Hi everyone, and welcome to Weekly Homilies with Father Mark Suslenko, Pastor of SS. Isidore and Maria Parish in Glastonbury, Connecticut. We are part of the Catholic Archdiocese of Hartford. I'm Carol Vassar, parish director of communications, and this is Episode 2 of Season 6 for the Second Sunday of Advent: Dec. 4, 2022. Our Gospel reading is from Matthew, Chapter 3, verses 1-12
John the Baptist appeared, preaching in the desert of Judea and saying, "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand!"
It was of him that the prophet Isaiah had spoken when he said: A voice of one crying out in the desert, Prepare the way of the Lord, make straight his paths. John wore clothing made of camel's hair and had a leather belt around his waist. His food was locusts and wild honey.
At that time Jerusalem, all Judea, and the whole region around the Jordan were going out to him and were being baptized by him in the Jordan River as they acknowledged their sins.
When he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to his baptism, he said to them, "You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath? Produce good fruit as evidence of your repentance. And do not presume to say to yourselves, 'We have Abraham as our father.’ For I tell you, God can raise up children to Abraham from these stones. Even now the ax lies at the root of the trees.
Therefore every tree that does not bear good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire. I am baptizing you with water, for repentance, but the one who is coming after me is mightier than I. I am not worthy to carry his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fan is in his hand. He will clear his threshing floor and gather his wheat into his barn, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire."
The Gospel of the Lord
“The Gift of Sacred Scripture” by Father Mark S. Suslenko, Pastor, SS. Isidore and Maria Parish, Glastonbury, Connecticut
One thing is for certain, our faith can easily be shaken. Our faith can easily be shaken. Maybe we're undergoing something in our own life that is problematic, causing us to stumble, hurting us, or maybe we look outside of ourselves at the world and see the state of affairs and wonder what God is doing, not only about our own individual issues but the issues of the world. And we can see life unfolding, but it's not always in a positive way, at least from our vision of things. And we can grow very impatient with God because we are expecting God to act in the way that we want God to act or in the way that we expect God to act.
As we consider the scope of our lives, both individually and as a unit of humanity, how does a person of faith negotiate all that is before us? Well, sometimes we think we're kind of alone in our journey of faith. Either we have it or we don't. And feeling somewhat alone in our, it's easy to become discouraged at times. But we often don't realize that we've been given a very wonderful gift, and it's the gift of sacred scripture, which is really the story of God working in and through people, one generation to the next, from the beginning of time; of God leading his children from one place to the other.
St. Paul tells us by endurance and the encouragement of scripture, we might have hope. And isn't that what we're ultimately looking for when we struggle with faith? It's really that sense of hope. We can accept what's going on in the immediate if we know for certain that something better is going to come.
St. Paul says in order to have that hope, we have to endure and find the encouragement that comes from scripture. And so if you look into that body of scripture, into that story of God's love for his people, we see a lot of endurance going on. We have to understand, and Advent reminds us of this, is that when God looks at things, God sees the big picture. God is eternal. He sees things from the time they first started on into eternity. So God knows how the story ends. As we journey through our lives, we see the particulars of our life, and those particulars can easily take our minds and hearts off of the big picture and put them on the smaller one. And then that begins to consume us and perplex us, and captivate us. And Advent reminds us it's not so much about the small picture; it's the bigger one that ultimately matters. It's the bigger one that will last forever.
And so how do we, in our lives, find that hope?
The Israelites' journey through the desert for 40 years, it wasn't an easy journey. The scriptures tell us over and over again how hard that journey was for them and how discouraged they got at times. But it's also a story of endurance and not understanding, not knowing, having no certainty; they moved on, and they trusted, and we know how the story ended. They were brought where God promised that they would be.
The prophets through the whole Old Testament warned the folks that they're going off the mark to come back to center, and they often faced ridicule. But they were proven correct.
Jesus Christ himself, the Son of God, had to endure intense suffering in order to open up the door of salvation.
So endurance, really in the life of faith, is a gift. To be able to accept what is before us, to endure it, regardless of how much it hurts and how uncomfortable it may be. Because the encouragement that comes from scripture tells us if we listen to those stories, that it's going to be okay. That what I don't understand today, I will understand tomorrow. That what's not working today will work tomorrow. It may not be in the way that I expect or the way I want, but it will. It will.
You see, sometimes we do battle with our lives and even with God, too. Because, in order for us to take that leap that faith calls us to, we want too much certainty. In other words, we say to ourselves and to God himself, too, if you want me to believe, and then I need to know that that's. So all those stories that I hear about in the Old Testament, I need to know that they're true before I invest myself in the program. And so we want to have faith, but we wanna have faith in that which is provable and certain. We don't wanna put faith into something that is uncertain, but yet, our scriptures and the stories that are before us draw us to something the opposite of that. Faith is an investment in what I do not know and what is not certain. And that's when faith becomes real. It's when I buy into what I've heard that God did and what I heard that God is doing now. When I buy into that plan, that's when I have faith. Not when I understand it. Not when I can prove it. But simply as it is. And then hope occurs when I then consider the future and I invest in what God will do in the future to come.
As I look at those stories and I look at salvation history and the wisdom of the scriptures, I can see that God takes one thing and brings it to another place. So if he did that, and I believe that then why do I think it's going to be any different with me? Can I take that leap and trust that God is going to take this and make it better? That somehow, in the end, it's gonna all be okay.
And so, in order to get to the point where faith and hope are real for us and not just ideas, we need to have patience and stop fighting with God and with ourselves, and with what's happening to us. We have to find our way to patient waiting, which is what Advent draws us to. And in that patient waiting, we find ourselves enduring what is before us.
Because in order to do that, and this is the true test of the Christian, it requires great love. For me to endure what's happening to me now, and to do it with patience, and to wait means that I wholeheartedly love God as God and the plan that he has put before us. And being in love with God and with that plan, I can then invest myself in it and strengthen my faith and then look to the future and walk with hope.
See all those pieces fit together, and they are what binds us together because our power as a Christian people comes not from that which is superficial, but from that which is deep; by our ability to endure, Because if we can endure, then we can truly love. And when people look on us, it is our endurance that binds us together. That's why St. Paul, in that very beautiful narrative on love, at its conclusion says, "love endures all things."
So as we journey through this Advent season, let's take a moment to allow the beauty and the simplicity of this season to take us off the smaller picture of our lives, if even for a moment, and focus us on God's bigger picture yet to come. To invest ourselves and allow ourselves to fall into what God has done before us, what God is doing now in us, and what God will do in the future for us.
By our endurance and the encouragement of the scriptures, we might have hope. And with that hope, we journey forward one day to the next end during whatever comes.
Father Mark Suslenko is the pastor of SS. Isidore and Maria Parish in Glastonbury, Connecticut. Learn more about our parish community at www.isidoreandmaria.org. And follow us on social media: Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Our music comes free of charge from Blue Dot Sessions in Fall River, Massachusetts. I’m Carol Vassar. Thanks for joining us.