Homily for the Third Sunday of Advent (Year B)

While Saint John the Baptist has two Feast Days in his own right at other times of the year, we always hear from him twice in these mid-season Sundays of Advent. His ministry for preparing the way of the Lord, and introducing Him to the world when the Lord appears, is so central to the beginnings of the Lord’s own ministry that all four Evangelists tell us about him.

Saint Mark and Saint John the Evangelist bypass the story of the Lord’s birth and begin, instead, with Saint John the Baptist in the opening chapters of their Gospels. Saint John the Baptist is what has been described as an “inter-Testamental figure,” living and preaching like an Old Testament Prophet, yet working in New Testament times as a contemporary of Jesus.

He was an enigmatic figure: people were confused about both his identity and his ministry. When they finally ask him who he is, and why he’s baptizing, he gives a cryptic response: first quoting a passage from Isaiah that says little about who John is, then making an oblique reference to Christ without really saying who Christ is. His response was meant not to satisfy, but to rouse further curiosity about Christ whom he would eventually point out to the people.

He had hoped to fade into the background upon the Lord’s arrival (recall his words about Jesus elsewhere: “He must increase… I must decrease.”) but the ambiguous quality of his presence, stirring both attraction and rejection, eventually cost him his head.

Now… although the Sunday Sermon usually centers on the Gospel, I will grant the Baptists his wish to fade out of focus today, as we look for the cause of joy on this Gaudete Sunday in the other two Readings.

From the Book of the Prophet Isaiah we heard, “The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord God has anointed me; He has sent me to bring glad tidings to the poor.” This passage is familiar to us because we know it from an episode in Saint Luke’s Gospel. According to Luke, the Lord quotes this passage from Isaiah at the beginning of the Lord’s ministry in the Synagogue at Nazareth, as a means of announcing that His ministry would be messianic in character, fulfilling the Old Testament prophecies, and kick-starting the New Testament.

The second paragraph of this passage also bears a vague familiarity: “I rejoice in the Lord; in my God is the joy of my soul.” Don’t you think it sounds rather like the Blessed Mother’s Magnificat, which, as you no doubt noticed, was chanted today in place of the Responsorial Psalm? While some Scripture scholars will claim that Saint Luke constructed the Magnificat himself, there really is no reason to believe that Mary did not utter these words at the Visitation with Saint Elizabeth. We know that Mary was familiar with the Sacred Scriptures: there are many images in sacred art that depict Saint Anne teaching the Scriptures to Mary as a child.

Returning now to today’s Readings, we look to the writings of Isaiah and Saint Paul to determine our cause of Advent joy. Put very simply:

+ Saint Paul gives us instructions for living a good Advent
+ Isaiah gives us instructions for living a good life.
Both of these, when observed, will lead us to a quiet, interior, sustainable joy.

Saint Paul proposes a series of directives that seem to parallel the Lord’s own Beatitudes, but in the imperative form, as a formula for joyful living:

+ rejoice always
+ give thanks
+ test everything
+ refrain from evil
+ do not quench the Spirit
+ do not despise prophetic utterances
+ pray without ceasing.

All of these would provide a challenge for soulful living, but the most difficult of these imperatives is likely the first one: “rejoice always.” How could we be expected to maintain perpetual joy? Well, we’re not talking about a never-ending party atmosphere, we’re speaking more of the kind of joy that brings quiet serenity.  Saint Paul speaks of how we find serenity in the mind, while the Prophet Isaiah addresses more a serenity of the heart. How do we experience these?  

Serenity develops within the mind as we consider God’s holy Will and seek to live it, as Saint Paul points out for us in the more active dimension of spiritual life, such as:

+ listening to the word of the Lord and the Prophets
+ discerning the Holy Spirit’s Presence
+ refraining from evil and the near occasion of sin
+ maintaining consistency of prayer, with an air of gratitude

This brings about a certain on-the-job training for a joyful life, so that seeking less of self and more of God, moves us away from self-absorption and moves us along a liberating path to peace, and eventually to joy and serenity of the mind.

Isaiah speaks of the more contemplative dimension of spiritual life, which leads to serenity of the heart. He addresses a certain awareness of the Presence of God in all things and in all circumstances, beginning with the discovery in ego-free self-awareness, reached perhaps gradually, that “The Spirit of God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me.” While an external anointing is available to us in four of the seven Sacraments:

+ Baptism
+ Confirmation
+ Holy Orders
+ Anointing of the Sick

Here Isaiah is speaking of a more interior anointing, wherein our bodies are not touched, but our souls are. This “anointing of the heart,” as it were, leads a person even further inward, to the realm of the soul: that point of being in human life that enjoys a perpetual awareness of, and connectedness with, God. 

We witness two people in our Advent observance who have reached this interior dimension of the soul which causes them to break into song, nearly identically:

+ Isaiah: “I rejoice heartily in the Lord; in my God is the joy of my soul.”
+ Mary:  “My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord; my spirit rejoices in God my Savior.”

This sentiment will be reflected much later in the words of Saint Augustine: “Thou hast made us for Thyself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in Thee.” This quiet joy is also witnessed in the Prayers at the Foot of the Altar when, before ascending the steps into the Sanctuary at the beginning of Mass, I stop for a moment and pray, “Introibo ad altare Dei, ad Deum quia laetificat juventutum meum.” [“I go up to the altar of God, to the God who gives joy to my youth.”] This is meant to be prayed as a dialogue carried on by the Celebrant and the Server, but I pray it as a solo while the Lector and Servers find their places.

While uttering this prayer sotto voce, I maintain no delusions about my youth, which is far behind me; these prayerful words allude to a certain rejuvenation of the heart in anticipation of the beauty of the Sacred Liturgy and the renewal of Grace about to come forth from the Holy Spirit, granting a measure of the sought-after serenity of the heart.

When we look at the outcome of these experiences of serenity, be they in the mind or in the heart, we find a complementarity between Saint Paul’s praying, thanking, and rejoicing… and Isaiah’s glad tidings to the poor, the broken-hearted and prisoners.  These strengthen us so that we can eventually go forward into a weary world, proclaiming and hastening the Kingdom of Christ:

+ sometimes in words — like Saint John the Baptist
+ sometimes in thought — like Saint Paul
+ sometimes in deeds — like the Prophet Isaiah 

Gladness and well-being may come and go according to the circumstances of our lives, but serenity of the mind and heart can persist no matter what life’s circumstances, if we remain persistent in prayer. This is the kind of interior joy that, in the midst of everything else, brings us serenity, and the quiet cry of the heart, Gaudete!