Ok, so it is literally only a couple of hours before my first Christmas Mass as a priest, but here is my 4th Sunday homily... in case any of you are waiting until tomorrow to begin celebrating Christmas :)
Homily:
4th Sunday of Advent – Cycle C
“Haste
makes waste…” or so they say. And what
does that mean? Well, this saying—or
‘proverb’, if you will—is simply stating that, for most people, most of the
time, when one moves too quickly from thought into action it often times
results in something being left undone or forgotten, and that one then must waste time and energy either to redo
what wasn’t done or to return to retrieve whatever was forgotten. Now I know that I’m not alone when I say that
I can speak to the truth of this, for I often find myself making haste to leave
the office or the house because I’ve tried to do one too many things before
leaving and then realize that I’ve either left something undone or forgotten
something that I needed. And so I waste
time (and make myself late) because I left in haste instead of taking some
extra minutes to think about what I needed to do or retrieve before I left.
Yet, in
spite of the truth that rings out from this saying, over these past four weeks
or so, we’ve all been bombarded with messages telling us to make haste. All the way from the buildup to Black Friday
to the days and weeks that followed, every outlet of media has been filled with
messages urging us to make haste: “Sale ends…” “Three days only…” “Hurry before
they’re gone…” In contrast to the
age-old proverb, retail businesses seem to be saying to us “Make haste so that
you don’t waste a perfectly good opportunity to get what you want.” Yet all the while the Church has been telling
us to watch, wait, and listen.
In our
Gospel reading, the Virgin Mother makes haste to the hill country, to a town of
Judah so small and insignificant that the Gospel writer didn’t even bother to
name it, in order to visit her cousin Elizabeth: the barren one who was now in
her sixth month of pregnancy. Her hasty
departure (the Gospel tells us that she left soon after she heard the
announcement from the angel) probably meant that she left many things
undone. It is believed that she was
about 15 years old when she conceived Our Savior by the Holy Spirit, and so it
was likely that she was responsible for many things around the house. Thus, it is very likely that the Virgin
Mother’s haste made waste for others who needed to do what she left
undone. And would that be ok? I mean, even though she is the Virgin Mother
of God, does that mean that she could impose on her parents and their household
so she, in her exuberance, could visit her cousin? Perhaps, however, the blessing that the
Virgin Mother was to bring to her cousin was more important than the cost of
the journey and of what was left undone?
I guess, however, that since this is how the Scriptures have recorded it
we just have to believe this to be so.
But what if
it really wasn’t waste at all? You know
for years, Mary waited, watched, and listened for the coming of the Messiah,
God’s chosen one who would redeem his people.
Then, at the announcement of the angel, she was ready to move. And so what looked like haste was probably
not waste because she had already prepared herself to respond to whatever God’s
call might be, and whenever (and however unexpectedly) that call would come.
And so the
question, then, comes to us: This Advent, have we been so hasty to get to
Christmas that we’ve wasted our chance to prepare for his coming? Have we been so focused on wrapping presents,
sending cards, baking cookies, and decorating yards, trees, windows and (in
some cases) cars that we’ve forgotten to wait, watch, and listen? In other words, have we been so focused on
getting to the red and green that we’ve failed to notice the violet? …We’ve failed to notice the violet, haven’t
we? We’ve done it again, haven’t
we? We’ve wasted another Advent.
My brothers
and sisters, there is still time. There are only a few hours
of Advent remaining, but there is still time.
Nevertheless, in spite of the fact that the supposed end of time never
materialized, the time that remains to prepare is short. And so, my brothers and sisters, now is the
time to make haste to wait, watch, and listen.
Now is the time to turn off the Christmas songs, to take off the red and
green (and the jingle bells that inevitably go with it) and to welcome
silence. Now is the time to make haste
to slow down your heart: to wait and listen for the sound of Mary’s greeting to
hit your ears, announcing the arrival of her Son. Now, my brothers and sisters, is the time to
accept that everything that has ever needed to be done has been done: for Jesus
has come, he is with us now, and he is coming again. Let us, therefore, make haste to waste these
next days in prayer, to look with anticipation to what is yet to come, and so
be ready, when he comes, to leap for joy.
Given
at All Saints Parish: Logansport, IN – December 22nd & 23rd,
2012
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