christ's   Second Coming, and the signs preceding both.  Jesus answers the disciples by giving them signs of the end of the age (24:3-8), foretelling persecutions (24:9-14), and recalling the sacrilege prophesied by Daniel (24:15-28).  Jesus also tells the Parable of the Barren Fig Tree (24:32-35), in which he warns his disciples to be alert and prepared. 

The need for preparedness: The consistent warning in today’s Gospel text is that we should be prepared for the coming of the master.  Our text indicates that the end will seem to be a peaceful and normal time, with people eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, and working in their homes or businesses.  In this routine normal life, it might be easy to forget the "coming of the Son of Man."   In a reference to the story of Noah, Jesus says that the sin of the people was placing too much emphasis on the normal cares and necessities of life.  They were too concerned with eating and drinking – just as we are during the Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's holidays.  Jesus reminds us that there is something more important than feasts or weddings: the Son of Man will come to us unexpectedly, either at our death or at the end of the world, and that could be at any moment.   Since God will show up without an appointment, we must be prepared at all times. 

The “Rapture.” The reading from Romans contains a disputed reference to the so-called "rapture," an event in which, it is supposed, some people will be taken up from life on earth directly into the air to meet the returning Christ.  This concept of “dispensationalism," proposed by Rev. Nelson Darby an Irish Anglican lawyer-pastor in A.D. 1800, is a misinterpretation, however.   The belief in the Rapture is rooted in the fourth and fifth chapters of 1 Thessalonians, which are placed into an elaborate chronology of "end-time" events based on other passages from Revelation, Daniel, and Matthew 24. In this scheme, the Rapture was called the "day of the Lord" which would come like “a thief in the night" (1 Thess. 5:2). After this secret removal of believers would come the rise of the Antichrist and the placement of the "Mark of the Beast" on his followers during seven years of Tribulation. At the end of those seven years, the second coming of Christ and Armageddon, the final battle between good and evil, would take place. The passage in Matthew (24:40-41), does, indeed, talk about some people being "taken" and some being "left behind,” but the word for "taken" (paralambanomai) means, not "to go up" but rather "to go along with.”  It isn't a magical word about the “born again and saved” people floating up in the air as many of our Protestant brothers believe.  It is much more like Jesus' words to the apostles by the Sea of Galilee: “follow me” or “come along with me."

We need to be alert even while we work: The man working in the field and the woman working at the mill will be “left", because they won’t leave their work.  True enough – work is important.  We need to provide food and shelter for ourselves and our families.  But there is something more important than our work: the coming of the Son of Man. God will arrive unexpectedly. We don't know when a thief might break into our house, so we are prepared for him at all times.  We lock our doors and windows.  We leave a light on when we're gone. We put in an alarm system. We insure our possessions.  We do these things now because a thief could come at some unknown time.  Hence, especially during this busy Christmas season, we must keep our daily life centered on Christ.

How do we prepare for the unexpected coming of the Son of Man?  In Jesus’ parable, we have an example of the proper and improper methods of waiting.  The faithful slave who, with sincerity and good management, has faithfully carried out his master's instructions to ensure the welfare of his fellow-slaves (20:26-27), is always ready for his master's coming. In contrast, the wicked servant is primarily concerned with power, food and drink.  The master is the image for Jesus.   To be prepared for his coming (Matt. 24:3, 36-43), we must be obedient to the Divine will, which means that our actions must serve the community.  The question we might ask is: "Am I being faithful and wise in caring for others while waiting for Christ's return?"  The text reminds us that our preparation for the Incarnation of our Lord is only one aspect of our Advent preparation, and not necessarily the most important.  Let us remind ourselves of our need to be prepared for our Lord’s return in judgment without "doomsday paranoia" on the one hand or complacency on the other.

Life messages:  1) An Advent project: How to be alert and watchful in the spirit of today’s Gospel.  Every morning when we get up, let us pray, “Lord, show me someone today with whom I may share your love, mercy and forgiveness.”  St. Teresa of Calcutta (Mother Teresa), once said, "Whatever you do in your family, for your children, for your husband, for your wife, you do for Jesus."  Every night when we go to bed, let us ask ourselves, “Where have I found Christ today?”  The answer will be God’s Advent gift to us that day. By being alert and watchful, we’ll be getting an extra gift:  Christ himself.  There is a saying about being saved which goes back to St. Thomas Aquinas: "Without God, I can't.  Without me, He won't."  

2) We need to be wakeful and watchful: We are so future-oriented that we frequently forget the present entirely.  We spend too much time trying to protect ourselves against future misfortunes.  We save for a rainy day, to get married, to buy a home, to send the children to college, to retire in comfort and to protect ourselves against future misfortunes with varieties of insurance.  But we need to be more spiritually wakeful to prepare for our eternal life.  Let us make this Advent season the time of such preparation. 

JOKE OF THE WEEK: #1: Shirt over the wings: Grandma Martha was scolding her little grandson on his failure to go to church on a Sunday. “You will never get into Heaven the way you are going today,” she told him. “Well, Granny, the reason that I don’t go is I got a problem. I can’t for the life of me figure how I’m gonna get my shirt on over those wings I’ll have on my way to Heaven.” “Never mind about shirts,” said the grandma. “The question in your case is how are you gonna get your hat on over those horns which the bad boys get when they are taken to hell?”

 #2: End of the World News Reactions: God finally had had enough and decided to end the world. However, He wanted to warn the people. He decided to call the three most influential people of the world.  He therefore summoned Donald Trump, Xi Jinping (President of China), and Bill Gates into one room and told them of His plan and asked them to go out and inform the world. President Trump immediately appeared on CNN news and told the U.S., "I have good news and bad news.  The good news is that God congratulated me for standing for religious and moral principles.  The bad news is that He is going to end the world and I won’t be able to win my second term and bring back full prosperity to our country.” Jiang Zemin went to the Communist network and told his people: "I have bad news and worse news.  The bad news is that, despite what we have taught all these years, there IS a God. The worse news is that He is upset.  He is about to end the world." Bill Gates turned to the Internet and informed the world: "I have good news and better news...  The good news is that God thinks I am one of the three most influential people on earth... The better news is that Microsoft need not upgrade its WINDOWS anymore. 3) Search Google: One Sunday after Church, a mother was talking to her young daughter. She told her daughter that, according to the Bible, Jesus will return to earth someday. "When is he coming back?" the daughter asked. "I don't know," replied the mother. "Can't you look it up on the Internet?" the little girl asked. [Jeff Totten, "The Lord's Laughter,” Joyful Noiseletter (Jan. 2004), p. 2.]

Prepared by: Fr. Anthony Kadavil, Chaplain, Sacred Heart Residence of the Little Sisters of the Poor, 1655 McGill Ave, Mobile, AL 36604

HOMILY ON THE FIRST SUNDAY OF ADVENT, YEAR A

READY FOR THE DAY OF THE LORD:

(Is.2:2-5, Ps 121, Rom. 13:11-14 & Matt. 24:37-44)

Today is the First Sunday of the Advent Season which lasts for four weeks. The word "Advent" comes from the Latin word Adventus which means "coming." In the Christian tradition Advent has a twofold character, it is a time of preparation for the Solemnity of Christmas which commemorates the first coming of Our Saviour Jesus Christ in the human form, again Advent is a time when we, Christians look forward to Jesus' Second coming in glory at the end of time amidst the angels. For these two reasons, the Advent season is a period of delightful preparation and waiting in joyful hope to meet the Lord.

In light of this, Jesus warns his disciples and all of us today in the Gospel reading of today to be alert and be prepared to meet the day of the Lord when he comes again to judge the living and the dead. Here Jesus compares his coming with what happened in the "days of Noah" (see Gen. chp 6).

The Book of Genesis tells why God chose to separate Noah and his family who were God fearing from those who had utterly rejected God by corrupting the earth with violence and evil: "The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually,…with corruption and violence spreading everywhere" (Genesis 6:5, 11-12).

And so when the judgment of God came, the people were caught completely unaware and unprepared by the disaster that swept them away, as they were busy with their worldly affairs, eating and drinking and marrying wives and husbands and enjoying life until the day Noah and his family went into the Ark and the flood came and swept the whole people away.

Just as God made a covenant of peace with Noah and his descendants and provided a place of refuge for them in the ark which spared them from the great Deluge (Gen 7), so God provides for us today, (the people of the new covenant who are faithful to his word), a place of refuge in Christ, His Son, whom God sent as our Saviour and Redeemer.

The pressing question now is, how are we to live our lives now as we prepare to commemorate the birth of Christ and also to wait for the promise of his second coming? From the gospel reading of today, Jesus gives us two striking images to illustrate the urgency of the need for us not to be caught off guard and unprepared before the Lord on the day of judgment (Matt 24:40-41).

First is the image of two men working together in the field -very likely close family members or close colleagues. One is suddenly taken away and the other is left. Second, is the image of two women who are working closely together and one is taken and the other left. The two colleagues at work therefore represent the faithful and the unfaithful Christians, one is accepted while the other is abandoned on the ground of unpreparedness.

On the other hand, the parable shows that no one would stand in for another person in the Christian faith journey, no matter the level of intimacy existing between them. As the Igbos would say, 'Oso Eligwe abughi ogu nne na-agbara nwa ya.' This literally means that, 'No mother would run the heavenly race for her child.' Each person rather runs his own race and as well gives the account of it at the end himself.

Jesus, therefore, urges us today to STAY AWAKE and remain vigilant because nobody will know when the Lord shall return. For many it shall be too late. If all should know how close the day of the Lord is, I suppose, they would be living in readiness. Regrettably, this is not the case. Look around! Can it be said that all are ready? Can it be said that all are in a state of grace? Can it be said that all have recently received the Sacrament of Confession? Can it be said that all are at peace with their family members, neighbours and colleagues at work? "You must therefore be ready, because the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect." (Mt. 24:44).

Readiness here as St Paul admonishes in the second reading, also involves letting aside the works of darkness and put on the amour of light; to live honourably as in the day, not in reveling and drunkenness, not in debauchery and licentiousness, not in quarrelling and jealousy. But to put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and to make no provision for the gratification of the flesh, (Rom. 13:11-4). Give God the first place in your life and allow his principles to determine your decisions and life choices.

Reflection by Damian Ikemefuna Ozokwere cssp

Introduction: On the one hand, salvation is God's doing, and we cannot earn His blessings. Today's first reading, from Isaiah, emphasizes that, through his Son, God does all the saving.  On the other hand, we must cooperate with God because He cannot force his bounty upon us. That is why John the Baptist in today’s Gospel summons us to play our essential part by leading lives of repentance, conversion and renewal, thus preparing the way for the Lord's second coming.  We start this process by preparing for the celebration of Christmas, the Lord’s first coming.

Scripture lessons: Because of the bad example of the unfaithful successors of King David, the Chosen People are wavering in their loyalty to Yahweh. Hence Isaiah, in the first reading, tries to dispel their fears and stir up hope among his people with God’s promise of a new Davidic King (a son of Jesse), who will establish peace and a glorious Kingdom of justice on earth. In the second reading, Paul is praying for the Jewish Christians of Rome and instructing them to draw endurance and encouragement from the Old Testament books. They are to live in harmony with Gentile Christians, accepting them as equals and brothers and sisters while they wait for the second coming of Jesus. In today’s Gospel, John the Baptizer urges the Pharisees and Sadducees to give evidence that they mean to reform their lives so as to recognize and accept the promised Messiah.  He challenges them to repentance, conversion and renewal. He tells the common people, who expect the Messiah to come in the near future, to act with justice and charity,  letting their lives reflect the transformation that will occur when the Messiah enters their lives. In the same way, as we prepare to welcome Christ at Christmas, John advises us to "prepare the way of the Lord.

Life messages:  We need to prepare for Christ’s coming by allowing him to be reborn daily in our lives: Advent is the time for us to make this preparation by repenting of our sins and renewing our lives through prayer, penance, and the sharing of our blessings with others. Let us remember the oft-repeated words of Alexander Pope: "What does it profit me if Jesus is reborn in thousands of cribs all over the world and not reborn in my heart?” He means that Jesus must be reborn in our heart during this season of Advent and every day of our lives, radiating his love, kindness, mercy, forgiveness and spirit of humble service to the world through our lives.

2) We need to answer the call for a change of life.  John the Baptist challenges our superficial attempts at change, demanding that, while obeying the commandments faithfully, we must correct our relationships with others, mend ruptures and frictions, face family responsibilities, work honestly and treat employees justly.  Let us share our love with others as selfless and humble service. "Do small things but with great love" advise St. Theresa of Lisieux and St. Teresa of Calcutta (Mother Teresa). Therefore, following John's advice, let us celebrate the memory of Jesus’ first advent, prepare for Jesus’ daily advent into our lives through the Sacraments and the Bible, and wait for his second advent at the end of the world.

ADVENT II [A] (12/4/2016): Is 11:1-10; Rom 15:4-9; Mt 3:1-12  OK!

Anecdotes: #1: Accept divine forgiveness by true repentance: An attempt was made in 1985 by some fans of O. Henry, the short-story writer, to get a pardon for their hero who had been convicted a century before of embezzling $784.08 from the bank where he was employed. But a pardon cannot be given to a dead man. A pardon can only be given to someone who can accept it. Back in 1830 George Wilson was convicted of robbing the U.S. Mail and was sentenced to be hanged. President Andrew Jackson issued a pardon for Wilson, but he refused to accept it. The matter went to Chief Justice Marshall who concluded that Wilson would have to be executed. "A pardon is a slip of paper," wrote Marshall, "the value of which is determined by the acceptance of the person to be pardoned. If it is refused, it is no pardon. Hence, George Wilson must be hanged." For some, the pardon comes too late. For others, the pardon is not accepted. Today’s readings remind us that the Advent is the acceptable time for repentance and the acceptance of God’s pardon and renewal of life.

#2: John’s invitation is to practice the octopus-evangelism of mega-churches as opposed to the sponge evangelism of traditional churches: Most traditional churches are pretty good about sponge evangelism. We soak up visiting folks with warm welcome, ushers offer them seats of their choice, many members greet them with miles of smiles. But octopus-evangelism of mega-churches is something else. It means reaching, stretching, finding, touching, drawing in those who are in need of the love and forgiveness of Jesus Christ and may not have even realized it yet. Mega-churches are growing, not primarily because of their programming or preaching, buildings, video screens or cute, thirty-something pastors. They are growing primarily because members are actively inviting others to join them in worship. Eighty percent of all first-time visitors to a church come because a friend or neighbor invited them. It's the active verb...inviting, reaching, gathering...which makes all the difference. A mega-church is a non-denominational, Bible-centered Christian congregation that draws thousands of people to its weekly services. The phenomenon started about thirty years ago as a way to bring people back to the basics of Christianity - a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. You may have heard of Rick Warren, pastor of a mega-church in southern California whose book, The Purpose-Driven Life, has over 20 million copies in print () . You may also have heard of Joel Osteen, author of two national bestsellers, who runs a mega-church in Houston, Texas that attracts 38,000 people to its Sunday services and 200 million households to its television broadcasts () . You may even have heard of Bill Hybels [HIGH-bills], the founder of what many consider the first mega-church ever - Willow Creek Community Church, near Chicago, Illinois – that currently has more than 100 ministries operating out of its home base () . These are just some of the better known mega-church leaders, but mega-churches are springing up throughout North America, and they are even sending missionaries abroad. One little known fact about these mega-churches is that more than 25% of their members are former Catholics whom nobody in their former parishes actively invited to the liturgical celebrations and whom nobody involved in various church ministries. Today’s Gospel presents john the Baptist reaching out and touching the lives of people through his brand of   fire-brand-octopus-evangelization.

# 3: The artist’s reconciliation: Leonardo da Vinci painted the fresco (wall painting), "The Last Supper," in Santa Maria delle Grazie  church in Milan in three years (1495-1498). A very interesting story is associated with this painting. At the time that Leonardo da Vinci painted "The Last Supper," he had an enemy who was a fellow-painter. Da Vinci had had a bitter argument with this man and despised him. When Da Vinci painted the face of Judas Iscariot at the table with Jesus, he used the face of his enemy so that it would be present for ages as the man who betrayed Jesus. While painting this picture, he took delight in knowing that others would actually notice the face of his enemy on Judas. As he worked on the faces of the other disciples, he often tried to paint the face of Jesus but couldn't make any progress. Da Vinci felt frustrated and confused. In time, he realized what was wrong. His hatred for the other painter was holding him back from finishing the face of Jesus. Only after making peace with his fellow-painter and repainting the face of Judas was he able to paint the face of Jesus and complete his masterpiece. Be reconciled with your fellow human beings, says today's Gospel. ()

# 4: Waiting for the Lord to be reborn in our lives: Waiting, an inevitable and even necessary aspect of human life, is not something that most of us relish. We wait in lines: in order to purchase groceries; to be served at popular restaurants; to be assisted in a bank; at stop signs and traffic signals; at amusement parks; to see a play or film. We must also wait for flowers to grow and bloom; for babies to be born; for wounds to heal; for bread to rise and cheese to age; for children to mature; for friends to call; for love to deepen. Statisticians have estimated that in a lifetime of 70 years, the average person spends at least three years waiting! Today’s readings invite us to wait for the rebirth of the Lord in our lives with repentant hearts and renewed lives.

Introduction: On the one hand, salvation is God's doing, and we cannot earn His blessings. Today's first reading, from Isaiah, emphasizes that, through his Son, God does all the saving.  On the other hand, we must cooperate with God because He cannot force his bounty upon us. That is why  John the Baptist, in today’s Gospel, summons us to play our essential part – leading lives of repentance, conversion and renewal and thus preparing the way for the Lord's second coming.  We start this process by preparing for the celebration of Christmas, the Lord’s first coming. All the kings who succeeded David proved to be increasingly unfaithful, bringing eventual defeat and destruction upon the nation.   Because of the bad example of their leaders, the Chosen People were wavering in their loyalty to Yahweh. Isaiah, in the first reading, tries to dispel their fears and stir up hope among his people by God’s promise of a new Davidic King (a son of Jesse), who will establish peace and a glorious Kingdom of justice on earth. His kingdom will be a return to the time of peace before sin entered the world. In the second reading, Paul is praying for the Jewish Christians of Rome and instructing them to draw endurance and encouragement from the Old Testament books. They are to live in harmony with Gentile Christians, accepting them as equals -- brothers and sisters -- while they wait for the second coming of Jesus. In today’s Gospel, John the Baptizer urges the Pharisees and Sadducees to give evidence that they mean to reform their lives so as to recognize and accept the promised Messiah.  He challenges them to repentance, conversion and renewal. He tells the common people, who are filled with expectation that the Messiah will come soon, to act with justice and charity, letting their lives reflect the transformation that will occur when the Messiah enters their lives. In the same way, as we prepare to welcome Christ at Christmas, John advises us to "prepare the way of the Lord."

First reading: Is 10: 1-11: Explaining how God will respond to the sincere conversion of his people, Isaiah reports three oracles concerning a future king. The first two oracles (Isaiah 7:10-17, 9:1-6), were probably delivered to King Ahaz. This prophecy may have had an initial fulfillment in the days after it was first given, in Isaiah’s time. If so then, like many prophecies, it has another, greater fulfillment, which is in the Messiah. Today’s reading gives the third oracle as a prediction of the first coming of Jesus, the Messiah. Isaiah prophesies that the Spirit of God with His sevenfold gifts of wisdom, understanding, counsel, fortitude, knowledge, piety and fear of the Lord will appear in the promised Messiah. God Who called Abraham will fulfill His word by sending to them a king who will rule with wisdom and justice, and will have the true spirit of the Lord. The reading also portrays this Messianic Kingdom as a return to the perfect harmony of Paradise. The Spirit will enable men to create a world in which “the wolf shall be the guest of the lamb, and a leopard shall lie down with the young goat.” These prophecies are fulfilled, in an anticipatory way, with the first advent of the Messiah and the spread of the Christian Faith, and they will be definitively fulfilled with the Second Advent and the eternal order. The message for us is that, if we allow the Spirit of God to work in our lives, we will be able to live in peace and harmony even with those who threaten and disturb our lives. There can be no true love of neighbor or true respect for his rights where there is no love for God. Hence, we must strive to give God his rightful place in our daily lives and to follow the path that leads to justice and peace on earth.

 Second reading: Rom 15:4-9: Perhaps this reading is in the Lectionary today because it recommends patience, and this is the season of patient waiting for the Lord to come. It also contains a very seasonal statement about why the Lord came: to fulfill God's promise to the Jews and to extend mercy to the Gentiles.  Paul reminds the newly-converted Roman Christians, many of whom are Jews, that the Sacred Scriptures of the Old Testament are still a source of instruction, encouragement, and hope. The sacred Scriptures are useless unless they are employed to control the Christian's relations with others (Rom 15:4-9).  Hence, Paul advises the Judeo-Christians and Gentile Christians of Rome to “live in harmony with one another according to the Spirit of Christ Jesus,” by being less judgmental and more understanding and benevolent. Paul also reminds the Romans that Jesus came to fulfill God's promise to the Jews and to extend mercy to the Gentiles. Hence, he encourages the Roman Christians to “accept one another” as Jesus Christ has accepted them. This reading reminds us to wait patiently for the coming of the Lord during this Advent season and shows us how to live as we do so.

Exegesis: A prophet on fire with a fiery message: While only two Gospels mention the nativity, all four Gospels introduce Jesus with an account of John the Baptist's ministry (Mark 1:1-11; Luke 3:1-22; John 1:6-9). Matthew puts slightly greater emphasis on John's words than on his action of baptizing.  He records a direct quote from John’s preaching: "Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is near." There had been no prophet in Israel for four hundred years. But the people had no hesitation in accepting John as a prophet because he was like a burning torch summoning men to righteousness, a signpost to point men to God, and he had the authority of a man of God. He wore garments of coarse camel hair and a leather belt like the prophets that we read about in Zechariah 13:4 and 2 Kings 1:8.   He ate what was available in the rocky desert -- wild honey and roasted grasshoppers – which was permissible according to Leviticus 11. The Jews expected Elijah to return prior to the coming of the Messiah (Mal 4:5). John's clothing of camel's hair and leather belt (2 Kings 1:8)) identified him as the fulfillment of that prophecy, and Jesus Himself affirmed John’s role when he said, "I tell you that Elijah has already come (Mt. 17:12)."

Call to repentance: John's message was not soothing. It cut into the very hearts of men.  John denounced evil wherever he found it. He accused Herod of living a loose moral life (14:4), addressed the Scribes and the Pharisees as "brood of vipers" and summoned people to righteousness.  His message was "Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven has come near" (v. 2), words which Jesus later used to begin his own preaching (4:17), and similar to those the disciples would proclaim (10:7). John justified his call to repentance by announcing that the Kingdom of Heaven was near and that the way to prepare for that day was to repent.  Literally, the Greek word for repentance (teshuvá in Hebrew and metánoia) in Greek), means, "to change one's mind and heart," a change of direction or a U-turn. Repentance involves turning around – facing in a new direction -- with a change of heart and a new commitment. Repentance is a daily experience that renews our Baptism. “The repentant person comes before God saying, 'I can't do it myself, God. Kill me and give me new life. You buried me in Baptism. Bury me again today. Raise me to a new life.'" Repentance for us is not a one-time action but must take place daily, because preparing for the Lord is a perpetual task.

John’s baptism as the expression of repentance: John’s baptism by water was only an external expression of repentance.  What he insisted on was repentance that bore real fruit:  a turning from worldly values combined with generosity and love.  As a sign of true repentance, John urged the tax collectors to "stop collecting more than what is prescribed," and told the soldiers to “stop extortion and false accusation and remain satisfied with their wages.”  In short, John’s message was a call for radical conversion, a demand for self-denial, sacrifice and loving service to others. We may have to put an ax to the roots of the resentments and biases in our hearts. We may have to winnow out our greed and overindulgence, and we may have to burn the chaff of our impatience. Even though John’s preaching was characterized by scathing criticism, his call for reform was described in Luke’s Gospel as "the Good News" because the arrival of the Messiah would initiate a new reign of forgiveness, healing and salvation.

John’s conditions for belonging to the Kingdom of Heaven: The coming Kingdom was John’s main theme. While the Gentile convert, Mark, uses the words “Kingdom of God," Matthew follows the Jewish tradition of avoiding the use of God’s name by using the expression "Kingdom of Heaven.” The Kingdom of God is a God-centered, God-controlled life.  John wanted people to experience such a life. Everyone who wants to experience this “reign of God" needs to make a radical change in his or her life. That is the call for repentance. We cannot come under the sovereign rule of God without a change of attitude, a change of heart and a change of lifestyle. John not only denounced men for what they had done, he summoned them to what they ought to do. That is why Matthew emphasized the new life of proper fruit-bearing more than the forgiveness of sins. Bearing good fruit is not just doing good things but also doing them for the right reason.

Life messages: 1) We need to prepare for Christ’s coming by allowing him to be reborn daily in our lives: Advent is the time for us to make this preparation by repenting of our sins, and renewing our lives through prayer, penance, and sharing our blessings with others. Let us remember the oft-repeated words of Alexander Pope: "What does it profit me if Jesus is reborn in thousands of cribs all over the world and not reborn in my heart?" He means that Jesus must be reborn in our heart, during this season of Advent, and every day of our lives, bringing us love, kindness, mercy, forgiveness and the spirit of humble service.

2) We need to accept John’s call for a change of life.  John the Baptist, the stern and uncompromising preacher, challenges our superficial attempts at change, demanding that we take a deeper look.   Obeying the commandments is a good start, but we must also examine our relationships with others.   We must mend ruptures and frictions, face family responsibilities, work honestly, and treat employees justly.   Start where you are, John says.  Our domestic and social lives must be put in order.   John's voice is sober and runs counter to the intoxicating voices around us today.   He calls for rectitude and social consciousness.   We must abandon our selfish thirst for consumption and, instead, be filled with the expectation of Jesus' coming.   Therefore, following John's advice, let us celebrate the memory of this first advent, prepare for Jesus’ new advent in our lives, and wait for his second advent at the end of the world. 3) We need to wait prayerfully for the second advent of Jesus.   John’s answer as to how the Jews should wait for the Messiah was that they should wait for the Lord with repentant hearts and reformed lives.  We can start by praying from the heart. Let us remember that the Holy Mass is the most powerful of prayers because it transforms us into Eucharistic people, providing the living presence of Jesus in our hearts and his divine life in our souls.  Conversion is through Jesus whom we encounter, mainly, through the Holy Scripture and the Sacraments.  The Word and the Sacraments are the principal means God uses to give life to men's souls.  Daily reconciliation with God as we ask and receive His pardon for our daily sins and make our monthly sacramental confession make us strong and enable us to receive more grace in the Eucharist.  Let us read the Bible, pray the Rosary daily and fast once a week all year-round, rather than just during Advent and Lent. After all, we sin all year-round, so let us fast also all year-round by controlling our senses.  We could take some time before Mass to adore Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament, and we should practice forgiving those who offend us.  Finally, let us share our love with others as selfless and humble service. "Do small things but with great love,” advise St. Therese of Lisieux and St. Teresa of Calcutta (Mother Teresa).

JOKE OF THE WEEK

1) Lent versus Yom Kippur: A priest and a rabbi were discussing the pros and cons of their religions, and inevitably the discussion turned to repentance. The rabbi explained Yom Kippur as the solemn Jewish Day of Atonement and as a day of fasting and penitence, while the priest told him all about Lent, and its 40 days of self-denial as reparation for sins. After the discussion ended, the rabbi went home to tell his wife about the conversation, and how they discussed the comparative merits of Yom Kippur versus Lent. She turned her head and laughed. The rabbi asked, "What's so funny, dear?"

 “What a comparison!” she said. “Forty days of Lent for the poor Christians and one day of Yom Kippur for the Chosen People of God!” (L/16)

Advent II [A] (Dec 8) Sunday Homily: One-page summary (L-19)

Introduction: On the one hand, salvation is God's doing, and we cannot earn His blessings. We are saved by His grace. On the other hand, we must cooperate with God’s grace because God cannot force his bounty upon us. That is why John the Baptist in today’s Gospel summons us to play our essential part by leading lives of repentance, conversion, and renewal, thus preparing the way for the Lord's second coming.  We start this process by spiritually preparing for the annual celebration of Christmas, the Lord’s first coming, as we reform and renew our lives by repentance and works of charity. 

Scripture lessons: The first reading describes how God will reform the lives of His Chosen People by sending the Messiah. Because of the bad example of the unfaithful successors of King David, the Chosen People were wavering in their loyalty to Yahweh. Hence, in the first reading, the Lord God, through His prophet, Isaiah, tries to dispel their fears and to stir up hope among His people with His promise of a new Davidic King (a son of Jesse), who will establish peace and a glorious Kingdom of justice on earth. In today’s Responsorial Psalm (Ps 72), the Psalmist pictures the Messiah as one who will show compassion to the poor, the lowly, and the afflicted. In the second reading, Paul is praying for the reformation of the Jewish Christians of Rome and instructing them to draw endurance and encouragement from the Old Testament books. They are to live in harmony with Gentile Christians, accepting them as equal, brothers and sisters, while they wait together for the second coming of Jesus. In today’s Gospel, John the Baptizer urges the Pharisees and Sadducees to give evidence that they mean to reform their lives so as to recognize and be ready to meet and accept the promised Messiah.  He challenges them to repentance, conversion and renewal. He tells the common people, who expect the Messiah to come soon, to act with justice and charity, letting their lives reflect the transformation that will occur when the Messiah enters their lives. In the same way, as we prepare to welcome Christ at Christmas, John advises us to "prepare the way of the Lord.”

Life messages:  1) We need to prepare for Christ’s coming by allowing him to be reborn daily in our lives: Advent is the time for us to make this preparation by repenting of our sins and renewing our lives through prayer, penance, and the sharing of our blessings with others. Let us remember the oft-repeated words of Alexander Pope: "What does it profit me if Jesus is reborn in thousands of cribs all over the world and not reborn in my heart?” He means that Jesus must be reborn in our heart during this season of Advent and every day of our lives, radiating his love, kindness, mercy, forgiveness and spirit of humble service to the world through our lives. 

2) We need to answer the call for a change of life.  John the Baptist challenges our superficial attempts at change, demanding that, while obeying the commandments faithfully, we must correct our relationships with others, mend ruptures, soothe frictions, face family responsibilities, work honestly, and treat our employees justly.  Let us share our love with others as selfless and humble service. "Do small things but with great love" advise St. Theresa of Lisieux and St. Teresa of Calcutta (Mother Teresa). Therefore, following John's advice, let us celebrate the memory of Jesus’ first advent, prepare for Jesus’ daily advent into our lives through the Sacraments and the Bible, and wait confidently for his second advent at the end of the world. 

ADVENT II [A] (Dec 8): Is 11:1-10; Rom 15:4-9; Mt 3:1-12  

Homily starter anecdotes: #1: Accept divine forgiveness by true repentance: An attempt was made in 1985 by some fans of O Henry, the short-story writer, to get a pardon for their hero who had been convicted a century before of embezzling $784.08 from the bank where he was employed. But a pardon cannot be given to a dead man. A pardon can only be given to someone who can accept it. Back in 1830, George Wilson was convicted of robbing the U.S. Mail and was sentenced to be hanged. President Andrew Jackson issued a pardon for Wilson, but he refused to accept it. The matter went to Chief Justice Marshall who concluded that Wilson would have to be executed. "A pardon is a slip of paper," wrote Marshall, "the value of which is determined by the acceptance of the person to be pardoned. If it is refused, it is no pardon. Hence, George Wilson must be hanged." For some, the pardon comes too late. For others, the pardon is not accepted. Today’s readings remind us that the Advent is the acceptable time for repentance and the acceptance of God’s pardon and renewal of life.

#2: John’s invitation is to practice the octopus-evangelism of mega-churches as opposed to the sponge evangelism of traditional churches: Most traditional churches are pretty good about sponge evangelism. We soak up visiting folks with warm welcome, ushers offer them seats of their choice, many members greet them with miles of smiles. But octopus-evangelism of mega-churches is something else. It means reaching, stretching, finding, touching, drawing in those who are in need of the love and forgiveness of Jesus Christ and may not have even realized it yet. Mega-churches are growing, not primarily because of their programming or preaching, buildings, video screens or cute, thirty-something pastors. They are growing primarily because members are actively inviting others to join them in worship. Eighty percent of all first-time visitors to a Church come because a friend or neighbor invited them. It's the active verb...inviting, reaching, gathering...which makes all the difference. A mega-church is a non-denominational, Bible-centered Christian congregation that draws thousands of people to its weekly services. The phenomenon started about thirty years ago as a way to bring people back to the basics of Christianity - a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. You may have heard of Rick Warren, (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rick_Warren) pastor of a mega-church in southern California whose book, The Purpose-Driven Life, has over 20 million copies in print You may also have heard of Joel Osteen, (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joel_Osteen)  author of two national bestsellers, who runs a mega-church in Houston, Texas that attracts 38,000 people to its Sunday services and 200 million households to its television broadcasts (https://youtu.be/GA6uE2CPo1I) . You may even have heard of Bill Hybels [HIGH-bills] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Hybels) , the founder of what many consider the first mega-church ever - Willow Creek Community Church, near Chicago, Illinois – that currently has more than 100 ministries operating out of its home base (https://youtu.be/jbtbgkh_bfE) . These are just some of the better-known mega-church leaders, but mega-churches are springing up throughout North America, and they are even sending missionaries abroad. One little known fact about these mega-churches is that more than 25% of their members are former Catholics whom nobody in their former parishes actively invited to the liturgical celebrations and whom nobody involved in various church ministries. Today’s Gospel presents John the Baptist reaching out and touching the lives of people through his fire-brand-octopus-evangelization. 

# 3: The artist’s reconciliation: Leonardo da Vinci painted the fresco (wall painting), "The Last Supper," in Santa Maria delle Grazie church in Milan in three years (1495-1498). A very interesting story is associated with this painting. At the time that Leonardo da Vinci painted "The Last Supper," he had an enemy who was a fellow painter. Da Vinci had had a bitter argument with this man and despised him. When Da Vinci painted the face of Judas Iscariot at the table with Jesus, he used the face of his enemy so that it would be present for ages as the man who betrayed Jesus. While painting this picture, he took delight in knowing that others would actually notice the face of his enemy on Judas. As he worked on the faces of the other disciples, he often tried to paint the face of Jesus but couldn't make any progress. Da Vinci felt frustrated and confused. In time, he realized what was wrong. His hatred for the other painter was holding him back from finishing the face of Jesus. Only after making peace with his fellow-painter and repainting the face of Judas was he able to paint the face of Jesus and complete his masterpiece. Be reconciled with your fellow human beings, says today's Gospel. (http://www.lifeinitaly.com/art/last-supper.asp)

# 4: Waiting for the Lord to be reborn in our lives: Waiting, an inevitable and even necessary aspect of human life, is not something that most of us relish. We wait in lines: in order to purchase groceries; to be served at popular restaurants; to be assisted in a bank; at stop signs and traffic signals; at amusement parks; to see a play or film. We must also wait for flowers to grow and bloom; for babies to be born; for wounds to heal; for bread to rise and cheese to age; for children to mature; for friends to call; for love to deepen. Statisticians have estimated that in a lifetime of 70 years, the average person spends at least three years waiting! Today’s readings invite us to wait for the rebirth of the Lord in our lives with repentant hearts and renewed lives. (Sanchez Files).

Introduction: On the one hand, salvation is God's doing, and we cannot earn His blessings. Today's first reading, from Isaiah, emphasizes that, through his Son, God does all the saving.  On the other hand, we must cooperate with God because He cannot force his bounty upon us. That is why John the Baptist, in today’s Gospel, summons us to play our essential part – leading lives of repentance, conversion and renewal and thus preparing the way for the Lord's second coming.  We start this process by preparing for the celebration of Christmas, the Lord’s first coming. Many of the kings who succeeded David proved to be increasingly unfaithful, bringing eventual defeat and destruction upon the nation.   Because of the bad example of their leaders, the Chosen People were wavering in their loyalty to Yahweh. The Lord God, through His prophet, Isaiah, in the first reading, tries to dispel their fears and stir up hope among His people by His promise of a new Davidic King (a son of Jesse), who will establish peace and a glorious Kingdom of justice on earth. His kingdom will be a return to the time of peace before sin entered the world. In today’s Responsorial Psalm (Ps 72), the Psalmist pictures this King, the Messiah, as one who will show compassion to the poor, the lowly, and the afflicted. In the second reading, Paul is praying for the Jewish Christians of Rome and instructing them to draw endurance and encouragement from the Old Testament books. They are to live in harmony with Gentile Christians, accepting them as equals -- brothers and sisters -- while they wait for the second coming of Jesus. In today’s Gospel, John the Baptizer urges the Pharisees and Sadducees to give evidence that they mean to reform their lives so as to recognize and accept the promised Messiah.  He challenges them to repentance, conversion and renewal. He tells the common people, who are filled with expectation that the Messiah will come soon, to act with justice and charity, letting their lives reflect the transformation that will occur when the Messiah enters their lives. In the same way, as we prepare to welcome Christ at Christmas, John advises us to "prepare the way of the Lord." 

First reading: Is 10: 1-11 explained: The First Reading, taken from the Book of the Prophet Isaiah, is a Messianic prophesy.  Explaining how God will respond to the sincere conversion of His people, Isaiah’s prophecy reports three oracles concerning a future king. The first two oracles (Isaiah 7:10-17, 9:1-6), were probably delivered to King Ahaz. This prophecy may have had an initial fulfillment in the days after it was first given, in Isaiah’s time. If so then, like many prophecies, it has another, greater fulfillment, which is in the Messiah. Today’s reading gives the third oracle as a prediction of the first coming of Jesus, the Messiah. Isaiah prophesies that the Spirit of God with His sevenfold gifts -- wisdom, understanding, counsel, fortitude, knowledge, piety, and fear of the Lord -- will appear in the promised Messiah. God Who called Abraham will fulfill His word by sending to them a king who will rule with wisdom and justice and will have the true spirit of the Lord. The reading also portrays this Messianic Kingdom as a return to the perfect harmony of Paradise. The Spirit will enable men to create a world in which “the wolf shall be the guest of the lamb, and a leopard shall lie down with the young goat.” These prophecies are fulfilled, in an anticipatory way, with the first advent of the Messiah and the spread of the Christian Faith, and they will be definitively fulfilled with the Second Advent and the appearance of the eternal order. The message for us is that, if we allow the Spirit of God to work in our lives, we will be able to live in peace and harmony even with those who threaten and disturb our lives. There can be no true love of neighbor or true respect for his rights where there is no love for God. Hence, we must strive to give God his rightful place in our daily lives and to follow the path that leads to justice and peace on earth. 

 Second reading: Rom 15:4-9 explained: In the Second Reading, St. Paul, in  his Letter to the Romans, calls for reconciliation among the different factions in that community. Paul reminds his Roman readers that those who wait together for the many comings of our God should ignore their differences and sustain one another in mutual support and acceptance. Perhaps this reading is in the Lectionary today because it recommends patience, and this is the season of patient waiting for the Lord to come. It also contains a very seasonal statement about why the Lord came: to fulfill God's promise to the Jews and to extend mercy to the Gentiles.  Paul reminds the newly converted Roman Christians, many of whom are Jews, that the Sacred Scriptures of the Old Testament are still a source of instruction, encouragement, and hope. The sacred Scriptures are useless unless they are employed to control the Christian's relations with others (Rom 15:4-9).  Hence, Paul advises the Judeo-Christians and Gentile Christians of Rome to “live in harmony with one another according to the Spirit of Christ Jesus,” by being less judgmental and more understanding and benevolent. Paul also reminds the Romans that Jesus came to fulfill God's promise to the Jews and to extend mercy to the Gentiles. Hence, he encourages the Roman Christians to “accept one another” as Jesus Christ has accepted them. This reading reminds us to wait patiently for the coming of the Lord during this Advent season and shows us how to live as we do so. 

Gospel exegesis: A prophet on fire with a fiery message: While only two Gospels mention the nativity, all four Gospels introduce Jesus with an account of John the Baptist's ministry (Mark 1:1-11; Luke 3:1-22; John 1:6-9). Matthew puts slightly greater emphasis on John's words than on his action of baptizing.  He records a direct quote from John’s preaching: "Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is near." There had been no prophet in Israel for four hundred years. But the people had no hesitation in accepting John as a prophet because he was like a burning torch summoning men to righteousness, a signpost to point men to God, and he had the authority of a man of God. He wore garments of coarse camel hair and a leather belt like the prophets that we read about in Zechariah 13:4 and 2 Kings 1:8.   He ate what was available in the rocky desert -- wild honey and roasted grasshoppers – which was permissible according to Leviticus 11. The Jews expected Elijah to return prior to the coming of the Messiah (Mal 4:5). John's clothing of camel's hair and leather belt (2 Kings 1:8)) identified him as the fulfillment of that prophecy, and Jesus Himself affirmed John’s role when he said, "I tell you that Elijah has already come (Mt. 17:12)."  

Call to repentance: John's message was not soothing. It cut into the very hearts of men.  John denounced evil wherever he found it. He accused Herod of living a loose moral life (14:4), addressed the Scribes and the Pharisees as "brood of vipers" and summoned people to righteousness.  His message was "Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven has come near" (v. 2), words which Jesus later used to begin his own preaching (4:17), and similar to those the disciples would proclaim (10:7). John justified his call to repentance by announcing that the Kingdom of Heaven was near and that the way to prepare for that day was to repent.  Literally, the Greek word for repentance (teshuvá in Hebrew and metánoia) in Greek), means, "to change one's mind and heart," a change of direction or a U-turn. Repentance involves turning around – facing in a new direction -- with a change of heart and a new commitment. Repentance is a daily experience that renews our Baptism. “The repentant person comes before God saying, 'I can't do it myself, God. Kill me and give me new life. You buried me in Baptism. Bury me again today. Raise me to a new life.'" Repentance for us is not a one-time action but must take place daily, because preparing for the Lord is a perpetual task.  

John’s baptism as the expression of repentance: John’s baptism by water was an external expression of repentance.  What he insisted on was the internal expression, a repentance that bore real fruit:  a turning from worldly values combined with generosity and love.  As a sign of true repentance, John urged the tax collectors to "stop collecting more than what is prescribed," and told the soldiers to “stop extortion and false accusation and remain satisfied with your wages.”  In short, John’s message was a call for radical conversion, a demand for self-denial, sacrifice and loving service to others. We may have to put an ax to the roots of the resentments and biases in our hearts. We may have to winnow out our greed and overindulgence, and we may have to burn the chaff of our impatience. Even though John’s preaching was characterized by scathing criticism, his call for reform was described in Luke’s Gospel as "the Good News" because the arrival of the Messiah would initiate a new reign of forgiveness, healing and salvation.

John’s conditions for belonging to the Kingdom of Heaven: The coming Kingdom was John’s main theme. While the Gentile convert, Mark, uses the words “Kingdom of God," Matthew follows the Jewish tradition of avoiding the use of God’s name by using the expression "Kingdom of Heaven.” The Kingdom of God is a God-centered, God-controlled life.  John wanted people to experience such a life. Everyone who wants to experience this “reign of God" needs to make a radical change in his or her life. That is the call for repentance. We cannot come under the sovereign rule of God without a change of attitude, a change of heart and a change of lifestyle. John not only denounced men for what they had done, he summoned them to what they ought to do. That is why Matthew emphasized the new life of proper fruit-bearing more than the forgiveness of sins. Bearing good fruit is not just doing good things but also doing them for the right reason.

Life messages: 1) We need to prepare for Christ’s coming by allowing him to be reborn daily in our lives: Advent is the time for us to make this preparation by repenting of our sins, and renewing our lives through prayer, penance, and sharing our blessings with others. Let us remember the oft-repeated words of Alexander Pope: "What does it profit me if Jesus is reborn in thousands of cribs all over the world and not reborn in my heart?" He means that Jesus must be reborn in our heart, during this season of Advent, and every day of our lives, bringing us love, kindness, mercy, forgiveness and the spirit of humble service. 

2) We need to accept John’s call for a change of life.  John the Baptist, the stern and uncompromising preacher, challenges our superficial attempts at change, demanding that we take a deeper look.   Obeying the commandments is a good start, but we must also examine our relationships with others.   We must mend ruptures and soothe frictions, face family responsibilities, work honestly, and treat employees justly.   Start where you are, John says.  Our domestic and social lives must be put in order.   John's voice is sober and runs counter to the intoxicating voices around us today.   He calls for rectitude and social consciousness.   We must abandon our selfish thirst for consumption and, instead, be filled with the expectation of Jesus' coming.   Therefore, following John's advice, let us celebrate the memory of this first advent, prepare for Jesus’ new advent in our lives, and wait for his second advent at the end of the world. 

3) We need to wait prayerfully for the second advent of Jesus.   John’s answer as to how the Jews should wait for the Messiah was that they should wait for the Lord with repentant hearts and reformed lives.  We can start by praying from the heart. Let us remember that the Holy Mass is the most powerful of prayers because it transforms us into Eucharistic people, providing the living presence of Jesus in our hearts and his divine life in our souls.  Conversion is through Jesus whom we encounter, mainly, through the Holy Scripture and the Sacraments.  The Word and the Sacraments are the principal means God uses to give life to men's souls.  Daily reconciliation with God, as we ask and receive His pardon for our daily sins and make our monthly sacramental confession, make us strong and enable us to receive more grace in the Eucharist.  Let us read the Bible, pray the Rosary daily and fast once a week all year-round, rather than just during Advent and Lent. After all, we sin all year-round, so let us fast also all year-round by controlling our senses.  We could take some time before Mass to adore Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament, and we should practice forgiving those who offend us.  Finally, let us share our love with others as selfless and humble service. "Do small things but with great love,” advise St. Therese of Lisieux and St. Teresa of Calcutta (Mother Teresa).

JOKE OF THE WEEK

1) Lent versus Yom Kippur: A priest and a rabbi were discussing the pros and cons of their religions, and inevitably the discussion turned
to repentance. The rabbi explained Yom Kippur as the solemn Jewish Day
of Atonement and as a day of fasting and penitence, while the priest told him all about Lent, and its 40 days of self-denial as reparation for sins.
After the discussion ended, the rabbi went home to tell his wife about the conversation, and how they discussed the comparative merits of Yom Kippur versus Lent. She turned her head and laughed. The rabbi asked, "What's so funny, dear?" 

 “What a comparison!” she said. “Forty days of Lent for the poor Christians and one day of Yom Kippur for the Chosen People of God!”

Prepared by: Fr. Anthony Kadavil, Chaplain, Sacred Heart Residence of the Little Sisters of the Poor, 1655 McGill Ave, Mobile, AL 36604 ]

Introduction:  Today’s readings invite us to rejoice at the rebirth of Jesus in our lives as we are preparing for our annual Christmas celebration. Today is called Gaudete Sunday because today’s Mass begins with the opening antiphon: “Gaudete in Domino semper,” i.e., “Rejoice in the Lord always.” So, to express our joy in the coming of Jesus as our Savior into our hearts and lives, we light the rose candle in the Advent wreath, and the priest may wear rose vestments.

Scripture lessons: The prophet Isaiah, in the first reading, encourages the exiled Jews in Babylon to rejoice because their God is going to liberate them from slavery and lead them safely to their homeland.  In the second reading, James the Apostle encourages the early Christians to rejoice and wait with patience for the imminent second coming of Jesus. Finally, in the first part of today’s Gospel reading, Jesus encourages John the Baptist in prison to rejoice by casting away his wrong expectations about the Messiah and simply accepting Jesus’ healing and preaching ministry as the fulfillment of the Messianic prophecy of Isaiah.  In the second part of today’s Gospel, Matthew presents Jesus, the true Messiah, paying the highest compliments to John the Baptist as his herald and the last of the prophets, and giving special credit to the courage of John’s prophetic convictions, asking his listeners to rejoice in the greatness of his herald.

Life messages: 1) We need to learn how to survive a Faith crisis: If John the Baptist, even after having had a direct encounter with Jesus, the Messiah, had his doubts about Jesus and his teachings, we, too, can have our crises of Faith.    On such occasions, let us remember the truth that all our Christian dogmas are based on our trusting Faith in the Divinity of Jesus who taught them, and on his Divine authority which he gave to his Church to teach what he taught. Hence, it is up to us to learn our Faith in depth and so to remove our doubts.

2) “Go and tell others what you hear and see.”   We rejoice at the thought that Jesus is going to be reborn in our lives, deepening in us His gifts of love, mercy, forgiveness and the spirit of humble and sacrificial service during this Christmas season. Hence, let us joyfully share God’s bountiful grace, forgiveness, and mercy with others.   What Jesus commanded John’s disciples, he commands us as well:  Go and tell others what you hear and see. This means that we have to share with others our experience of the rebirth of Jesus within us,

3) We need to open our hearts and let God transform our lives: Today’s readings remind us that our lives can also be transformed if we are patient and place our trust in God. The message of Advent is that God is present among us, in our everyday lives.  We must prepare our hearts to recognize and welcome Him by allowing a metánoia (a change of thinking about God, ourselves, and the world) to take place in us during Advent. L/16

ADVENT III [A] (12/Dec 11): ; ; Mt 11: 2-11

Anecdote: # 1: Unfinished Play: Nathaniel Hawthorne was an American writer. When he died in 1864 he had on his desk the outline of a play he never got a chance to finish. The play centered around a person who never appeared on stage. Everyone talked about him. Everyone dreamed about him. Everyone waited for his arrival. But he never came. All kinds of minor characters described him. They told everybody what he would do. But the main character never appeared. –The Old Testament is something like Nathaniel Hawthorne’s play. It too ended without the main character’s putting in an appearance. Everyone talked about the Messiah, everyone awaited his arrival. But he never came in the Old Testament period. In today’s reading, we hear Isaiah describing what the Messiah would do by bringing salvation to all mankind. Today’s Gospel tells us that when the real Messiah came, even the last prophet and the Messiah’s herald, John the Baptist, could not believe that he was the expected Messiah. (Mark Link S. J. in Sunday Homilies)

# 2: Gaudete Sunday smile: A number of years ago, a young college student was working as an intern at his college’s Museum of Natural History. One day while working at the cash register in the gift shop, he saw an elderly couple come in with a little girl in a wheelchair. As he looked more closely at this girl, he saw that she was kind of perched on her chair. The student realized that she had no arms or legs, just a head, neck and torso. She was wearing a little white dress with red polka dots. As the couple wheeled her up to the checkout counter, he turned his head toward the girl and gave her a wink. Meanwhile, he took the money from her grandparents and looked back at the girl, who was giving him the cutest and the largest smile he had ever seen. All of a sudden her handicap was gone, and all that the college student saw was this beautiful girl, whose smile just melted him and almost instantly gave him a completely new sense of what life is all about. She took him from being an unhappy college student and brought him into her world - a world of smiles, love and warmth. With the lighting of the third rose candle of the Advent Wreath among the purple candles and the priest’s wearing the rose vestments, we are reminded that we are called to live with joy in our world of sorrows and pain. (Fr. James Farfaglia)

# 3:  "Buddhist gives a Jew a Christmas gift made by a Hindu!” Under a cultural exchange program a rabbi from Russia was visiting with a Christian family in Texas. Since it was Christmas, the family wanted to take him to some of the finest places in Houston, so they all went to a favorite Chinese restaurant. Throughout the meal the rabbi extolled the wonders of America in comparison to the bleak conditions of his homeland. When they had finished eating the waiter brought the check, a fortune cookie, and a small brass Christmas tree ornament as a present for the rabbi. They all laughed when the rabbi pointed out that the ornaments were stamped “made in India.” But the laughter soon subsided when they saw that the rabbi was quietly crying. They all thought that the rabbi must have been offended by receiving a Christmas tree as a gift. But no, he smiled and shook his head and said, “Nyet, I was shedding tears of joy to be in a wonderful country, in a Chinese restaurant in which a Buddhist gives a Jew a Christmas gift made by a Hindu!”

Introduction: The common theme running through today’s readings is one of joy and encouragement. The readings stress the need for patience in those awaiting the rebirth of Jesus in their hearts and lives.  They give us a messages of hope—for people almost three millennia ago, for people at the beginning of the first millennium and for people today.  Today is called Gaudete Sunday because today’s Mass begins with the opening antiphon: “Gaudete in Domino semper,” i.e., “Rejoice in the Lord always.” Today, to express our joy in the coming of Jesus as our Savior, we light the rose candle, and the priest may wear rose vestments. The prophet Isaiah, in the first reading, encourages the exiled Jews in Babylon to believe that God is going to save them and transform their lives.  In the second reading, James the Apostle encourages the early Christians to be patient, “because the coming of the Lord is at hand.”  Finally, in today’s Gospel reading, Jesus encourages John the Baptist to cast away the popular political expectations about the Messiah and simply to accept his healing and preaching ministry as the fulfillment of the messianic prophecy of Isaiah.

First reading: Is 35:1-6, 10: Isaiah tries to stir up in his exiled brothers and sisters the hope of their return to Israel by assuring them of the saving power of Yahweh in their lives.  He reminds them that it was through their disloyalty to God that they had lost their liberty, had been taken as slaves to Babylon and had lived there in servitude for sixty years (598-538 BC).  The Jews were finally set free by Cyrus (who had captured Babylon), and were allowed to return to their native land, rebuild the Temple and serve their God once more as His Chosen People.  The prophet assures them that God will lead them back to their land in this second exodus (6^th century B.C.), as He led their ancestors from Egypt to the Promised Land in the first exodus (13^th century BC).  He is going to do three things for them.  1) He will transform the wasteland lying between their land of exile and Israel into a new Garden of Eden to facilitate their journey.  2) The weak and the sick will be strengthened for the journey.  3) They will reach their destination singing and crowned with glory.  The assurance of this second exodus is chosen for Advent, because both Exodus events foreshadow the coming of the Messiah.

Second reading: James 5:7-10: The expectation of Jesus' imminent return did not last very long in the early Church. Even within Saint Paul's lifetime, that expectation had waned.  The Apostles advised the Christians to bear witness to Christ through their heroic lives without waiting for the Parousiain their lifetime.  Hence, in the second reading, James encourages the fearful, frustrated and persecuted early Christians to be patient.  Like Isaiah, James tries to show his Christian community that what they have been hoping for was already happening.  Though he stresses patience and determination, James also reminds them that "the Judge stands at the gate."  Just as the prophets believed that what they were proclaiming was already happening, the Christians needed to behave as though the returned risen Jesus were already influencing their lives.  James uses the analogy of a farmer who must wait patiently for the ground to yield its fruit.  In the same way, we must trust that God is bringing abundance into our lives, although we cannot see it yet.  St. James' warning is clear:  If anyone among you has hitherto neglected his duties to God, let him listen now to that warning and put his conscience and his life right with God.

Exegesis: Context: Today's Gospel describes how Isaiah's vision of Israel's glorious future is fulfilled unexpectedly by the coming of the promised Messiah and by his healing and preaching mission. But the Jews in general expected a political Messiah who would reestablish the Davidic kingdom after overthrowing the Roman government. Hence, most of them were scandalized by Jesus’ peaceful preaching and shameful death. The disciples of John the Baptist continued to insist that John was indeed the Messiah, and they awaited his return, causing problems to early Christians. Hence, all four Evangelists highlighted John’s important role as the Messiah’s herald but emphasized that John’s was a secondary and subordinate role in salvation history. Matthew, in the second part of today’s Gospel, presents Jesus, the true Messiah, as paying the highest compliments to John the Baptist as his herald and the last of the prophets, and to the courage with which John proclaimed his prophetic convictions.

John’s reasonable doubts. Scripture scholars over the centuries have wondered why John sent his disciples to ask Jesus if he were the one who was to come. There are two possible explanations: 1) John knew that Jesus was the Christ and, as a prisoner, he wanted his disciples to follow Jesus as their new master. So he sent them to ask Jesus this question and presumed that, once they had met Jesus, they would see for themselves that he was the Messiah and so would become followers of Jesus. 2)  John began to doubt Jesus’ identity as the promised Messiah. The silent healing, preaching, saving, and empowering ministry of Jesus was a surprise to John and to those who expected a fire-and-brimstone Messiah. Besides, Jesus had not yet fulfilled John's prediction that the One-to-come would baptize the repentant in the Holy Spirit. Nor did Jesus conform to popular Jewish beliefs about a warrior and a political Messiah who would bring political, social, and economic deliverance to Israel. Instead, Jesus pronounced blessings on the poor in spirit, the meek, and peacemakers (5:1-11).  He called his disciples to love their enemies (5:42-48).  He warned his disciples not to judge others (7:1-5). For John, these teachings might have seemed to weaken rather than to strengthen the Messiah’s cause. Furthermore, Jesus moved away from Jerusalem, the home of the Temple and the center of religious authority, and began his ministry in Galilee among the common people (4:12).  John proclaimed the power of the coming Messiah to bring in a new age, and instead found himself imprisoned in the dungeon of Herod’s prison-fortress at Machaerus, southeast of the Dead Sea. He may have been wondering why the expected Messiah was not setting him free as Isaiah (61:1) had predicted. John may have found sympathetic doubters among his own disciples who might have wondered how the Messiah could leave their own teacher in prison, and how He could usher in the kingdom without political or military might.  This may have been why John sent his disciples to dispel his doubt, asking: "Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?”

Generosity to dispel doubts meets humility to accept correction: Instead of criticizing Jesus or breaking away from him, John approached Jesus through his disciples.   The disciples asked Jesus whether he was the one to come or if they should look for another. John may have had his doubts, but he was open to hearing Jesus say that he was, indeed, the one! John must have recognized the Scriptural allusions behind Jesus' answer.  Isaiah 29:18 speaks of the deaf hearing and the blind seeing.  Isaiah 35:6 speaks of the lame leaping like a deer.  Isaiah 26:19 speaks of the dead becoming alive.  Isaiah 61:1 speaks of good news for the oppressed, the brokenhearted, captives and prisoners.  These were signs of the Messiah's coming.  Jesus could have rebuked John for his doubts, but instead offered him a blessing.  Jesus had not lived up to John's expectations, but John did not allow that to be a stumbling block (skandalizomia).  Soon enough, Jesus would deal with the people of his hometown, who took offense at him (13:57).  Complimenting John, Jesus says that John is the fulfillment of Malachi 3:1 ("See, I am sending my messenger to prepare the way before me"),presenting the Baptist as the end-time messenger, the forerunner of the Messiah.

Life messages: 1) We need to learn how to survive a Faith crisis: From a theological perspective, this entire episode helps us to understand how the experience of a faith crisis can play a role in our spiritual and emotional development. If John the Baptist, even after having had a direct encounter with Jesus the Messiah, could question, doubt and question his Faith, then so can we.  If disillusionment is a necessary precondition for a more resilient faith, then we, too, must be open to its possibilities.  In moments of doubt, despair and disillusionment, we are, indeed, in good company.Occasional doubts – even horrifying doubts – are one thing, but doubts that persist in the face of every Biblical remedy demand careful attention. Let us remember the truth that all our Christian dogmas are based on our trust and faith in the Divinity of Jesus Who taught them, and on His Divine authority by which He authorized the Church to teach what He taught. It is up to us to learn our Faith in depth, so that God will be able to dispel our doubts.

2) “Go and tell others what you hear and see.”  In medieval times, this day—the Third Sunday of Advent—was called Gaudete Sunday, as an equivalent to Laetare Sunday during Lent. As we pray today, we also rejoice that the Lord does not fail to show his power and might.   We rejoice at the thought that Jesus is going to be reborn in our lives, deepening in us His gifts of love, mercy, forgiveness and the spirit of humble and sacrificial service during this Christmas season. During this season, let us joyfully share God’s bountiful grace, forgiveness, and mercy with others.   What Jesus commanded John’s disciples, he commands us as well:  Go and tell others what you hear and see.

3) We need to open our hearts and let God transform our lives: We, too, should be encouraged by today’s readings.  They remind us that our lives can also be transformed, if we are patient and place our trust in God. The message of Advent is that God is present among us, in our everyday lives.  We must prepare our hearts to recognize and welcome Him.  “If a man is the center of his [own] life, everyone around him becomes hell for him because everyone around him interferes with him and obstructs what he wants to do” (Jean Paul Sartre).  Let us believe in our hearts the Gospel message about Jesus given by Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.  Will we allow the Holy Spirit, through these Gospel reports, to create a metánoia (a change of thinking about God, ourselves, and the world) in us during Advent?

JOKE OF THE WEEK

1) A man who thought he was John the Baptist was disturbing the neighborhood, so for public safety, he was committed.   He was put in a room with another crazy one.  The new inmate immediately began his routine, "I am John the Baptist! Jesus Christ has sent me!"   The other guy looked at him and declared, "I did not!"

2) A Politically Correct Christmas Greeting? Best wishes for an environmentally conscious, socially responsible, low-stress, non-addictive, gender-neutral, winter solstice holiday, practiced within the most joyous traditions of the religious persuasion of your choice, but with respect for the religious persuasions of others who choose to practice their own religion as well as for those who choose not to practice a religion at all. (Disclaimer: This greeting is subject to clarification or withdrawal. It implies no responsibility for any unintended emotional stress these greetings may bring to those not caught up in the holiday spirit.)

3) What happens when pastor’s mom lives in the rectory as his housekeeper? On a Sunday morning, he couldn't get out of bed. His mother tried to get him out of bed, but to little avail. She shouted up the stairs, “Get up!” and he shouted down the stairs, "No!" Then she shouted again, “Get up!” and he shouted down, “Why should I?” She said, “Well, first of all your breakfast is ready, secondly this is the third Advent Sunday, and thirdly you're the Pastor and you have to say two Masses today!”

Advent III [A] Sunday Homily: One-page Summary (L/19) 

Introduction:  Today’s readings invite us to rejoice at the rebirth of Jesus in our lives as we are preparing for our annual Christmas celebration. Today is called Gaudete Sunday because today’s Mass begins with the opening antiphon: “Gaudete in Domino semper,” i.e., “Rejoice in the Lord always.” So, to express our joy in the coming of Jesus as our Savior into our hearts and lives, we light the rose candle in the Advent wreath, and the priest may wear rose vestments.

Scripture lessons summarized: The prophet Isaiah, in the first reading, encourages the exiled Jews in Babylon to rejoice because their God is going to liberate them from slavery and lead them safely to their homeland. In the second reading, James the Apostle encourages the early Christians to rejoice and wait with patience for the imminent second coming of Jesus. Finally, in the first part of today’s Gospel reading, Jesus encourages John the Baptist in prison to rejoice by casting away his wrong expectations about the Messiah and simply accepting Jesus’ healing and preaching ministry as the fulfillment of the Messianic prophecy of Isaiah.  In the second part of today’s Gospel, Matthew presents Jesus, the true Messiah, paying the highest compliments to John the Baptist as his herald and the last of the prophets, and giving special credit to the courage of John’s prophetic convictions, asking his listeners to rejoice in the greatness of his herald. 

Life messages: 1) We need to learn how to survive a Faith crisis: If John the Baptist, even after having had a direct encounter with Jesus, the Messiah, had his doubts about Jesus and his teachings, we, too, can have our crises of Faith.    On such occasions, let us remember the truth that all our Christian dogmas are based on our trusting Faith in the Divinity of Jesus who taught them, and on his Divine authority which he gave to his Church to teach what he taught. Hence, it is up to us to learn our Faith in depth and so to remove our doubts.

 2) “Go and tell others what you hear and see.”   We rejoice at the thought that Jesus is going to be reborn in our lives, deepening in us his gifts of love, mercy, forgiveness and the spirit of humble and sacrificial service during this Christmas season. Hence, let us joyfully share God’s bountiful grace, forgiveness, and mercy with others.   What Jesus commanded John’s disciples, he commands us as well:  Go and tell others what you hear and see. This means that we have to share with others our experience of the rebirth of Jesus within us.3) We need to open our hearts and let God transform our lives: Today’s readings remind us that our lives can also be transformed if we are patient and place our trust in God. The message of Advent is that God is present among us, in our everyday lives.  We must prepare our hearts to recognize and welcome him by allowing a metánoia (a change of thinking about God, ourselves, and the world) to take place in us during Advent. 

ADVENT III [A] : Is 35:1-6a, 10; Jas 5:7-10; Mt 11:2-11 

Homily starter anecdotes: # 1: Unfinished Play: Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864) was an American novelist and short story writer. When he died in 1864, he had on his desk the outline of a play he never got a chance to finish. The play centered around a person who never appeared on stage. Everyone talked about him. Everyone dreamed about him. Everyone waited for his arrival. But he never came. All kinds of minor characters described him. They told everybody what he would do. But the main character never appeared. –The Old Testament is something like Nathaniel Hawthorne’s play. It too ended without the main character’s appearing on the stage. Everyone talked about the Messiah, everyone awaited his arrival. But he never came in the Old Testament period. In today’s reading, we hear Isaiah describing what the Messiah would do by bringing salvation to all mankind. Today’s Gospel tells us that when the real Messiah came, even the last prophet and the Messiah’s herald, John the Baptist, could not believe that he was the expected Messiah. (Mark Link S. J. in Sunday Homilies) 

# 2: Gaudete Sunday smile: A number of years ago, a young college student was working as an intern at his college’s Museum of Natural History. One day while working at the cash register in the gift shop, he saw an elderly couple come in with a little girl in a wheelchair. As he looked more closely at this girl, he saw that she was kind of perched on her chair. The student realized that she had no arms or legs, just a head, neck and torso. She was wearing a little white dress with red polka dots. As the couple wheeled her up to the checkout counter, he turned his head toward the girl and gave her a wink. Meanwhile, he took the money from her grandparents and looked back at the girl, who was giving him the cutest and the largest smile he had ever seen. All of a sudden, her handicap was gone, and all that the college student saw was this beautiful girl, whose smile just melted him and almost instantly gave him a completely new sense of what life is all about. She took him from being an unhappy college student and brought him into her world - a world of smiles, love and warmth. With the lighting of the rose candle, the third of the Advent Wreath, among the purple candles, and the priest’s wearing the rose vestments, we are reminded that we are called to live with joy in our world of sorrows and pain. (Fr. James Farfaglia)  

# 3:  "Buddhist gives a Jew a Christmas gift made by a Hindu!” Under a cultural exchange program, a rabbi from Russia was visiting a Christian family in Texas. Since it was Christmas, the family wanted to take him to some of the finest places in Houston, so they all went to a favorite Chinese restaurant. Throughout the meal the rabbi extolled the wonders of America in comparison to the bleak conditions of his homeland. When they had finished eating, the waiter brought the check, a fortune cookie, and a small brass Christmas tree ornament as a present for the rabbi. They all laughed when the rabbi pointed out that the ornaments were stamped “made in India.” But the laughter soon subsided when they saw that the rabbi was quietly crying. They all thought that the rabbi must have been offended by receiving a Christmas tree as a gift. But no, he smiled and shook his head and said, “Nyet, I was shedding tears of joy to be in a wonderful country, in a Chinese restaurant in which a Buddhist gives a Jew a Christmas gift made by a Hindu!” 

Introduction: The common theme running through today’s readings is one of joy and encouragement. The readings stress the need for patience in those awaiting the rebirth of Jesus in their hearts and lives.  They give us a message of hope—for people almost three millennia ago, for people at the beginning of the first millennium and for people today.  Today is called Gaudete Sunday because today’s Mass begins with the opening antiphon: “Gaudete in Domino semper,” i.e., “Rejoice in the Lord always.” Today, our joy in the coming of Jesus as our Savior, is marked by our lighting of our Advent Wreath’s third candle  which is 'rose-colored,' and by the  'rose-colored' vestments, which the priest may wear  at this Eucharist, because they represent a lightening of the dark violet of the rest of the penitential season of Advent. They remind us of the color of the sky at the very brink of morning, when the sun is just beginning to come up. The horizon takes on a pale rose color that gradually gets redder and brighter as the sun rises. For faithful Christians, life is like a “long sunrise,” and death is the entrance into the bright, “everlasting day” of eternal life. This is the reason why this Sunday is also called “Rose Sunday. ”The prophet Isaiah, in the first reading, encourages the exiled Jews in Babylon to believe that God is going to save them and transform their lives.  The Responsorial Psalm (Ps 146) reminds us of the fidelity, mercy and justice of the Lord God Who will come again.  In the second reading, James the Apostle encourages the early Christians to be patient, “because the coming of the Lord is at hand.”  Finally, in today’s Gospel reading, Jesus encourages John the Baptist to cast away the popular political expectations about the Messiah and simply to accept Jesus’ healing and preaching ministry as the fulfillment of the messianic prophecy of Isaiah. 

First reading: Is 35:1-6, 10 explained:  Through Isaiah, His prophet, the Lord God tries to stir up in his exiled children the hope of their return to Israel by assuring them of His saving power in their lives.  He reminds them that it was through their disloyalty to Him that they had lost their liberty, had been taken as slaves to Babylon and had lived there in servitude for sixty years (598-538 BC).  The Jews were finally set free by Cyrus (who had captured Babylon), and were allowed to return to their native land, rebuild the Temple and serve their God once more as His Chosen People. Through the prophet, Yahweh assures the exiles that He will lead them back to their land in this second exodus (6^th century B.C.), as He led their ancestors from Egypt to the Promised Land in the first exodus (13^th century BC).  The Lord God says He is going to do three things for them.  1) He will transform the wasteland lying between their land of exile and Israel into a new Garden of Eden to facilitate their journey.  2) The weak and the sick will be strengthened for the journey.  3) They will reach their destination singing and crowned with glory.  The assurance of this second exodus is chosen for Advent, because both Exodus events foreshadow the coming of the Messiah. 

Second reading: James 5:7-10 explained: The expectation of Jesus' imminent return did not last very long in the early Church. Even within Saint Paul's lifetime, that expectation had waned.  The Apostles advised the Christians to bear witness to Christ through their heroic lives without waiting for the Parousia in their lifetime.  Hence, in the second reading, James encourages the fearful, frustrated and persecuted early Christians to be patient.  Like Isaiah, James tries to show his Christian community that what they have been hoping for is already happening.  Though he stresses patience and determination, James also reminds them that "the Judge stands at the gate."  Just as the prophets believed that what they were proclaiming was already happening, the Christians needed to behave as though the returned risen Jesus were already influencing their lives.  James uses the analogy of a farmer who must wait patiently for the ground to yield its fruit.  In the same way, we must trust that God is bringing abundance into, and out of, our lives, although we cannot see it yet.  St. James' warning is clear:  if anyone among them has hitherto neglected his duties to God, he needs to listen now to the warning (“The Judge is standing before the gates!”) and put his conscience and his life right with God. 

Gospel exegesis: The context: Today's Gospel describes how Isaiah's vision of Israel's glorious future is fulfilled unexpectedly by the coming of the promised Messiah in Jesus, the poor, humble, itinerant preacher who told the Truth, and who worked wonders of  healing in his Messianic mission. But the Jews in general expected a political Messiah who would reestablish the Davidic kingdom after overthrowing the Roman government. Hence, most of them were scandalized by Jesus’ peaceful preaching and shameful death. The disciples of John the Baptist continued to insist that John was indeed the Messiah, and they awaited his return, causing problems to early Christians. Hence, all four Evangelists highlighted John’s important role as the Messiah’s herald but emphasized that John’s was a secondary and subordinate role in salvation history. Matthew, in the second part of today’s Gospel, presents Jesus, the true Messiah, as paying the highest compliments to John the Baptist as his herald and the last of the prophets, and to the courage with which John proclaimed his prophetic convictions.  

John’s reasonable doubts. Scripture scholars over the centuries have wondered why John sent his disciples to ask Jesus if he were the one who was to come. There are two possible explanations: 1) John knew that Jesus was the Christ and, as a prisoner, he wanted his disciples to follow Jesus as their new master. So, he sent them to ask Jesus this question and presumed that, once they had met Jesus, they would see for themselves that he was the Messiah and so would become followers of Jesus. 2)  John began to doubt Jesus’ identity as the promised Messiah. The silent healing, preaching, saving, and empowering ministry of Jesus was a surprise to John and to those who expected a fire-and-brimstone Messiah. Besides, Jesus had not yet fulfilled John's prediction that the One-to-come would baptize the repentant in the Holy Spirit. Nor did Jesus conform to popular Jewish beliefs about a warrior and a political Messiah who would bring political, social, and economic deliverance to Israel. Instead, Jesus pronounced blessings on the poor in spirit, the meek, and peacemakers (5:1-11).  He called his disciples to love their enemies (5:42-48). He warned his disciples not to judge others (7:1-5). For John, these teachings might have seemed to weaken rather than to strengthen the Messiah’s cause. Furthermore, Jesus moved away from Jerusalem, the home of the Temple and the center of religious authority and began his ministry in Galilee among the common people (4:12).  John proclaimed the power of the coming Messiah to bring in a new age, and instead found himself imprisoned in the dungeon of Herod’s prison-fortress at Machaerus, southeast of the Dead Sea. He might have been wondering why the expected Messiah was not setting him free as Isaiah (61:1) had predicted. John might have found sympathetic doubters among his own disciples who might have wondered how the Messiah could leave their own teacher in prison, and how He could usher in the kingdom without political or military might.  These might  have been the reasons why John sent his disciples to dispel his doubt, asking: "Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?” 

Generosity to dispel doubts meets humility to accept correction: Instead of criticizing Jesus or breaking away from him, John approached Jesus through his disciples.   The disciples asked Jesus whether he was the one to come or if they should look for another. John might have had his doubts, but he was open to hearing Jesus say that he was, indeed, the one! John must have recognized the Scriptural allusions behind Jesus' answer.  Isaiah 29:18 speaks of the deaf hearing and the blind seeing. Isaiah 35:6 speaks of the lame leaping like a deer. Isaiah 26:19 speaks of the dead becoming alive. Isaiah 61:1 speaks of good news for the oppressed, the brokenhearted, captives and prisoners. These were signs of the Messiah's coming.  Jesus could have rebuked John for his doubts, but instead offered him a blessing.  Jesus had not lived up to John's expectations, but John did not allow that to be a stumbling block (skandalizomia).  Soon enough, Jesus would deal with the people of his hometown, who took offense at him (13:57).  Complimenting John, Jesus says that John is the fulfillment of Malachi 3:1 ("See, I am sending my messenger to prepare the way before me"), presenting the Baptist as the last prophetic messenger, the forerunner of the Messiah.  

Life messages: 1) We need to learn how to survive a Faith crisis: From a theological perspective, this entire episode helps us to understand how the experience of a Faith crisis can play a role in our spiritual and emotional development. If John the Baptist, even after having had a direct encounter with Jesus the Messiah, could doubt and question his Faith, then so can we.  If disillusionment is a necessary precondition for a more resilient Faith, then we, too, must be open to its possibilities.  In moments of doubt, despair and disillusionment, we are, indeed, in good company. Occasional doubts – even horrifying doubts – are one thing, but doubts that persist in the face of every Biblical remedy demand careful attention. Let us remember the truth that our trust and Faith  in our Christian dogmas and all the teachings of the Church, are rooted and grounded in the Divinity of Jesus Who taught them, and on His Divine authority by which He authorized the Church to teach what He taught. It is up to us to learn our Faith in depth, so that God will be able to dispel our doubts. 

2) “Go and tell others what you hear and see.”  In medieval times, this day—the Third Sunday of Advent—was called Gaudete Sunday, as an equivalent to Laetare Sunday during Lent. As we pray today, we also rejoice that the Lord does not fail to show his power and might.   We rejoice at the thought that Jesus is going to be reborn in our lives, deepening in us His gifts of love, mercy, forgiveness and the spirit of humble and sacrificial service during this Christmas season. During this season, let us joyfully share God’s bountiful grace, forgiveness, and mercy with others.   What Jesus commanded John’s disciples, he commands us as well:  Go and tell others what you hear and see. Despite the obvious “signs” and miracles, some people still rejected Jesus (CCC #548). Each of us must strive to interpret the “signs of the times,” and accept the help of the Church and the Holy Spirit (CCC #1788). 

3) We need to open our hearts and let God transform our lives: We, too, should be encouraged by today’s readings.  They remind us that our lives can also be transformed, if we are patient and place our trust in God. The message of Advent is that God is present among us, in our everyday lives.  We must prepare our hearts to recognize and welcome Him.  “If a man is the center of his [own] life, everyone around him becomes hell for him because everyone around him interferes with him and obstructs what he wants to do” (Jean Paul Sartre).  Let us believe in our hearts the Gospel message about Jesus given by Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.  Will we allow the Holy Spirit, through these Gospel reports, to create in us this Advent a metánoia  -- a radical change of our thinking, loving, living, and our very being in relation to God, other people, and ourselves, which will reshape and clarify our purpose for living in this world as He intended when He created us. 

4) Each of us is called to be “more than a prophet,” “more than a precursor,” more than someone who points to Jesus. We are called to be greater than a prophet, greater than John the Baptist, in our mission. We’re supposed to become Jesus’ voice, Jesus’ hands, Jesus’ feet, Jesus’ heart. As St. Teresa of Avila would say, “Christ has no body on earth now but yours. No hands, no feet on earth but yours. Yours are the eyes through which Christ’s compassion is to look out to the earth. Yours are the feet by which He is to go about doing good and yours are the hands by which He is to bless us now.”

JOKE OF THE WEEK  

1) "I am John the Baptist! A man who thought he was John the Baptist was disturbing the neighborhood, so for public safety, he was committed.   He was put in a room with another crazy one.  The new inmate immediately began his routine, "I am John the Baptist! Jesus Christ has sent me!"   The other guy looked at him and declared, "I did not!"

2) A Politically Correct Christmas Greeting? Best wishes for an environmentally conscious, socially responsible, low-stress, non-addictive, gender-neutral, winter solstice holiday, practiced within the most joyous traditions of the religious persuasion of your choice, but with respect for the religious persuasions of others who choose to practice their own religion as well as for those who choose not to practice a religion at all. (Disclaimer: This greeting is subject to clarification or withdrawal. It implies no responsibility for any unintended emotional stress these greetings may bring to those not caught up in the holiday spirit.)  3) What happens when pastor’s mom lives in the rectory as his housekeeper? On a Sunday morning he couldn't get out of bed. His mother tried to get him out of bed, but to little avail. She shouted up the stairs, “Get up!” and he shouted down the stairs, "No!" Then she shouted again, “Get up!” and he shouted down, “Why should I?” She said, “Well, first of all your breakfast is ready, secondly this is the third Sunday of Advent, and thirdly you're the Pastor and you have to say two Masses today!”

[Prepared by: Fr. Anthony Kadavil, Chaplain, Sacred Heart Residence of the Little Sisters of the Poor, 1655 McGill Ave, Mobile, AL 36604 ]

JOHN THE BAPTIST SUFFERS IN HIS WITNESSING

(Is.35:1-6,10, Ps.146:6-10, Jam.5:7-10 & Matt. 11:2-11)

Last Sunday we heard from the prophet Isaiah how the expected Messiah would reconcile the contradictions and differences that separate people and to bring peace and harmony when he comes. While in the gospel John the Baptist cries in the wilderness calling the people to prepare the Lord's way by a change of heart.

In today's first reading Isaiah goes further to encourage the people as well as to reiterate the total liberation and restoration of the people by the expected Messiah. Isaiah says that when the Messiah comes to save his people he would open the eyes of the blind and the ears of the deaf, the lame would leap, and the tongue of the dumb sing for joy and he would exert vengeance and liberation of captives, (Isaiah 35:5).

However, in the today's Gospel passage, John the Baptist 'the Voice' that cries in the wilderness, now remains in the prison suffering because of his witness to the expected Messiah, even when the Messiah is already on the scene.

Meanwhile, as John was still in prison he heard the reports about Jesus the Messiah performing miracles and signs and speaking to the people about the coming of God's kingdom, and perhaps, John had expected that Jesus would come to free him from the prison, since it is for his course that John finds himself in prison.

However, when that was not forth happening, John, therefore, sends his disciples to Jesus with the message, 'are you the one who is to come or shall we wait for another?' In his reply Jesus tells the messengers to inform John what they have heard and seen, the blind sees, the deaf hears, the lame walks, etc. And when they had gone Jesus remarks about John saying, 'Among all born of any woman non is greater than John'. Certainly, the 'silence' of God is not abandonment.

What actually led to John's imprisonment, one may ask? Because John condemns King Herod’s adulterous act of taking his brother -Philip’s wife as his own wife while his brother was still alive.

Nowadays, we are living in a society where people fear and avoid giving a caring-confrontation to their neighbours even when it is glaringly obvious that what their friends and colleagues are doing are wrong and grievous. They rather maintain their silence for the fear of what may result from the caring-confrontation. And this has left all of us in a vicious moral mess in our families and the wider society. People keep quiet while evil thrive around them probably because they don’t want to lose their good name and their relationship. Or still because they don’t want to suffer any punishment or lose whatever favours or privileges they had been enjoying.

But for the person of John the Baptist, he tells us today that, nothing can come in between him and his love and witness to the Messiah. Hence, he did not fear any threat or any lose confronting Herod with the painful truth regarding his inordinate relationship with Herodias his brother’s wife. He was ready to suffer and die for the truth and goodness sake.

Evils and atrocities are on the increase in our societies today simply because those who should talk, challenge, confront or even advise on the positive are not only keeping quiet but they even join the bandwagon. And so we keep moving in a vicious circle. It was Martin Luther King Jnr. who says, that 'At the end of the day, we will not only remember the words of our enemies but more painfully the silence of our friends.

May God renew in us today the spirit of John the Baptist, (the greatest of all born of any woman), so that we all would stand up in our families and in the society to redeem it by challenging in a lovingly and pro-active ways the negative agents that are eating deep into the moral fabrics our families and society.

Again, may our today's Eucharistic celebration strengthen us, all the more, to face with greater zeal the challenges and difficulties on our way of standing in sincerity for Jesus in our world today and may all who suffer in different ways because of their commitment to God in their Christian faith be filled with greater fortitude and lovely boldness like John the Baptist.

Give God the first place in your life and allow his principles to determine your decisions and life choices.

Reflection by Damian Ikemefuna Ozokwere cssp

Introduction: Loving, responsive obedience to God as modeled for us by St. Joseph is the central theme of today’s Golden Goose Superstar Homme Soldes readings, with Golden Goose Slide Pas Cher special emphasis on the Virgin Birth of Jesus.

Scripture lessons: In the first reading, the prophet Isaiah gives a sign from God to King Ahaz of Judah: “Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and his name shall be called Emmanuel” (Is 7:14).  Matthew considers this prophecy as one of the most descriptive and definite prophecies foretelling the future Messianic King, the Christ, to be born as a descendant of David.  In the second reading, Paul also asserts that Jesus was a descendant of David and thus the Messiah: “from David according to the flesh” (Rom 1:3). Paul explains that the only-begotten Son of God, become Incarnate as Jesus, was revealed and established by the Father as Son of God in power by his Resurrection from the dead.  Then Paul provides a sweeping summary of God’s mighty acts in history through Jesus Christ.  Today’s Gospel, from Matthew, focuses on the person and role of Joseph. For Jesus to fulfill the Messianic prophecy given by Isaiah, Joseph had to accept Jesus as his son, making Jesus a legal descendant of David because Joseph was a descendant of David.  Hence, Matthew makes it clear that Jesus was not the biological child of Joseph.  But because Joseph was the husband of Mary at the time Jesus was born, Jesus was legally the son of Joseph and thus a descendant of David. 

Life messages: 1) Like Joseph, we need to trust in God, listen to Him and be faithful.  Although we may face financial problems, job insecurity, tensions in the family and health concerns, let us try to be like St. Joseph, trusting and faithful. Instead of relying on our own schemes to get us through life, let us trust in God and be strengthened by talking to Him in fervent prayer and by listening to Him speaking through the Bible. 2) We need to experience Emmanuel in our lives and change the world: The Good News and the consoling message of Christmas is that the Child Jesus still waits today to step into our hearts—your heart and mine—and to change us and the world around us by the beauty of God’s love, kindness, mercy and compassion.  Let us take some time to welcome the Christ Child into our hearts and lives this week, so that He may change our world of miseries with the beauty of that love. 3) Do we have any gift for our “Birthday Boy?” Let us check to see if Jesus is on our list this Christmas and if we have a special gift in mind for him.     A heart filled with love for God and our fellow-human beings is the birthday gift which Jesus really wants from us. Hence, let us prepare our heart for Jesus, filling it with love, mercy, compassion and forgiveness on this Christmas and every day of our lives. 4) Let us be a Christmas gift to others: The greatest gift we can give to those we love, is to have faith in them, believe in their dreams and try to help them realize them. We need to believe in the dreams of our husband, wife, children, parents, heroes, leaders and friends, then try our best to help them realize those dreams.

ADVENT IV  Is 7:10-14; Romans 1:1-7; Matthew 1:18-24

Anecdote: #1: “You’ll know tonight.” It was a few days before Christmas. A woman woke up one morning and told her husband, “I just dreamed that you gave me a pearl necklace for Christmas. What do you think this dream means?” “Oh,” her husband replied, “you’ll know the day after tomorrow.” The next morning, she turned to her husband again and said she had the same dream, and received the same reply.  On the third morning, the woman woke up and smiled at her husband, “I just dreamed again that you gave me a pearl necklace for Christmas. What do you think this dream means?” And he smiled back, “You’ll know tonight.” That evening, the man came home with a small package and presented it to his wife. She was delighted. She opened it gently. And when she did, she found—a book! And the book’s title was The Meaning of Dreams. Today’s Gospel tells us how Joseph had a dream and how he reacted to it. (Rev Samuel Candler).

# 2:  Emmanuel - God with us: Over 100 years ago Father Damien deVeuster, a Belgian priest, began working with lepers on Molokai, a small Hawaiian island. Father Damien found a source of fresh water in the mountains and developed a system to bring it down to the colony. He built the first sanitation system and clinic. He and the lepers constructed a chapel for worship. Each Sunday Father Damien would begin his sermon with these words: “You lepers know that God loves you.” This went on for years. Finally, one Sunday Father Damien began his sermon this way: “We lepers know that God loves us.” Father Damien had contracted leprosy. Yet he went on loving and serving until his death in 1898. Even as Father Damien cast his lot in with the lepers, Jesus, Emmanuel, invested Himself totally in us sinners. “He was bruised and wounded for our sins. He was lashed, and we were healed.”  “All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet: ‘Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and his name shall be called Emmanuel’”(Mt 1: 22-23). (Dr. William R. Bouknight).

#3: Emmanuel: There is a story about a small boy who went to a pet shop. “Mister,” he said to the owner, “I want to buy that puppy.” The owner’s eyes followed the boy’s finger to a little crippled puppy all by himself. “Son,” replied, “that pup is worthless. We’re going to have him put to sleep in the next few days.” But the boy protested, “I’ve saved my money just to buy that one puppy. I have been looking at him in the window every day. He’s the only one I want.” Once again the owner explained the problem—the dog was crippled—the dog was worthless—the dog would be put to sleep. The small boy then reached down with two little hands and pulled up his trousers. The man observed two little legs enclosed in braces. “Mister,” he said, “You don’t know what love can do!” Jesus, Emmanuel has worn our braces and died for our sins. Now with grateful hearts let us enthrone him as Savior and Lord.       

Introduction: The story of the Virgin Birth is at the heart of our Christmas celebrations.  Hence, today’s readings focus on the story of the Virgin Birth. In the first reading, God gives a sign through the prophet Isaiah to King Ahaz of Judah: “Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and his name shall be called Emmanuel” (Isaiah 7:14) Matthew considers this one of the most descriptive and definite prophecies foretelling that the future Messianic king, the Christ, would be born as a descendant of David.  Paul, in the second reading, also asserts that Jesus was a descendant of David and thus the Messiah, being: “descended from David according to the flesh” (Rom 1: 3). Paul also explains that Jesus was revealed and established as the Son of God in power by his Resurrection from the dead.  Then Paul provides a sweeping summary of God’s mighty acts in history through Jesus Christ.  Today’s Gospel, from Matthew, focuses on the person and role of Joseph. In order for Jesus to fulfill the Messianic prophecy given by Isaiah, Joseph had to accept Jesus as his son, making Jesus a descendant of David because Joseph was a descendant of David.  Hence, Matthew makes it clear that Jesus was not the biological child of Joseph.  But because Joseph was the husband of Mary at the time Jesus was born, and because he named and thus accepted the child as his own, Jesus was legally the son of Joseph and thus a descendant of David. 

The first reading: The undivided kingdom of Israel under David and Solomon was divided, at Solomon’s death in the late eighth century BC, into a northern kingdom, Israel, and a southern kingdom, Judah. Assyria, the dominant power in the region controlled, among other lands, Israel and Syria. These two liege states were planning to rebel against Assyria.  Their kings pressured Judah’s King Ahaz, the eleventh Jewish king of Judah in ten years (735 to 715 BC), to join them. [See 2 Kg 16 ff and 2 Chronicles 28 for Ahaz’ history.]  When he refused, they began to plot to overthrow him by attacking Judah. Instead of trusting in God, Ahaz planned to ask for help in holding his throne from his overlord, the pagan Assyrian king, a request which later led to the overthrow of the kingdom of Judah. Confident that his God, Yahweh, would protect Judah and its king, the prophet Isaiah told Ahaz to have Faith in Yahweh and not to ally himself with Assyria. But Ahaz wouldn’t listen; he was determined to go ahead with his alliance.  (In order to appease the Assyrians, Ahaz had replaced the altar in the Temple with an Assyrian altar and had sacrificed his firstborn son to the Assyrian god Moloch).  Isaiah told Ahaz that the Lord wanted him to ask God for a sign of the truth of what Isaiah was saying.   Ahaz had already made up his mind to rely on Assyria instead, so he refused to ask for a sign, using the excuse that it would be “tempting God” to do so. In frustration, Isaiah announced God’s sign anyway, the birth from a virgin of a son, whose very name, “Emmanuel” (“God is with us”), would assure everyone that God was really with His people.

Matthew understands the passage from Isaiah as promising the birth of an ideal descendant of David, the Messiah. Despite Matthew’s citation from Isaiah, Isaiah probably wasn’t consciously prophesying Jesus’ birth in Is 7:10-14, and certainly was not predicting that birth exclusively.  The Lord God, through Isaiah, was giving King Ahaz a sign which had to be recognized instantly, not 700 years later in Jesus. Besides, the Hebrew word almah which we translate as “virgin,” meant only a woman who had not yet delivered a baby.  Hence, the almah Isaiah mentions probably would be Ahaz’ wife, Abia, and the Emmanuel would be their soon-to-be-born son Hezekiah. The promised son of Ahaz would be faithful to Yahweh and would institute a series of religious reforms that would undo many of Ahaz’ accommodations to Assyrian religious practices. Hence, many modern Bible scholars do not believe that the immediate identities of Isaiah’s “virgin” and “Emmanuel” were Mary and Jesus. That prophecies, the work of the Holy Spirit, can have several fulfillments often centuries apart is axiomatic in the Church, which relies on the Holy Spirit as her Guardian against error, as Jesus promised would be the case. The Letter to the Hebrews provides multiple instances of this kind of reading of Biblical texts. Matthew’s citation, which does identify the “Virgin” as Mary and “Emmanuel” as Jesus, provides what is probably the final fulfillmentof the prophecy.

Second Golden Goose V-star 1 Pas Cher Reading: The reading from St. Paul’s letter to the Romans also emphasizes that Jesus was a descendant of David and thus the Messiah [”descended from David according to the flesh” (Rom 1: 3).]  At the beginning of this letter, Paul briefly summarizes the Gospel, the core of Christian faith, as including two things.  One is that that the only-begotten Son of God, become Incarnate as Jesus, was a descendant of the line of David; the second is that Jesus was revealed and established by the Father as Son of God in power by his Resurrection from the dead. Jesus’ birth is significant because of his death and Resurrection for our salvation. 

The Christian congregation in Rome was small, not yet persecuted and still meeting in someone’s home. These were the first-generation converts - some Jewish, some Gentile.  Paul was introducing himself to the Romans in this letter, and he was establishing his authority as God’s Apostle. That was necessary because the Church in Rome did not know Paul personally, Golden Goose V-star 2 Soldes having heard only that he was a former persecutor turned Apostle.  In the first sentence, Paul describes himself as “set apart to proclaim the Gospel ...,” and later, “favored with Apostleship.”   The rest of the introduction is a summary of the Gospel and of the Divine Plan Paul serves.  Paul sees how Jesus’ coming and his own mission to non-Jews is prefigured in the Hebrew Scriptures.  Paul does not use the name Emmanuel for Jesus, but he does provide a sweeping summary of God’s mighty acts in history through Jesus Christ. 

Exegesis: While Mary is featured prominently in Luke’s account of Jesus’ birth, Matthew brings Joseph to the forefront, because Jesus becomes part of David’s lineage through Joseph (1:1-17).  Luke tells us of Mary’s obedience (Luke 1:38) and Matthew of Joseph’s obedience.  Luke tells the story of the angel’s appearance to Mary (Luke 1:26-38), but Matthew tells us only that the child was from the Holy Spirit.  But why does the Church couple Ahaz with Joseph in today’s readings?  Because of the stark contrast between the two men, each faced with a difficult situation.  One of them, Ahaz, relied on his own wits and schemes.  Joseph relied on God alone and trusted in Him absolutely. One of them sacrificed his own son to appease others and showed no mercy.  The other spent his life in protecting his foster-son.  And so we see Joseph, in sharp contrast to Ahaz in the background, as the just and righteous man that he is. 

Crisis in the family: Jewish marriage started with an engagement arranged by parents, often between children.  Just prior to marriage, couples began a year-long betrothal very much like marriage except for sexual rights.  Betrothal was binding and could be terminated only by death or divorce.  A person whose betrothed had died was considered to be a widow or widower. Joseph found that Mary was pregnant without his knowledge.  Now, the law required that Mary be stoned to death, because she would have been considered an unfaithful wife, and the baby would have been stoned to death with her.  In Deuteronomy 22:23-24, the penalty for adultery was death by stoning at the door of her father’s house as she had disgraced her father. Since Joseph was a just man of great mercy, he resolved to divorce Mary quietly so that he might not cause her unnecessary pain.  In doing so, he shows us Christ-like compassion in the face of sin.  He also demonstrates a Godly balance between the Law of Torah and the Law of Love.  And then in a dream he learned that the Child had been conceived by the Holy Spirit, and that he himself was to be the foster-father of the Christ, claiming the Child by naming Him, and then rearing Him.  Joseph, through trust and Faith in God, accepted his mission as the foster-father of the Son of God.

God’s message through His angel: This is the first of three occasions on which an angel appears to Joseph in a dream.   In each instance, the angel calls Joseph to action and Joseph obeys.  Joseph doesn’t have a speaking part.  In this first instance, the angel commands Joseph to take Mary as his wife.   In Mt 2:13, the angel will tell Joseph to take the mother and child to Egypt to escape Herod’s wrath.  In Mt  2:19, the angel will, at the death of Herod, tell Joseph to return to Israel.  The angel begins by saying, “Joseph, son of David,” alerting us to Joseph’s lineage.  It is through Joseph that Jesus will be of the house and lineage of David.  Mary’s role is to bear a son, and Joseph’s role is to name him.  By naming him, Joseph makes Jesus his son and brings him into the house of David. After each of the three angelic apparitions in his dreams, Joseph obeys the angel’s commands without question or pause.  His hallmark is obedience—prompt, simple, and unspectacular obedience.  And in this sense, Joseph prefigures the Gospel of Matthew’s understanding of righteousness:  to be righteous is simply to obey the Word of God. Joseph’s obedience allows Jesus to be adopted as a true Son of David; it is Mary’s role that allows Jesus to be born Son of God.  In the end, Joseph obediently took Mary as his wife, in spite of his fears, and he claimed her Son as his own by naming him. In spite of his earlier decision to divorce this woman quietly, Joseph nurtured, protected, watched over and loved both Mary and her Child.  

Virgin Birth: “Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son and his name shall be called Emmanuel” (Is 7:14). Matthew and early Christians understood Mary as the Virgin and Jesus as the Son in the prophecy, although the prophecy found its original fulfillment in Hezekiah, the son of Ahaz and his wife, Abia. In the Old and New Golden Goose Soldes Testaments, there are two Golden Goose V-star 1 Homme Soldes possibilities for the word we translate “virgin”: a Hebrew meaning and a Greek meaning.  In Hebrew, the language of the Old Testament, the word for “virgin” used in the Isaiah prophecy is “almah,” which simply means “young woman who has not yet delivered a baby” as explained above. But in Greek, the language of the New Testament, the word for “virgin,” parthenos,means someone who has not been sexually active with anther person, who has never had sexual relationships with another. With the translation of the Hebrew Bible into Greek, the Hebrew “almah” in Isaiah’s prophecy became the Greek parthenos,and brought the more complete meaning of “virginity” in our terms, with it. So in the Gospel reading for today, where Matthew 1:23 cites Isaiah 7:14, “Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son and his name shall be called Emmanuel,” as the explanation for the events he has just related, the full meaning of parthenos makes it plain that the final fulfillment of the Isaiah prophecy was to be found in Mary as the untouched Virgin who, by the power of God, gave birth to Jesus as Emmanuel without a human partner. In the Old Testament, virginity (meaning the state in a woman of never having had sexual intercourse), was highly prized.  A virgin was someone who was precious.  Rebecca was not merely a young woman; she was a virgin.  The Bible is very emphatic about that.  There were several laws to protect the virginity of women.  That is, parents made arrangements for their daughters to be married, and they expected their daughters to be virgins. In fact, Christ’s birth ‘did not diminish his mother’s virginal integrity but sanctified it.’ And so the liturgy of the Church celebrates Mary as Aeiparthenos, the ‘Ever-virgin.’ (CCC #499). [The doctrine of the Virgin Birth of the Messiah, Jesus, the Son of God and the Son of Man is crucial to our Redemption (; ; , ). First, let’s look at how Scripture describes the event. In response to Mary’s question, “How will this be?” (), Gabriel says, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you” (). The angel encourages Joseph to not fear marrying Mary with these words: “What is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit” (). Matthew states that the virgin “was found to be with child through the Holy Spirit” (). also teaches the Virgin Birth: “God sent His Son, born of a  woman.” Question of the Week.]

Jesus the Emmanuel: The name Jesus is the Greek form of the Hebrew Yehosua, which means ‘YHWH is salvation’.  The first Joshua, the successor of Moses, saved the people from their enemies.  The second Joshua (Jesus) will save the people from their sins.  The people did not expect a Messiah who would save them from their sins, but one who would deliver them from their oppressors.  The fulfillment of prophecy is important to Matthew.  He mentions fulfillment of prophecy eleven times (1:22; 2:15, 17, 23; 4:14; 8:17; 12:17; 13:35; 21:4; 26:56; 27:9).  In Hebrew, El is a short form of Elohim, a name for God. Immanu-El means “God with us.”  Emmanuel describes Jesus’ role or vocation.  Jesus’ calling is to save his people from their sins and to manifest God’s presence. Matthew thus begins his Gospel with the promise that Jesus is God-with-us.  He will end the Gospel with the promise that Jesus will be with us “always, to the end of the age” (28:20).  Matthew understands that in the life, death, and Resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth, God is with us, reconciling the world to Himself.  He is the reassurance in the flesh that God has not given up on us, but will remain with us. The real event of Christmas is that God comes to change the world and each of us—not just through a historical, virginal conception and a baby lying in a manger, but through the God Who is with us today, shattering our self-righteous attitudes and seeking to move us beyond our fears, freeing us from our bondages.  

Life messages: 1) Like Joseph, we need to trust in God, listen to Him and be faithful.  We are here in this Church, a week before Christmas, because, like Joseph, we are faithful, and we trust in God, His power and His mercy.  Although we may face financial problems, job insecurity, family problems and health concerns let us try to be trusting and faithful like St. Joseph.   Instead of relying on our own schemes to get us through life, let us trust in God and be strengthened by talking to Him in fervent prayer and by listening to Him speaking through the Bible. Let us remain faithful and prayerful, imitating Joseph and Mary, the humblest of the humble, the kindliest of the kindly, and the greatest-ever believers in God’s goodness and mercy, as we welcome Jesus into our hearts and lives this Christmas. 

2)   We need to experience Emmanuel in our lives and change the world: God who entered our world through Jesus some 2000 years ago is at work in the world.  But the question is, if God has come to be present in our lives and our world, then why are there so many lives which are unhappy and beastly?  Why are people so hostile, hating each other, and why do so many love-relationships turn sour? Why is there domestic violence? Why is there child abuse?  Why is there war in at least a dozen countries of God’s good earth at any given time?  Why are so many people homeless and hungry, even in rich countries?  The Good News, the consoling message of Christmas, is that the child Jesus still waits today to step into our hearts—your heart and mine—and to change us and the world around us by the beauty of God’s love, kindness, mercy and compassion.  Let us take some time to let the Christ Child enter our hearts and lives this week, so that He may change our world of miseries with the beauty of that love.

3) Do we have any gift for our “Birthday Boy?” Let us check to see if Jesus is on our list this Christmas and if we have a special gift in mind for him.   We all know the pleasure of finding the right present for our husband or wife, for our children, a good friend, a parent.  What special gift are we giving to Jesus this year to honor his birth, and what do we expect from God?  God sent Jesus from Heaven to earth to give us human beings what we really need most in life: hearts filled with love.  That is the gift which Jesus really wants from us, and that is what you and I really need from God this Christmas – a heart filled with love.  We have tons of wants.  We are like children with a catalogue before Christmas, circling all our wants by the dozens.  But we have one essential need:  a heart filled with love. God wants to give each of us a heart filled with love, mercy, compassion and forgiveness on this Christmas and every day of our lives.

4)   Let us be a Christmas gift to others: The greatest gift we can give to those we love, is to have faith in them, believe in their dreams, and try to help them realize them. We need to believe in the dreams of our husband, wife, children, parents, heroes, leaders and friends, then try our best to help them realize those dreams.

JOKE OF THE WEEK 

Jesuit Joke: A Jesuit, a Dominican and a Franciscan were walking along an old road, debating the greatness of their orders. Suddenly, a vision of the Holy Family appeared in front of them, with Jesus in a manger and Mary and Joseph praying over him. The Franciscan fell on his face, overcome with awe at the sight of God born in such poverty. The Dominican fell to his knees, adoring the beautiful reflection of the Trinity and the Holy Family. The Jesuit walked up to Joseph, put his arm around his shoulder, and said, “So, where ya thinking of sending the kid for school?

Advent IV [A] Sunday Homily- One-page summary (L-19)

Introduction: Loving, responsive obedience to God, as modeled for us in the Gospel by St. Joseph, is the central theme of today’s readings, with special emphasis on the Virgin Birth of Jesus. 

Scripture lessons summarized: In the first reading, the prophet Isaiah gives a sign from God to King Ahaz of Judah: “Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and his name shall be called Emmanuel” (Is 7:14).  Matthew considers this prophecy as one of the most descriptive and definite prophecies foretelling the future Messianic King, the Christ, who will be born as a descendant of David. The Refrain for today’s Responsorial Psalm (Ps 24), “Let the Lord enter; He is King of Glory” reminds us that we must choose to let Jesus enter our hearts to rule our lives, for God never forces us to receive His gifts.   In the second reading, Paul asserts that Jesus was a descendant of David and thus the Messiah: “from David according to the flesh” (Rom 1:3). Paul explains that the only begotten Son of God, become Incarnate as Jesus, was revealed and established by the Father as Son of God in power by his Resurrection from the dead.  Then Paul provides a sweeping summary of God’s mighty acts in history through Jesus Christ.  Today’s Gospel, from Matthew, focuses on the person and role of Joseph. For Jesus to fulfill the Messianic prophecy given by Isaiah, Joseph had to, and freely did, accept Jesus as his son, making Jesus a legal descendant of David because Joseph was a descendant of David.  Hence, Matthew makes it clear that Jesus was not the biological child of Joseph.  But because Joseph was the husband of Mary at the time Jesus was born, Jesus was legally the son of Joseph and thus a descendant of David. 

Life messages: 1) Like Joseph, we need to trust in God, listen to Him and be faithful.  Although we may face financial problems, job insecurity, tensions in the family and health concerns, let us try to be like St. Joseph, trusting and faithful. Instead of relying on our own schemes to get us through life, let us trust in God and be strengthened by talking to Him in fervent prayer and by listening to Him speaking through the Bible.

 2) We need to experience Emmanuel in our lives and change the world: The Good News and the consoling message of Christmas is that the Child Jesus still waits today to step into our hearts—your heart and mine—and to change us and the world around us by the beauty of God’s love, kindness, mercy and compassion.  Let us take some time to welcome the Christ Child into our hearts and lives this week, so that God may change our world of miseries with the beauty of that love. 

3) Do we have any gift for our “Birthday Boy?” Let us check to see if Jesus is on our list this Christmas and if we have a special gift in mind for him.     A heart filled with love for God and our fellow-human beings is the birthday gift which Jesus really wants from us. Hence, let us prepare our heart for Jesus, filling it with love, mercy, compassion and forgiveness on this Christmas and every day of our lives. 

4) Let us be a Christmas gift to others: The greatest gift we can give to those we love, is to have faith in them, believe in their dreams and try to help them realize them. We need to believe in the dreams of our husband, wife, children, parents, heroes, leaders and friends, then try our best to help them realize those dreams. 

ADVENT IV [A] Is 7:10-14; Rom 1:1-7; Mt 1:18-24 

Homily starter anecdotes: # 1:   Emmanuel - God with us: Over 100 years ago Father Damien deVeuster, (St. Damien of Molokai) a Belgian priest, began working with lepers on Molokai, a small Hawaiian island. Father Damien found a source of fresh water in the mountains and developed a system to bring it down to the colony. He built the first sanitation system and clinic. He and the lepers constructed a chapel for worship. Each Sunday Father Damien would begin his sermon with these words: “You lepers know that God loves you.” This went on for years. Finally, one Sunday Father Damien began his sermon this way: “We lepers know that God loves us.” Father Damien had contracted leprosy. Yet he went on loving and serving until his death in 1898. Even as Father Damien cast his lot in with the lepers, Jesus, Emmanuel, invested Himself totally in us sinners. “He was bruised and wounded for our sins. He was lashed, and we were healed.”  “All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet: ‘Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and his name shall be called Emmanuel’” (Mt 1: 22-23). (Dr. William R. Bouknight).

#2: “You don’t know what love can do!” There is a story about a small boy who went to a pet shop. “Mister,” he said to the owner, “I want to buy that puppy.” The owner’s eyes followed the boy’s finger to a little crippled puppy all by himself. “Son,” replied, “that pup is worthless. We’re going to have him put to sleep in the next few days.” But the boy protested, “I’ve saved my money just to buy that one puppy. I have been looking at him in the window every day. He’s the only one I want.” Once again, the owner explained the problem—the dog was crippled—the dog was worthless—the dog would be put to sleep. The small boy then reached down with two little hands and pulled up his trousers. The man observed two little legs enclosed in braces. “Mister,” he said, “You don’t know what love can do!” Jesus, Emmanuel has worn our braces and died for our sins. Now with grateful hearts let us enthrone him as Savior and Lord. 

# 3: “A baby is God’s opinion that the world should go on.” Carl Sandburg (1878-1967), the noted American historian, novelist, and poet, once said, “A baby is God’s opinion that the world should go on.” When Isaiah offered Ahaz the sign which he had refused to request, the prophet’s message bore some similarity to the words of Sandburg. A baby would be born, he prophesied, and that child’s existence would underscore, yet again, God’s fidelity to his promises. Judah could be sure that its world would indeed go on.

# 4:  You’ll know tonight.” It was a few days before Christmas. A woman woke up one morning and told her husband, “I just dreamed that you gave me a pearl necklace for Christmas. What do you think this dream means?” “Oh,” her husband replied, “you’ll know the day after tomorrow.” The next morning, she turned to her husband again and said she had the same dream and received the same reply.  On the third morning, the woman woke up and smiled at her husband, “I just dreamed again that you gave me a pearl necklace for Christmas. What do you think this dream means?” And he smiled back, “You’ll know tonight.” That evening, the man came home with a small package and presented it to his wife. She was delighted. She opened it gently. And when she did, she found—a book! And the book’s title was The Meaning of Dreams. Today’s Gospel tells us how Joseph had a dream and how he reacted to it. (Rev Samuel Candler).   

Introduction: The story of the Virgin Birth is at the heart of our Christmas celebrations.  Hence, today’s readings focus on the story of the Virgin Birth. In the first reading, God gives a sign through the prophet Isaiah to King Ahaz of Judah: “Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and his name shall be called Emmanuel” (Isaiah 7:14) Matthew considers this one of the most descriptive and definite prophecies foretelling that the future Messianic king, the Christ, would be born as a descendant of David. The Refrain for today’s Responsorial Psalm (Ps 24), “Let the Lord enter; He is King of Glory,” reminds us that, like Joseph,  we must choose to let Jesus enter our hearts to rule our lives, for God never forces us to receive His gifts.  Paul, in the second reading, also asserts that Jesus is a descendant of David and thus the Messiah, being: “descended from David according to the flesh” (Rom 1: 3). Paul also explains that Jesus was revealed and established as the Son of God in power by his Resurrection from the dead.  Then Paul provides a sweeping summary of God’s mighty acts in history through Jesus Christ.  Today’s Gospel, from Matthew, focuses on the person and role of Joseph. In order for Jesus to fulfill the Messianic prophecy given by Isaiah, Joseph had to, and freely, willingly, did, accept Jesus as his son, making Jesus a descendant of David because Joseph was a descendant of David.  Hence, Matthew makes it clear that Jesus was not the biological child of Joseph.  But because Joseph was the husband of Mary at the time Jesus was born, and because he named and thus accepted the child as his own, Jesus was legally the son of Joseph and thus a descendant of David. 

The first reading (Is 7:10-14 explained: God had promised (2Samuel 7:14) an unending dynasty to David. Hence the Israelites hung their hopes on a coming messiah (anointed king) whose reign would restore the peace and prosperity for which they longed. But the undivided kingdom of Israel under David and Solomon was divided at Solomon’s death in the late eighth century BC, into a northern kingdom, Israel, and a southern kingdom, Judah. Assyria, the dominant power in the region controlled, among other lands, Israel and Syria. These two liege states were planning to rebel against Assyria.  Their kings pressured Judah’s King Ahaz, the eleventh Jewish king of Judah in ten years (735 to 715 BC), to join them. [See 2 Kg 16 ff and 2 Chronicles 28 for Ahaz’ history.]  When he refused, they began to plot to overthrow him by attacking Judah. Instead of trusting in God, Ahaz planned to ask from the pagan Assyrian king, help for holding his throne, a request which later led to the overthrow of the kingdom of Judah. Confident that his God, Yahweh, would protect Judah and its king, the prophet Isaiah told Ahaz to have Faith in Yahweh and not to ally himself with Assyria. The sign value for Ahaz would be more in the name given to that child: Emmanuel, which means “God is with us.” That child would be a sign that God is on the house of Judah’s side, that we don’t have to act as if God has left us alone.  But Ahaz wouldn’t listen. He was determined to go ahead with his alliance.  (In order to appease the Assyrians, Ahaz had replaced the altar in the Temple with an Assyrian altar and had sacrificed his firstborn son to the Assyrian god Moloch).  Isaiah told Ahaz that the Lord wanted him to ask God for a sign of the truth of what Isaiah was saying.   Ahaz had already made up his mind to rely on Assyria. So, he refused to ask for a sign, using the excuse that it would be “tempting God” to do so. In frustration, Isaiah announced God’s sign anyway, the birth from a virgin of a son, whose very name, “Emmanuel” (“God is with us”), would assure everyone that God was really with His people. 

The true and definitive fulfillment of the sign given to Ahaz, however, we see in today’s Gospel. Seven centuries later, in describing the miraculous events of Jesus’ conception and birth, St. Matthew wrote, “All this took place to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet, “Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel,” which means, “God-is-with-us.” Matthew understands the passage from Isaiah as promising the birth of an ideal descendant of David, the Messiah. Despite Matthew’s citation from Isaiah, Isaiah probably wasn’t consciously prophesying Jesus’ birth in Is 7:10-14, and certainly was not foretelling that birth exclusively.  The Lord God, through Isaiah, was giving King Ahaz a sign, which had to be recognized instantly, not 700 years later in Jesus. Besides, the Hebrew word almah which we translate as “virgin,” meant only a woman who had not yet delivered a baby.  Hence, the almah Isaiah mentions probably would be Ahaz’ wife, Abia, and the Emmanuel would be their soon-to-be-born son Hezekiah.  In the birth of the child, God proved himself once again to be Emmanuel; God-with-us. The promised son of Ahaz would be faithful to Yahweh and would institute a series of religious reforms that would undo many of Ahaz’ accommodations to Assyrian religious practices. Hence, many modern Bible scholars do not believe that the immediate identities of Isaiah’s “virgin” and “Emmanuel” were Mary and Jesus. But on a fuller level of meaning, Isaiah’s prophecy has been understood to apply to the birth of Jesus. As is reflected in Matthew’s Gospel today, the early Church realized that the Israel’s centuries’ old messianic aspirations and God’s promise to David were finally and completely fulfilled only in Jesus’ coming. That prophecies, the work of the Holy Spirit, can have several fulfillments often centuries apart is axiomatic in the Church, which relies on the Holy Spirit as her Guardian against error, as Jesus promised would be the case. The Letter to the Hebrews provides multiple instances of this kind of reading of Biblical texts. Matthew’s citation, which does identify the “Virgin” as Mary and “Emmanuel” as Jesus, provides what is probably the final fulfillment of the prophecy. We’re tempted sometimes, like Ahaz, to go through life as if God is not really there for us, as if he is not really present. But God has given this enduring sign that even when we’re experiencing tremendous human difficulty, we’re never abandoned. God is truly with us

The second reading (Romans 1:1-7 explained: The reading from St. Paul’s letter to the Romans also emphasizes that Jesus was a descendant of David and thus the Messiah [” descended from David according to the flesh” (Rom 1: 3).]  At the beginning of this letter, Paul briefly summarizes the Gospel, the core of Christian Faith, as including two things.  One is that that the only-begotten Son of God, become Incarnate as Jesus, is a descendant of the line of David; the second is that Jesus was revealed and established by the Father as Son of God in power by his Resurrection from the dead. Jesus’ birth is significant because of his death and Resurrection for our salvation.  

The Christian congregation in Rome was small, not yet persecuted, and still meeting in people’s homes. These were the first-generation converts - some Jewish, some Gentile.  Paul was introducing himself to the Romans in this letter, and he was establishing his authority as God’s Apostle. That was necessary because the Church in Rome did not know Paul personally, having heard only that he was a former persecutor turned Apostle.  In the first sentence, Paul describes himself as “set apart to proclaim the Gospel ...,” and later, “favored with Apostleship.”   The rest of the introduction is a summary of the Gospel and of the Divine Plan Paul serves.  Paul sees how Jesus’ coming and his own mission to non-Jews is prefigured in the Hebrew Scriptures.  Paul does not use the name Emmanuel for Jesus, but he does provide a sweeping summary of God’s mighty acts in history through Jesus Christ. 

Gospel (Matthew 1:18-24) Exegesis: While Mary is featured prominently in Luke’s account of Jesus’ birth, Matthew brings Joseph to the forefront, because Jesus becomes part of David’s lineage through Joseph (1:1-17).  Luke tells us of Mary’s obedience (Luke 1:38), and Matthew tells us of Joseph’s obedience.  Luke tells the story of the angel’s appearance to Mary (Luke 1:26-38), but Matthew tells us only that the child was from the Holy Spirit.  But why does the Church couple Ahaz with Joseph in today’s readings?  Because of the stark contrast between the two men, each faced with a difficult situation. One of them, Ahaz, relied on his own wits and schemes. Joseph relied on God alone and trusted in Him absolutely. One of them sacrificed his own son to appease others and showed no mercy. The other spent his life in protecting his foster-son. And so we see Joseph, in sharp contrast to Ahaz in the background, as the just and righteous man that he is. 

Crisis in the family: Jewish marriage started with an engagement arranged by parents, often between children.  Just prior to marriage, couples began a year-long betrothal very much like marriage except for sexual rights.  Betrothal was binding and could be terminated only by death or divorce. A person whose betrothed had died was considered to be a widow or widower. Joseph found that Mary was pregnant without his knowledge.  Now, the law required that Mary be stoned to death, because she would have been considered an unfaithful wife, and the baby would have been stoned to death with her. In Deuteronomy 22:23-24, the penalty for adultery was death by stoning at the door of her father’s house as she had disgraced her father. Since Joseph was a just man of great mercy, he resolved to divorce Mary quietly so that he might not cause her unnecessary pain.  In doing so, he shows us Christ-like compassion in the face of sin. He also demonstrates a Godly balance between the Law of Torah and the Law of Love.  (If civil divorce is the only way of ensuring certain legal rights, it can be tolerated, and for that reason does not constitute a moral offense (CCC #2383). And then in a dream he learned that the Child had been conceived by the Holy Spirit, and that he himself was to be the foster-father of the Christ, claiming the Child by naming Him, and then rearing Him.  Joseph, through trust and Faith in God, accepted his mission as the foster-father of the Son of God.

God’s message through His angel: This is the first of three occasions on which an angel appears to Joseph in a dream.   In each instance, the angel calls Joseph to action and Joseph obeys. Joseph doesn’t have a speaking part.  In this first instance, the angel commands Joseph to take Mary as his wife. In Mt 2:13, the angel will tell Joseph to take the mother and child to Egypt to escape Herod’s wrath.  In Mt 2:19, the angel will, at the death of Herod, tell Joseph to return to Israel. The angel begins by saying, “Joseph, son of David,” alerting us to Joseph’s lineage. It is through Joseph that Jesus will be of the house and lineage of David.  Mary’s role is to bear a son, and Joseph’s role is to name him. By naming him, Joseph makes Jesus his son and brings him into the house of David. After each of the three angelic apparitions in his dreams, Joseph obeys the angel’s commands without question or pause.  His hallmark is obedience—prompt, simple, and unspectacular obedience. And in this sense, Joseph prefigures the Gospel of Matthew’s understanding of righteousness: to be righteous is simply to obey the Word of God. Joseph’s obedience allows Jesus to be adopted as a true Son of David; it is Mary’s role that allows Jesus to be born Son of God.  In the end, Joseph obediently took Mary as his wife, in spite of his fears, and he claimed her Son as his own by naming him. In spite of his earlier decision to divorce this woman quietly, Joseph nurtured, protected, watched over and loved both Mary and her Child.  

Virgin Birth: In order to emphasize the traditional Christian belief that Jesus did not have a human father; the Christian tradition always taught the revealed truth that the conception of Jesus by Mary was from the Holy Spirit. The main biblical text supporting this teaching is Isiah 7:14: “Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son and his name shall be called Emmanuel.” Matthew and early Christians understood Mary as the Virgin and Jesus as the Son in the prophecy. This means that the prophecy had an original fulfillment and a final fulfillment.  The prophecy found its original fulfillment in Hezekiah, the son of Ahaz and his wife, Abia. So, in the Gospel reading for today, where Matthew 1:23 cites Isaiah 7:14, “Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son and his name shall be called Emmanuel,” as the explanation for the events he has just related, the full meaning of parthenos (the Greek translation of the Hebrew word almah used by Isiah) makes it plain that the final fulfillment of the Isaiah prophecy was to be found in Mary as the untouched Virgin who, by the power of God, gave birth to Jesus as Emmanuel without a human partner. “The doctrine of the Virgin Birth of the Messiah, Jesus, the Son of God and the Son of Man is crucial to our Redemption (Isaiah 7:14; Matthew 1:23; Luke 1:27, 34). First, let’s look at how Scripture describes the event. In response to Mary’s question, “How will this be?” (Luke 1:34), Gabriel says, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you” (Luke 1:35). The angel encourages Joseph, “Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary, your wife, into your home. For it is through the Holy Spirit that this child has been conceived in her” (Mt 1:20).  Matthew states that the virgin “was found to be with child through the Holy Spirit” (Matthew 1:18). Galatians 4:4 also teaches the Virgin Birth: “God sent His Son, born of a woman.” [Question of the Week.]

Almah and Parthenos: In the Old and New Testaments, there are two possibilities for the word we translate “virgin”: a Hebrew meaning and a Greek meaning.  In Hebrew, the language of the Old Testament, the word for “virgin” used in the Isaiah prophecy is “almah,” which simply means “young woman who has not yet delivered a baby.” But in Greek, the language of the New Testament, the word used for “virgin” is parthenos, and it means someone who has not been sexually active with another person, who has never had sexual relationships with another. With the translation of the Hebrew Bible into Greek, the Hebrew “almah” in Isaiah’s prophecy became the Greek parthenos and brought the more complete meaning of “virginity” in our terms, with it. In the Old Testament, virginity (meaning the state in a woman of never having had sexual intercourse), was highly prized.  A virgin was someone who was precious.  Rebecca was not merely a young woman; she was a virgin.  The Bible is very emphatic about that.  There were several laws to protect the virginity of women.  That is, parents made arrangements for their daughters to be married, and they expected their daughters to be virgins. In fact, Christ’s birth ‘did not diminish his mother’s virginal integrity but sanctified it.’ And so, the liturgy of the Church celebrates Mary as Aeiparthenos, the ‘Ever-virgin.’ (CCC #499). “Christian tradition emphasizes a virgin birth (just as it emphasizes a virgin burial, a virgin tomb to parallel the virgin womb),  not because it judges that sexuality is too impure and earthy to produce something holy. Rather, beyond wanting to emphasize that Jesus had no human father, the Christian tradition wants to emphasize what kind of heart and soul is needed to create the space wherein something divine can be born.” (Fr. Ron Rolheiser S. J.) “Virgin birth stories in the Gospels are an affirmation of faith in the transcendental origin of Jesus’ history. (Fr. Reginald Fuller).

Jesus the Emmanuel: The name Jesus is the Greek form of the Hebrew Yehosua, which means ‘YHWH is salvation’.  The first Joshua, the successor of Moses, saved the people from their enemies.  The second Joshua (Jesus) will save the people from their sins.  The people did not expect a Messiah who would save them from their sins, but one who would deliver them from their earthly oppressors.  The fulfillment of prophecy is important to Matthew.  He mentions fulfillment of prophecy eleven times (1:22; 2:15, 17, 23; 4:14; 8:17; 12:17; 13:35; 21:4; 26:56; 27:9).  In Hebrew, El is a short form of Elohim, a name for God.  Immanu-El means “God with us.”  Emmanuel describes Jesus’ role or vocation.  Jesus’ calling is to save his people from their sins and to manifest God’s presence. Matthew thus begins his Gospel with the promise that Jesus is God-with-us.  He will end the Gospel with the promise that Jesus will be with us “always, to the end of the age” (28:20).  Matthew understands that in the life, death, and Resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth, God is with us, reconciling the world to Himself.  He is the reassurance in the flesh that God has not given up on us, but will remain with us. The real event of Christmas is that God comes to change the world and each of us—not just through a historical, virginal conception and a baby lying in a manger, but through the God Who is with us today, shattering our self-righteous attitudes and seeking to move us beyond our fears, freeing us from our bondages.  

Life messages: 1) Like Joseph, we need to trust in God, listen to Him and be faithful.  We are here in this Church, three days before Christmas, because, like Joseph, we are faithful, and we trust in God, His power and His mercy.  Although we may face financial problems, job insecurity, family problems and health concerns let us try to be trusting and faithful like St. Joseph.   Instead of relying on our own schemes to get us through life, let us trust in God and be strengthened by talking to Him in fervent prayer and by listening to Him speaking through the Bible. Let us remain faithful and prayerful, imitating Joseph and Mary, the humblest of the humble, the kindliest of the kindly, and the greatest-ever believers in God’s goodness and mercy, as we welcome Jesus into our hearts and lives this Christmas. 

2)We need to experience Emmanuel in our lives and change the world: God who entered our world through Jesus some 2000 years ago is at work in the world.  But the question is, if God has come to be present in our lives and our world, then why are there so many lives which are unhappy and beastly?  Why are people so hostile, hating each other, and why do so many love-relationships turn sour? Why is there domestic violence? Why is there child abuse?  Why is there war in at least a dozen countries of God’s good earth at any given time?  Why are so many people homeless and hungry, even in rich countries?  The Good News, the consoling message of Christmas, is that the child Jesus still waits today to step into our hearts—your heart and mine—and to change us and the world around us by the beauty of God’s love, kindness, mercy and compassion.  Let us take some time to let the Christ Child enter our hearts and lives this week, so that He may change our world of miseries with the beauty of that love. 

3) Do we have any gift for our “Birthday Boy?” Let us check to see if Jesus is on our list this Christmas and if we have a special gift in mind for him.   We all know the pleasure of finding the right present for our husband or wife, for our children, a good friend, a parent.  What special gift are we giving to Jesus this year to honor his birth, and what do we expect from God?  God sent Jesus from Heaven to earth to give us human beings what we really need most in life: hearts filled with love.  That is the gift which Jesus really wants from us, and that is what you and I really need from God this Christmas – a heart filled with love.  We have tons of wants. We are like children with a catalogue before Christmas, circling all our wants by the dozens. But we have one essential need: a heart filled with love. God wants to give each of us a heart filled with love, mercy, compassion and forgiveness on this Christmas and every day of our lives. 

4) Let us be a Christmas gift to others: The greatest gift we can give to those we love, is to have faith in them, believe in their dreams, and try to help them realize them. We need to believe in the dreams of our husband, wife, children, parents, heroes, leaders and friends, then try our best to help them realize those dreams. 

JOKE OF THE WEEK  

Jesuit Joke: A Jesuit, a Dominican and a Franciscan were walking along an old road, debating the greatness of their orders. Suddenly, a vision of the Holy Family appeared in front of them, with Jesus in a manger and Mary and Joseph praying over him. The Franciscan fell on his face, overcome with awe at the sight of God born in such poverty. The Dominican fell to his knees, adoring the beautiful reflection of the Trinity and the Holy Family. The Jesuit walked up to Joseph, put his arm around his shoulder, and said, “So, where ya thinking of sending the kid for school?

Life Messages: (1) Let us make sure that we belong to the third group:  a) by worshiping Jesus at Masswith the gold of our love, the myrrh of our humility and the frankincense of our adoration; b) by giving a new direction to our lives , choosing (as the Magi chose another route to return to their homes), a better way of life, abstaining from proud and impure thoughts, evil habits and selfish behavior;  c) by becoming stars leading others to Jesus as the star led the Magi to Jesus --  removingthe darkness of the evil around us and radiating Jesus’ love through selfless service, unconditional forgiveness and compassionate care. (2) Like the Magi, let us offer Jesus our gifts on this feast of the Epiphany: (a) our gift of friendship with God in the form of wholehearted love and devotion;  (b) our gift of friendship with others  by leading them to Jesus through our exemplary lives of Christian charity in action; (c)  our gift of reconciliation with God by daily asking His pardon and forgiveness for our sins and giving unconditional forgiveness to our offenders; and      (d)   our gift of peace by seeking God’s peace in our own lives through prayer, leading a Sacramental life and meditation daily on the Word of God.

EPIPHANY OF THE LORD (Jan 8): Is 60:1-6; Eph 3:2-3a, 5-6; Mt 2:1-12