Homily for the Fourth Sunday in Advent (C)

Just a few weeks ago on the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception, we heard the Gospel account of the Annunciation: the Angel Gabriel announcing to Mary that she would become the Mother of God … and Gabriel also told Mary that her cousin Elizabeth was six months pregnant, even in her old age, “because nothing will be impossible for God.”

It’s been said that it is the celebration of the Immaculate Conception that gives the entire season of Advent its true meaning. By preserving her from the stain of original sin, even from the first moment of her conception, God was preparing Mary for this other moment when she would consent to God’s will and allow Jesus to be conceived by the Holy Spirit in her womb.

All of our Advent preparation over these past four weeks has aimed at helping us comprehend how we, too, were created by God to be “holy and blameless” in His sight; how we, too, must wait and long for His coming; and how we, too, must give our yes to God’s will so that Christ might be borne into the world through our lives.

Now, today, on this last Sunday of Advent, we hear the Gospel reading that picks up immediately after the angel Gabriel has made his announcement and departs from Mary. The very next words Luke writes in his Gospel tell us: “Mary set out and traveled to the hill country in haste to a town of Judah, where she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth.”

Mary set out in haste. Undoubtedly, Mary was still awed and in shock. She must still have had so many doubts and concerns about how this could possibly be true and what it would mean for her life, especially for her upcoming marriage to Joseph. And yet, Mary’s first and immediate instinct is to get up and rush to see her cousin Elizabeth and to offer her the assistance she would need during her pregnancy.

St. Luke tells us that “when Elizabeth heard Mary's greeting, the infant leaped in her womb, and Elizabeth, filled with the Holy Spirit, cried out in a loud voice and said, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb.” So we can see that Mary’s instinct to “set out in haste” was truly a movement of grace. It was really her Divine Son who compelled her to action – to self-sacrificing service – and Mary indeed carried Christ to Elizabeth and her unborn child, John. They both recognized His presence in Mary’s loving service and in turn they were filled with joy and thanksgiving.

Over the past week, as I’ve been watching news coverage of the terrible school shooting in Newtown, I was struck by the number of people from around the country who were dropping everything to travel to Connecticut in the wake of the tragedy:

Two-dozen seventeen-year-old boys from a youth hockey team in Philadelphia came to Newtown to lay wreaths at the town’s makeshift memorial. A woman from North Carolina drove up to Connecticut with twenty-six Christmas trees, one for each of the victims. A group of students who survived a previous school shooting on an Indian reservation in Red Lake, Minnesota came with the flags of their tribe and hard-won words of advice on how to begin the healing process. And any number of other volunteers came from as far away as Texas to offer whatever help they could.

During all the television coverage, many of these people have been interviewed by reporters, but when they were asked what it was that made them travel such distances, they were almost universally at a loss for words. The best they could explain – and they almost all used words similar to this – was that they simply felt they had to do something, so they got up and found their way to Connecticut any way they could.

I fully realize that not all of those people are as saintly as our Blessed Mother. And some of them may not even be Christians. And yet, as Christians ourselves, we cannot fail to see in their story a reflection of today’s Gospel reading … we cannot help but believe that it was really Christ’s desire to be carried to those in need, that these people were responding to when they set out for Newtown. Yes, they were compelled by love – to our minds, they were compelled by the One who is Love itself.

Well, brothers and sisters, what about us? No, I’m not asking that we all get up right now and drive to Connecticut. But do we always drop everything and respond at once to Jesus’ daily promptings in our lives? Do we give as much attention to the needs of our spiritual lives as we do to our physical health, or to our financial stability? Do we say yes to the many invitations Christ gives us each and every day to do even the small kindnesses that are signs of His love? Or do we rather imagine that we can be passive about the spiritual life, or that there will be time enough in the future to respond to Christ’s pull upon our hearts?

In one of the opening collects that we’ve prayed often at Mass during this Advent season we’ve asked God for “the resolve to run forth to meet your Christ with righteous deeds at His coming.”

Friends, today’s Gospel, connected as it is to the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception makes it clear that our Advent waiting – like that of Mary’s pregnancy some two thousand years ago – is not a static, stationary reality. Our Advent waiting is an active reality, a running forth, a setting out in haste. And even after Christmas has come and gone, this sense of immediacy, this eagerness to do righteous deeds, this longing to greet Christ's return, should really mark the entirety of our lives as Christians.

So, what is it that God is calling you to do today, or with the rest of your life? What is the mission He is giving to you, and to you alone? How does He want you to serve Him and His holy people? Whatever He may be asking of us, brothers and sisters, may we be like Our Blessed Mother and set out in haste to do His will.

Homily for the Third Sunday of Advent (C)

Today is the Third Sunday of our Advent season, which is known as Gaudate Sunday.  The word Gaudate means ‘Rejoice’ and it gives its name to this Third Sunday of Advent because it is the very first word spoken in the entrance antiphon of today’s Mass, and because the theme of rejoicing repeats itself in several of our readings.

In our first reading the prophet Zephaniah tells us: “Shout for joy and sing joyfully;” our responsorial Psalm admonishes us to “cry out with joy and gladness;” and in our second reading St. Paul encourages the faithful to “rejoice in the Lord always; I shall say it again: rejoice!” 

Normally on this Third Sunday of Advent we recognize just how close we are to our celebration of Christmas, and how near God is to us every day – and so we put the penitential color of purple aside for a week, and we allow the joyful, white brilliance of Christmas to seep in and make a beautiful rose.

But on this particular Third Sunday of Advent it is nearly impossible for us to think of rejoicing.  Our hearts and minds are too preoccupied by the horrifying news from Newtown, Connecticut. 

We are thinking of the littlest victims whose young lives were snuffed out, and those other children whose innocence was so abruptly taken from them.  We are praying for the parents whose arms and homes were so tragically empty last night, and those other parents who search for the words to explain this to their children and to comfort them.  

And together all of us are searching for answers.  How could this have happened?  Why did that troubled young man do such a horrible thing?  How can we keep it from ever happening again?  How could God have let this happen and where can He be found amidst these awful events?

At first glance, our readings – focused as they are on rejoicing – might not seem to offer many answers.  But I think if we take a closer look we might, in fact, find that just the opposite is true.  In our first reading Zephaniah tells the people, “fear not, do not be discouraged;” in the Psalm we are told to be “confident and unafraid;” and in our second reading St. Paul instructs us to “have no anxiety at all.”  

Friends, that’s because when Zephaniah, and the Psalmist, and St. Paul speak of rejoicing none of them are talking about a constant state of giddiness.  They are not encouraging us into a naïve blissfulness that willfully ignores the violence, loss, and grief, the struggles and hardships that we so often face, and certainly confront right now.

Rather, all of our readings today take such things as a given, and that is precisely why they begin by acknowledging our fear, doubt, and even our anger.  But they also refuse to leave us in such a place: they point a way forward, and they help answer at least one of the many questions that we always ask when tragedies like this occur.

Our readings tonight help us answer the troubling question, “Where is God in all of this?”  The prophet Zephaniah tells us, “the Lord your God is in your midst;” the Psalmist proclaims: “great in your midst is the Holy One of Israel;” and St. Paul assures us simply “the Lord is near.”

Friends, the lesson of this Advent and Christmas season is that our God is indeed very close to us – especially when we endure injustice and encounter the evil of violence and death.  These seasons point us to a God born in the flesh, born as a child so poor He is laid to rest not in a crib in a nursery, but in a manger in a stable … a child who is hunted by a mass murderer and exiled to a foreign country … a child, grown into a man, who is unjustly arrested and tried, brutally tortured and publicly executed … all in order to save us from our sins! 

And so, brothers and sisters, if we want to know where we can find God in events like yesterday we need look no further than the children who huddled in classrooms and closets fearful of a madman who sought their lives; we can find His presence in the teachers who shepherded their students to safety, and the principal who lived and died with such great devotion to education; and of course we can see God the Father, and Mary the Mother of God, in the faces of mothers and fathers who weep and mourn for their sons and daughters. 

Our God is Emmanuel – God with us!  He is so very near, so intimately close to us, that He has shared with us the suffering and death of human life – and He has conquered them!  That is why, even amidst such awful tragedy and loss, such grief, doubt, and fear, we cling desperately to a hope and a joy that the world cannot give, and therefore that the world cannot take away either:

We cling to Jesus Christ, our Savior, the fulfillment of all our longings, the answer to all our doubts, the source of all our healing and our glad tidings.  He is even now in our midst, and He will come again at the end of time to usher in the fullness of His kingdom.

Friends, tonight our hearts and minds are with our brothers and sisters in Connecticut, and with our own children and families.  Our hearts break and our minds reel trying to make sense of all that has happened.  But we pray, with the confidence that God is close to us, that “the peace of God that surpasses all understanding will guard our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus”