Homily for the Third Sunday of Advent

As most of you know, I moved to Vermont from Colorado more than 30 years ago. My final parish assignment was in Breckenridge, a town situated at an altitude of 9,600 feet. The air is rarefied there, containing less oxygen, affording a Rocky Mountain High by simply walking up the stairs too fast.

Although they receive a lot more snow than we do, they also receive a lot more sunshine than we do, making for, I think, sunny dispositions and a quiet sense of well-being for both residents and visitors. In those days, no one there had ever heard of “Seasonal Affective Disorder."

In my three years of living there, I never met a single native Coloradan: people chose to live there because they love the Winter, a Winter longer, even, than ours, with Spring coming in June, and ski slopes re-opening in October.

Winter sports notwithstanding, the Winter is essentially a time of waiting: it is nature’s Advent. The dormant trees and shrubs, the hibernating animals may appear lifeless, but they are merely awaiting the coming of Spring, when the cycle of life is renewed.

But, of course, for us humans, Winter brings a different experience: for all its darkness and gloom, it has a certain purpose: It gives an extended respite from… say… gardening chores, and while nature goes into dormancy, humanity finds a period of rest (that is, after the busy holidays) and a period of hope-filled planning for the Spring (as the seed catalogs arrive in January).

I rarely witness the sunrise in the Summer, as the sky begins its illumination around 4:30 or so at the Summer Solstice, but in the Winter, the sunrise arrives three hours later, and can be spectacular, often catching me by surprise and delight as I arise, since my Sitting Room faces east.

It seems good, then, that Advent comes to us in Winter, for the Winter has its own character: the cold, the darkness, the snow’s insulating silence: these can serve to turn the soul inward to itself, the soul being the ultimate meeting point of God with Man.

Unlike the dormancy or hibernation of much of the rest of Creation, Advent speaks to the fuller, more-engaging experience of being human. We look to celebrate Our Lord’s First Coming to the world in His Holy Birth in Bethlehem, with an eye to preparing for His Second Coming which He has promised. We are given time not only in Advent, but in our entire lifetime, to look forward, not simply to the return of Spring, but to the return of the very Son of God.

Our lives, then, are meant to be, in their focus and in the living, a preparation for this future, glorious, and hopeful destiny: the sight of God. This holy season, and above all, the celebration of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, provides the means, both moral and spiritual, of approaching God through Word and Sacrament, learning, as we grow, how we might eventually bear the beauty of the Beatific Vision to come.

I think it was the late Pope Benedict XVI wrote these words of this season: “And such, too, are the feelings with which we come before Him in prayer day by day. The season is chill and dark, and the breath of the morning is damp, and worshipers are few, but all this befits those who are penitents and mourners, watchers and pilgrims. More dear than loneliness, more cheerful than severity, and more bright than gloom, true faith does not covet comforts: It only complains when it is forbidden to kneel. Its only hardship is to be hindered, or to be ridiculed for its fidelity, when it would place itself before God as its Judge. They who realize that fearful Day when they shall see Him face-to-face, whose eyes are as a flame of fire, will as little bargain to pray pleasantly now, as they will think of doing so then.”

Past winters have taught us that the Springtime is awaiting us, but Advent reminds us that God is awaiting us. While thoughts of Spring help some people to to get through Winter’s gloom, thoughts of eventually meeting God help us to make sense of the long loneliness that life on earth can be, and encourage us to make of our lives an industrious Advent.

We can see this hopefulness in the words of some Scriptural figures, and one early Father of the Church, such as:

Job: “In my flesh I shall see God; Him, mine eyes shall behold, and none other.”

Balaam: “I shall see Him, but not now; I shall behold Him, but not nigh. There shall come a Star out of Jacob and a Scepter shall rise out of Israel.”

St. Paul: “They shall see His face, and His name shall be written on their foreheads.”

St. John the Evangelist: “When He appears, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.”

St. Ephraim the Syrian: “While our thoughts about God and His love are often abstract, God never loves in the abstract, but only in the concrete. This is the sole explanation for the Incarnation.”

And so, it was into the cold, dark quiet of ancient Bethlehem that God chose to come to us, to initiate and to reveal His love for us, in the person of the newborn Babe: of Jesus Christ.

He showed Himself to the world, not in the grandeur of the Beatific Vision, which we mere humans could not bear, but in the Babe of Bethlehem, who manifested His Messiahship/His Sonship gradually over time, in His:

+ humble birth

+ hidden life

+ public ministry

+ Passion and Death

— and, finally —

+ the glory of the Resurrection.

How, then, shall we “go out to meet Him” as the Scriptures enjoin?

Saint Josemaria Escriva speaks here in terms of a spiritual athleticism: “Athletes preparing for competition practice regularly. They don’t enter the arena, track, or field for the first time on the day of the competition, race or game. They focus, train, and prepare… they attempt to ‘see through’ the event, to its hopeful fulfillment: the gold medal, or the laurel wreath.

“Further, once the competition is over, they don’t quit the training; the next day, they’re right back at it. Such should be our spiritual life: ongoing training by way of prayer and the Sacraments, to prepare ourselves for our ultimate goal, that most important event: the Beatific Vision.”

On this Third Sunday of Advent there is a change of focus in our Scripture Readings. The turn is away from the eschaton, and last things, toward the Lord’s Nativity in Bethlehem. This can help us to re-focus our lives: instead of thinking about meeting God in the distant future, we can look more immediately at meeting him in the present moment.

In this vein, St. John the Baptist gives some advice as to how to accomplish this: He speaks to three different groups: the “crowds”… tax collectors… and soldiers. These are people one might not think especially religious or devout, yet they find themselves attracted to St. John, converted by his message. And… he doesn’t go easy on them. His words were what is referred to as “hard sayings”: things people need to hear, but don’t necessarily like to hear: an element mostly missing in contemporary preaching.

Father James Schall,, the late Jesuit priest, has written that, unlike John the Baptist, many homilists refuse to mention subjects that might threaten their popularity. He writes: “Christianity is a joyful religion, but it is not a soft one. It is not primarily concerned that we feel good about ourselves. It is, in fact, concerned with the truth of what is, including the truth of the disorder in our souls called sin.”

Recognizing that parish priests have become accidental missionaries of a sort, he continues:

“The greatest need for missionaries is found where the Commandments have not been taught, in which sins are not explained as the Church has explained them from her foundation, in which the forgiveness, not the covering-over of sins is a major preparation for understanding and participating in the joy that is revealed to us.”

In today’s Gospel passage, St. John the Baptist exposes sin in the forms of:

+ greed

+ cheating

+ extortion and

+ false accusations.

His advice is not mean-spirited or punitive, but it is pointed. He shows us that whether or not we like what we hear from the pulpit, the truth is that there is more than just “room for improvement” in our lives.

But facing our sin, confessing it, and, with a firm purpose of amending our lives, avoiding the near occasion of sin, we find the best preparation for our life with Christ, and, therefore, the beginnings of true joy.

Saint John’s call to conversion is the set-up for calling this day “Gaudete Sunday”: The joy waiting for us beyond sin is a foretaste of the promised joy of heaven. Listen again to what the Prophet Zephaniah says to us. While beginning the passage by encouraging us to rejoice in God for His goodness, mercy, and glory he then says, in a foreshadowing of sin in the Sacrament of Penance: “The Lord has removed the judgment against you.” This is worth repeating: “The Lord has removed the judgment against you.”

He then goes on to tell us that God rejoices in us: “The Lord your God is in your midst, a mighty Savior; He will rejoice over you with gladness, and renew you in His love. He will sing joyfully because of you, as one sings at festivals.”

Thus, the “Winter of Our Discontent,” transformed by Advent preparation and participation, becomes the Springtime of our life in Christ. While still growing toward holiness, this preparation for meeting Christ allows us to utter from the very depths of our being: “Gaudete.”