Third Sunday of Advent

Dominica III Adventus A
11 December 2022 

                Within the season of Advent this Mass of the Third Sunday stands out with a unique character.  The character of this Sunday stands out by the shift in color from purple to the liturgical color rose and the permission to decorate the sanctuary with flowers.  It should be obvious to anyone following from day to day in Advent that something is different at this moment in the season.  Coming from the Latin first word of the entrance antiphon of the Mass, this Mass is known as Gaudete – or Rejoice! – Sunday.  The entrance antiphon of the Mass had us pray, “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I say, rejoice.”  And why do we rejoice?  What is the cause of our rejoicing?  The antiphon goes on to tell us, for “the Lord is near.”

                The “Lord” refers to God.  That God has come near to His people – to us! – is a cause of joy, even if it is also mysterious and causes some reverential fear.  In what ways has God come near to us?  We hold in faith the coming near of God-in-the-flesh at the first coming of His birth.  God has taken on our flesh to come very near indeed!  He walked and lived among people in a real place and at a real time in history.  And He is not now far, though He has given everything for the saving mission He came to accomplish on the Cross; for we also hold in faith that by His ascension He still remains in our flesh and is still one-with-us from His rightful place in Heaven.  The Lord God is near!  He continues to come near to us when with faith, even faith the size of a mustard seed, a person opens his heart and mind to call upon Him in prayer.  He comes near in a real and spiritual way to such souls who pray.  He continues to come near when we comport our lives to His commands, working hard to reject sin and to remain near to Him by our moral conduct.  He is near when we have such a union with Him that we take on His very heart to have compassion to serve others and to seek out the lost.  He comes near to us as we embrace the orthodox faith that the Church guards and passes on for our salvation and for the salvation of the world.  And for those who are united to the Church established by our Lord, we experience the nearness of God when we prepare and receive worthily the grace of the sacraments He so generously gives.  When we are united to the sacramental life of the Church we have a means of rejoicing because the very life and power of God come to us in humble elements of nature, in the same way as God once came in the humility of human flesh.

                Rejoice in the Lord always!  The Lord is near!  Why do we believe that God is near?  Certainly, the authority of God’s Word in the passages heard today are a prime cause of rejoicing in the revelation they give to us.  Let’s take a look at what God’s Word reveals to us.  So many centuries of Christian faith having gone before us may mean that we don’t keep clear an important distinction about Jesus.  We accept that Jesus is the Messiah and we accept that He is God.  These are actually two distinct things that may not be so distinct in our minds so many centuries after the revelation of today’s Gospel passage.  Jesus is the Messiah, in Greek the Christ, the promised one who comes to bring redemption to God’s people by lifting them from their suffering and by being the anointed priest and king who would have an enduring kingdom in the line of David.  Yet, quite another thing is the revelation that Jesus is also God Himself.  It is God Himself who comes to be this Messiah, this Christ.  We take the joining of these two realities rather for granted, I suggest.  But that was a lesson that still needed to be learned in Jesus’ time and it explains the revelation that comes about by John the Baptist’s question in today’s Gospel when he hears of the “works of the Christ”, the works of the Messiah, the works that reveal the Messiah.  Through his own disciples, John asks Jesus, “Are you the one who is to come, or should we look for another?”  What is the Lord’s response?  He basically quotes from today’s first reading, Isaiah 35.  He says, “Go and tell John what you hear and see.”  Did you notice who is coming in Isaiah 35?  It is not the Messiah.  It is, rather, God Himself.  Listen again to the first reading, “Here is your God, he comes with vindication;… he comes to save you.”  Who is coming?  It is God.  And what are the signs that God is coming?  Isaiah 35 says, the eyes of the blind will be opened, the ears of the deaf will be cleared, the lame will leap, the mute will speak.  And when John the Baptist asks are you the one who is to come, how does Jesus answer?  He says, you tell me what you are seeing and hearing.  He lists off the following: the blind regain sight, the lame walk, the deaf hear.  In other words, Jesus is doing the works of God who comes.  So, this passage reveals that Jesus is the one who is to come and that He is God Himself.  You probably also note that Jesus added a few things to his list of evidence.  He also noted that in him lepers are cleansed and the dead are raised.   This alludes to other Old Testament passages (2 Kgs. 5 and Isaiah 26) that indicate actions that only God can do.  It’s like putting an exclamation point on this revelation that the “one” we are talking about here is God Himself.  Finally, Jesus also notes another piece of evidence, that in him the poor have the good news proclaimed to them.  This alludes to signs that the Messiah – distinct from being God – has come (Isaiah 61).  So, the Lord’s answer to the question, “are you the one,” really gives us a double revelation.  The answer is, yes, Jesus is God who was promised to come and he is the Messiah, fulfilling both roles in one: He is God and He is the Messiah.  He is the Divine Messiah, the origin of the beautiful Advent hymn, “O Come Divine Messiah”.  And so, the Church says, “rejoice!”  Why?  Because the Lord God Himself is near!  He is not far from you!

                To live in rejoicing, to remain in rejoicing, we need to remain near to God.  A grace for us today is to find hope in the nearness of God and to recognize that if we are far from God it is not because He has failed to come near.  It is rather, because we stray.  We choose to dwell apart in the darkness of sin.  We go astray in our own ideas and popular concepts about religion that depart from orthodox faith.  We stray into secular pursuits that can replace a living faith.  Some even quite literally stray away from the Church.  If the cause of our rejoicing is that God Himself has come near to us, then a simple lesson for us is that we are called to use our freedom and zeal to remain near to Him.  And the good news is He has already bridged the gap, He has already come close.  We have to be convinced that we are not near to the Lord when we adopt secular ways and when we are complacent about sin.  Are there ways in which you do not find yourself rejoicing?  Then a lesson of this Mass is that one key to resolving that is to get closer to Jesus.  The fulfillment offered to us in God and the claim of fulfillment offered by consumerism come crashing into one another at this time of year.  So many sacred mysteries do we recall with tenderness in this time of year, and at the same time so much busyness, shopping, gift buying, and wrapping, and all the things that we have to do.  A grace for us is to admit that there is abundant evidence that having all this world can give does not lead to satisfaction and rejoicing.  If you can identify some ways in which you do not rejoice then work to get nearer to God as a remedy.  God is near; we have to work to remain near to Him.  Make a specific time and plan to improve your prayer life… and do it.  Give special attention to working toward the daily Rosary, praying as a family.  Make yourself pull away from all the illusions of media and entertainment by physically moving yourself to our chapel for adoration.  You wonder why you can’t pray at home in front of the television and all the noise and the phone?!  Get away from them.  Plop yourself in this chapel behind me.  Get to a place that’s conducive to prayer.  Get nearer to God and nearer to rejoicing by confessing your sins and doing so with frequency.  Get nearer to God and nearer to rejoicing by finding regular ways to serve others in charity.  You’ll know God and His promises are near when you do so.  Finally, get nearer to God and nearer to rejoicing by being worthily prepared to receive the grace of the sacraments, especially Holy Communion.  Any poverty in our rejoicing is not because God has somehow moved away.  But because we have.  “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I say, rejoice.  Indeed, the Lord God is near.”