Homily for the 3rd Sunday of Advent, A

John the Baptist was sent as a messenger to prepare the way of the Lord. And now, awaiting execution, John's death at Herod's hands will foreshadow Jesus' own death on the cross. On the cross, Jesus prayed the opening line of Psalm 22, "My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?" Inside his cell, John faces his own experience of abandonment and doubt.

I have Mass on Sunday, December 14

at St. Isidore @ 9:30/11:30 am

at St. Andrew @ 5:00 pm

frjoedailey@gmail.com

Transcript

A reading from the Holy Gospel according to Matthew. 

When John the Baptist heard in prison of the works of the Christ, he sent his disciples to Jesus with this question, Are you the one who is to come, or should we look for another? Jesus said to them in reply, "Go and tell John what you hear and see. The blind regain their sight, the lame walk, Lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have the good news proclaimed to them. And blessed is the one who takes no offense at me." 

As they were going off, Jesus began to speak to the crowds about John. "What did you go out to the desert to see? A reed swayed by the wind? Then what did you go out to see? Someone dressed in fine clothing? Those who wear fine clothing are in royal palaces. Then why did you go out? To see a prophet? Yes, I tell you, and more than a prophet. This is the one about whom it is written, Behold, I am sending my messenger ahead of you. He will prepare your way before you. Amen, I say to you, among those born of women, there has been none greater than John the Baptist. Yet the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he. 

The Gospel of the Lord. 

John the Baptist, bold, relentless, unafraid, is now sitting in a prison cell. The wilderness prophet who once felt the wind of God on his face is now held by stone walls and the suffocating weight of unmet expectations. And from that place of confinement, from a heart that can no longer see the horizon, comes one of the most vulnerable questions in Scripture. Are you the one who is to come, or should we look for another? 

Not asked in rebellion, but in exhaustion, in longing, in the thin place between hope and heartbreak, where you desperately need God to be who God says he is. And instead of shaming John, Jesus answers with tenderness. Look again. See where life is breaking through Hope is still happening Even if you can't see it from your cell. Sometimes sacred space is not a place at all. It's the moment where our questions are met by a presence gentle enough to hold them.

 John the Baptist was sent as a messenger to prepare the way of the Lord. And now, awaiting execution, John's death at Herod's hands will foreshadow Jesus' own death on the cross. On the cross, Jesus prayed the opening line of Psalm 22, "My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?" Inside his cell, John faces his own experience of abandonment and doubt. T

oday is the feast of San Juan de la Cruz, the 16th century Spanish mystic, Saint John of the Cross. Juan de la Cruz named the experience of the dark night of the soul. God has to work in the soul in secret and in darkness, because if we fully knew what was happening and what God will eventually ask of us, We would either try to take charge or to stop the whole process. 

Gerald May writes, The dark night is a profoundly good thing. It is an ongoing spiritual process in which we are liberated from attachments and compulsions and empowered to live and love more freely. But sometimes this letting go of old ways is painful. occasionally even devastating. But this is not why the night is called dark. The darkness of the night implies nothing sinister, only that the liberation takes place in hidden ways, beneath our knowledge and understanding. It happens mysteriously, in secret, and beyond our conscious control. 

In his book, "Patience with God, the story of Zacchaeus continuing in us," the Czech priest Tomáš Halík has an intriguing chapter on another Carmelite, Saint-Thérèse of Lisieux. Towards the end of her life, we see Thérèse, who all her life has been filled with a longing for the missions, journeying into completely new and foreign land, reaching the most distant of all. She is plunged into obscurity and loses all sense of God's presence and even her faith, as she had previously known it. Her soul is invaded by the thickest darkness. 

And now she understands what she has never known before, that there really are people who live without faith and she's given to taste their condition. Thérèse calls these unbelievers her brothers, with whom she sits at the same table and eats the same bread, and she begs Jesus not to banish her from that place. Thérèse is dying in deep solidarity with those who are separated from God. She shares their lot fully and consciously, like Jesus on the cross. For Thérèse, the essence of her idea of sanctity is to live a life of love. Her vocation, she says, is love, and her mission to be love in the heart of the Church. 

In Halík's understanding, Thérèse does not simply want to draw these unbelievers back into the heart of the Church. Through her solidarity with unbelievers, Thérèse seeks to broaden the heart of the Church by including the experience of those who sit in darkness. 

In the Gospel of John, Jesus, who is close to the Father's heart, tells us, In my father's house, there are many dwelling places. There is a place, even for those whose certainties have been shaken, uprooted, or thrust into darkness. 

Like a farmer waiting for the early and late rains, Thérèse trusted in God. She resolved to keep faith during the dark night of the soul. Her journey into darkness transformed her. The apparent absence of God proved to be part of the spiritual journey. 

Patience comes from the word patior, the capacity to suffer or endure difficult circumstances. The first thing that Jesus promises is suffering. I tell you, you will be weeping and wailing, and you will be sorrowful. But Jesus calls these birth pains. And so what seems a hindrance becomes a way. What seems an obstacle becomes a door. What seems a misfit becomes a cornerstone. 

Profound questions do not seek information. They invite us to be alive in a new way and to speak in a new language. The poet Rainier Maria Rilke wrote, "Don't search for the answers which could not be given to you now because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. live the questions now perhaps then someday far in the future you will gradually without even noticing it live your way into the answer."