Third Sunday of Advent C-2000     

Homily

Sing and shout for joy, so we are told on this third Sunday of Advent. That is why it is called Gaudate Sunday, gaudate being the Latin word for rejoice.

I don’t know about you but I don’t really feel in a particularly joyful mood at the moment. What with two funerals during the week, trying to get ready for Christmas, the computer playing up, a mountain of papers on my desk, the dark nights, all this rain we’ve been having, etc, etc.

However, the liturgy is giving us a prod, snap out of it, be joyful! And perhaps that’s just what I need, a prompt to tell me to shake out of it, to realise that Christmas is coming up fast and I had better get into the right mood in order to celebrate it worthily and well.

The Church in ancient times placed the celebration of Christmas at the darkest time of the year. And it did so with good reason for from the celebration of the birth of Christ on the days get brighter and longer, just as with the appearance of Christ on that first Christmas Day things got better.

We haven’t arrived at Christmas yet and the liturgy urges to put aside our depression, to fight the darkness and to look forward in hope to the coming of the Saviour. The Liturgy tells us that this darkness is not the darkness of death, it is the hour before the dawn. It is a time of waiting with great expectancy for Christ to come. And the predominant feeling is one of hope.

Christ is coming John tells the people in today’s Gospel—he frightens them a bit: His winnowing fan is in his hand and the chaff he will burn in a fire that will never go out. And Luke tells us that he says this to exhort the people and announce the Good News to them.

Sounds a bit like blood and thunder rather than Good News. But you must remember that John had been baptising the people and it was a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. It was clearly the others who hadn’t repented that would experience the full severity of the Messiah’s judgement.

But salvation is open to all. And John gives instructions to various groups as to what they must do to be saved –those with two tunics, those with plenty to eat, tax collectors, soldiers. Each of us could and should be able to give similar instructions to ourselves. We know in our conscience what we have to put right in order to live as Jesus wants us to.

And putting things right with God is an important part of our Advent preparations. There will be an opportunity to celebrate the Sacrament of Reconciliation tomorrow night and this is surely the very best way to prepare for Christmas. Clean the house if you like, but don’t forget to clean the soul. John’s message of repentance is addressed just as much to you and me as it was to the people of Palestine.

The question the people put to John in today’s Gospel is a legitimate one: What must we do? This question is answered by the liturgy today. But we have to modify the question a little. Not so much—What must we do? —as What must we be? And the answer is: Be joyful—Rejoice.

If you want to know whether you are on the path to salvation—not that you have got there but are on the way—ask yourself if you are at peace within yourself, if you experience inner contentment, if you are joyful.

I’m not talking about any superficial silliness; I am talking about deep-seated joy with life and peace with God. We said that this season of Advent is about hope and this virtue of hope is one that does have within it a deep-seated joy and peace.

When I was a school chaplain I was once having a pastoral chat with a twelve-year-old girl and I asked her about prayer—if she prayed and when and how she did it. She said that she didn’t pray but she often sat down and simply hoped a lot. I let out a laugh of delight and told her that she could hardly find a higher form of prayer!

So often we are consumed with anxiety, so often our prayers are a recitation of our worries, prayers of earnest intercession that God will sort out the lives of our children or of our parents; telling him to do this or that to solve financial problems; worries about health; or lack of faith or other dangers. It is hard for us to feel that deep-seated contentment.

Yes, we do hope, but sometimes this feels more like hoping against hope. The worries consume us and we find our faith is tested. But Paul tells us that the Lord is very near.

Yes we are beset by problems on all sides but we have our faith and Christ has won the victory. He is our hope. He came to us in weakness and in poverty, his life was threatened from the very first and although everything seemed to go against him but he came into his own brought us Good News and salvation. He taught us how to live the kind of life that is acceptable to God and which will enable us to be fully human. And by his death and resurrection he showed us the depth of his love.

So we have cause for joy. Real joy, not a happy-clappy simplistic-view-of-life type of joy that cannot support the battering we receive on our journey through life. No, our joy is based on confidence in the promises of God to the world. It is based on the victory Christ has won. It is based on our own personal experience of his love in our lives.

Going back to John the Baptist and how he is described in the Gospel of Luke—one of the most significant things about him was that he directed the people away from himself and towards Christ. I am not even fit to undo his sandals, he says.

And this is the task of the Christian in the world. Not to say: look at us aren’t we holy, why don’t you copy us? But to say: Turn to Christ; he is the only one who can save us from sin.

We profess ourselves to be Christians and this implies two things. First we follow Christ; we walk where he has walked; we live the same kind of life as he lived; we try to conform to him in every respect in our actions, in our thoughts and in our attitudes.

Secondly, we point to him. We direct others to Christ, we don’t take his glory to ourselves: we speak about him; we write about him; we direct the attention of others towards him in any way we can.

There are a thousand minute ways this can be done. In our conversation by choosing our words carefully and subtly we can direct others to Christ. We can do it in our choice of Christmas card. We can do it by sending a mass card to someone who has experienced bereavement. We can do it by explaining aspects of our faith to someone who doesn’t know. We can do it by displaying a crucifix in our home; by making sure we have a crib scene in our home as well as a Christmas tree.

We do all these things and many more and they are true expressions of our faith and trust in God and in his promises. We are an Advent people, we hope and trust in God, we await the celebration of his coming at Christmas, we look forward in hope to his second coming at the end of time and we invite him to enter our hearts and lives each day.

Let us conclude with the prayer of St Paul from our second reading: May the peace of God, which is so much greater than we can understand, guard our hearts and thoughts, in Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen