4th Sunday of Advent (Fr. Francis)
My Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Are you ready for Christmas? There’s so much to do, isn’t there? Parties to attend. Gifts to buy. Decorations to put up. Guests to put up with. Meals to prepare. Getting ready for family gathering etc.
Have you ever thought about how God prepared for Christmas?
Well, here’s how God prepared. He started early. Really early. Like in the Garden, in Genesis when Adam and Eve fell into sin, He promised a Savior who would fix the mess. And He set aside a people, Israel, to be the ones from whom and to whom the Christ would come, that they would be like a kingdom of priests, a light shining in a dark place for all the world to see and rejoice.
He kept sending prophets, priests, kings to Israel to make a little highway in the desert, a royal road for the Savior to walk, a people ready to greet Him. The last one to be sent before the Messiah was Saint John the Baptist. God chose Bethlehem, a town too tiny to count. He picked a young virgin, poor and lowly and insignificant to be His Mother. Yes it’s God who kept preparing for this wonderful day!
It is God who builds the house! It is God who sends the Savior! It is God who comes to Mary and through Mary gives us the Savior. All comes from God and all returns to God, but the present is the important time because it is now that God and humans are in relationship.
The first reading today is from the Second Book of Samuel. What a wonderful account of David and of David’s desire to build a house for the Lord! The point of this account, however, is that all of us must recognize that God is the center of life and not us. At one level we can do nothing for God.
That should not stop us from trying to do everything for God! Even though all we have comes from God, we can still return His love by striving to live for Him and striving to be faithful to all that He asks of us. This is a normal, natural response to knowing the love of God.
The second reading today comes from the Letter to the Romans and speaks of the mystery of salvation now being revealed. Only when we believe in a personal God who loves us does any “plan of God” make sense. Sure God does not have to “plan” the way that we humans do, but God always has our good in His mind and is working to bring about His goodness and love within us. Part of the “plan” of God was sending His Only Son to save us from ourselves.
Today, many people do not believe in God or in salvation. On the other hand, if we look around our world at any time in history—if we look today—we see what a mess we humans make of our lives. In the 1900s there was a large movement that believed that we humans could make everything better and perfect. That kind of thinking is still around us in those who are convinced that our problems come from political systems or from economic systems or from other causes. There is practically no recognition today that our problems come from our fallen human nature and that we humans, by ourselves, are unable to fix ourselves and are in need of salvation.
The Gospel from Saint Luke today presents us with Mary saying “yes” to God’s invitation in her life. This is the dawn of our salvation! Only in Jesus the Savior will our world ever be at peace. Only in Jesus as Lord will nations be able to work together. Only with Jesus at the heart of our own personal lives can we truly serve the Lord in Spirit and Truth.
May God build our house, our Church, our country and our world—and with that hope we await the coming of the Lord!
Amen.
Fr. A. Francis HGN