Homily: 3rd Sunday of Advent – Cycle B
As
we have been journeying through this time of Advent, we’ve been speaking a lot
about preparation: about looking for Christ our King and about preparing for
his coming. Last week, John the Baptist
reminded us that this preparation is mostly of ourselves: of looking at our
lives and asking ourselves the question, “Am I living as a disciple of Jesus?”
Today we come and our liturgy
tells us to REJOICE! Not
"Prepare", but "Rejoice".
Why is that? Primarily, the liturgy
calls us to rejoice as a call to pause and remember the fullness of what we
celebrate, even as we do the work of preparing.
The fullness of what we celebrate is that Christ HAS COME, that he IS
WITH US, and that he IS COMING AGAIN. In
other words, it is a reminder that the victory over sin and death has been won,
even though the full experience of Christ’s victory has not yet been revealed.
The prophecy that we read
today from the book of Isaiah helps us to understand exactly what this
means. In the reading, Isaiah proclaims
himself to be “anointed” by God’s Spirit to “announce a year of favor from the
Lord”. This “year of favor” is a
reference to what was known as the “jubilee year”. This is an idea rooted in the priestly laws
recorded for us in the book of Leviticus.
According to Jewish law, every seven years was a “Sabbath” year: a year
in which they wouldn’t farm, but would give the land a year of rest. Every seventh time that the seven-year
Sabbath was observed (that is, every 49 years), a “jubilee year” would be
observed in which not only would the land lay fallow for the year, but a number
of other things took place. In the
jubilee year, all debts would be forgiven, land that had been forfeited as payment
of debts would be returned to its original owner, and those imprisoned because
of debt (whether incarcerated or as a slave) would be set free.
Although it is not clear
whether the ancient Jews ever fully observed the jubilee year, the idea of it
became a powerful metaphor for emancipation.
To declare “a year of favor from the Lord” was to declare an advent of a
new era, a time of deliverance for those who are suffering and
disadvantaged. The jubilee was to remind
the people that they had once been slaves and that God had delivered them. Thus, when Isaiah was inspired to make this
proclamation, he was filled with joy.
In the reading from the
prophet Isaiah that we read last week, we heard him declare a message of
comfort to his people. In that
situation, the Assyrian army had long-oppressed the Jews of the southern
kingdom of Judah and the people felt abandoned.
The Assyrians retreated, however, and they felt emancipated once
again. This emancipation and the promise
of God’s return to them is now followed by the proclamation of “a year of favor
from the Lord”: a “jubilee year” to emphasize that God’s favor had returned to
his people. In a way, this is what we do
every Advent: we declare “a year of favor from the Lord” and we set ourselves
to living this “jubilee” in preparation for the second coming of Jesus.
In our Gospel reading, we hear
again about John the Baptist: this time the account of how the people tried to
understand who John was and what was his message. We find out that he, too, is a prophet
declaring a “jubilee” from the Lord. He
himself eludes definition, but nonetheless hearkens to a message of emancipation
from God when he declares himself to be “the voice of one crying out in the
desert, make straight the way of the Lord.”
This is the message of comfort that Isaiah declared at the beginning of
last week’s reading and John applies it here to the same effect: the Lord is
coming to emancipate us and usher in the ultimate “jubilee”, the final
redemption of mankind. This, too, is our
joy-filled Advent message: the one who is to come will return soon, ushering in
the fullness of the “jubilee” that he won through his passion, death, and
resurrection for those who have been faithful to him.
Our
Lady of Guadalupe, whom we honored so festively this past week, is a messenger
like Isaiah and John, but greater than both.
She rejoiced as she declared the Lord's favor over the land of Mexico,
just as she rejoiced when she visited her cousin Elizabeth and sang her song of
praise: the one that we remembered in the Responsorial today. Her appearance and
proclamation – and her leaving her image on the tilma of Juan Diego – led to
the conversion of almost all of Mexico and the end of the human sacrifices of
the Aztecs. This was a sign of the "setting free" that the
jubilee year entailed.
We
who celebrate her feast must be ready to continue her declaration in a world
that has so obviously fallen back into pagan ways. We must declare “a year of
favor from the Lord” and work to bring it about: bringing everyone to Our Lady
so that she may show them her Son. As someone who grew
up in this country, I can tell you that we need your witness, so infused with
devotion to Our Lady of Guadalupe, to re-evangelize this land and prepare for
the Lord’s return.
How do we begin? The formula is very simple and Saint Paul
gives it to us in our reading from the letter to the Thessalonians: rejoice,
pray, and give thanks. My friends, these
three things are the foundation for the work of preparing for the great jubilee
of the second coming of Jesus. When we
are joy-filled in this world of suffering and strife, we declare that we are
already recipients of the jubilee: set free from our debt to God and restored
to our original inheritance. When we
pray, we remain connected to the one who saves us and strengthens us. When we give thanks, we remember and
acknowledge from whom all these good things come and so remain humble and ready
to serve.
With this foundation, we then
turn to proclaim the coming of Christ, as John the Baptist did, and to bring
him to others, as Our Lady did. We do
this with our words, of course, but also by our actions. When we do the works of mercy, we are
"setting free" from suffering those who are bound to it and so
declare with our actions "a year of favor from the Lord". My brothers and sisters, this is right
preparation for the celebration of Christmas!
Therefore, trusting in Our Lady's help, let us take up this
good work: not only declaring the jubilee of the Lord (which is both coming and
is already here), but also bringing it forth by our good works done joyfully,
both with prayer and thanksgiving: the greatest of which we offer her in this
Eucharist.
Given in Spanish at St. Joseph parish: Rochester, IN – December
17, 2023
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