My dear brothers and sisters, I'd like to start this reflection with a bit of a personal background and something that I feel is important to kind of share with you, and that is, you know, my own journey can seem to the worldly minded, to the secular philosophy and those who mock faith and religion as a tragedy. Right. Somebody will look at a person like me who's far from the family he loves. I'm in Rome and my family is in Canada, and I'm living a celibate life. In other words, I've renounced marriage, right. So I'm not looking after an immediate personal family, a wife and children. I've given up my sacred right to decide my own future. So I've given my will into the hands of my superiors, as flawed as they may be. I've got no money, because as Franciscans, we make a vow of poverty.
And yet, brothers and sisters, I only wish that most people can feel the depth of joy that fills my heart every day. It's a joy that this world doesn't know. It's a joy that this world cannot buy, because it is a joy that comes from giving your life entirely, completely without reserve to God. And that being said, that joy, therefore, is meant to grow. Because if truth be told, we struggle to give ourselves unreservedly to God, even as religious. We make the vows of poverty, chastity, obedience. But it's a journey, and we need to grow in these three vows.
But my brothers and sisters, today's readings speak to us of the long awaited one, the source of the true joy that can come to us by following him and discovering living and loving our eternal father's will. What is his will for me? Let me not just obey him when he tells me to forgive, when he tells me to be humble, when he tells me to look after the poor. Let me not see those as burdens, but rather as something I desire with my whole heart to fulfill in my life.
Because in doing his will, even nailed to a cross beneath that excruciating pain, our Lord says Saint Thomas Aquinas, will be the image of the happiest man you've ever seen. Even though he's nailed to the cross and his dying words: Father, it is accomplished. It is finished. What you sent me to do, I have done. Into your hands I commend my spirit.
But first, the one who had opened the gates of heaven for us needed to be born. Our Blessed Mother, not knowing exactly what the salutation of the angel entailed, nevertheless submitted herself. Behold the handmaiden of the Lord, be it done to me according to your word.
So our Blessed Mother becomes the model for us on how to find true joy.
This Gaudete Sunday, and the first reading from the thirty-fifth chapter of the prophet Isaiah, often called the Book of Consolation because it addresses Israel in a context of exile, devastation, discouragement, it's a message from God that there is hope, and it speaks of the new Exodus. It speaks of how from barrenness life will be born from sin,
which brings us death. The source of life who leads to resurrection will be walking in our midst, will be born unto us. He describes it in this way: the desert and the parched land will exult. God's nearness, he says, is a source of courage. Strengthen the hands that are feeble. Make firm the knees that are weak. And the reason here is: your God. He comes to save you.
Now the Jews never imagined in their wildest dreams that the Messiah to come would be God himself. And yet God is making it clear through the prophet: here is your God. He comes to save you.
And when he was standing right before them, right in front of them, and they were speaking about the greatness of Abraham, and they were extolling the prophets, he told them, standing before you is somebody greater than Abraham. You're not even fifty years old. How can you be older than Abraham? Before Abraham was, I am.
And they were speechless. They were shocked. They were scandalized. They took up stones to throw at him, to stone him to death, because they knew what he meant. In their minds, this mere mortal was making himself God. And you can read that in the Gospel of John in the eighth chapter.
My brothers and sisters, Isaiah speaks of the joy that will characterize, will be a trait of the redeemed. And so the chapter concludes not with judgment, but with joy. They will enter Zion singing, crowned with everlasting joy. Sorrow and mourning will flee away.
In the second reading, we hear from Saint James. We hear him talk about the nearness of the Lord in his precise words: the coming of the Lord is at hand. Yet this nearness does not eliminate the element of waiting. This is what we do during Advent. We're in a time of waiting and a time of preparation, right. A marvelous guest is about to come to our house, and we're preparing the house. We're waiting with eager anticipation for his coming, and in a symbolic and a liturgical sense, for the coming of his birth among us, and in the real-time sense, for his second coming in glory.
And James compares believers to a farmer. See how the farmer waits for the precious fruit of the earth, being patient with it until it receives the early and the late rains. The farmer works, waits, and trusts, precisely the posture required of us during Advent, to trust in the Lord, to keep trusting in him.
In the Gospel of Matthew today, we hear about Saint John the Baptist, who is the greatest, the greatest of all prophets, the greatest of all men born of a woman, said Jesus. And yet he has a crisis. Doubt arises in his heart. It's almost like an inexplicable doubt.
Because imagine this is the prophet who sees the Holy Spirit descend upon Jesus like a dove. He hears the father's voice say, this is my Son. What could have possibly transpired from that moment of this divine revelation, glorious manifestation of the presence of God in Jesus, to this moment of doubt, when John is now captured in prison, about to be beheaded?
He sends his disciples to ask Jesus, and I quote, are you the one who is to come, or should we look for another? What? John. You saw the Holy Spirit descend. You heard the father's voice. What else could you possibly need?
But John was sure that a few of the things that Jesus was doing so much so that it caused him to doubt. What were those things that he was doing that shocked John, that didn't make sense? Jesus embraced the enemy, the Romans. In John's mind, the Messiah had to help the people of God conquer the enemy.
And what John might not have been keeping in mind is that Jesus's final enemy, as described in Scripture, was death. Not the Romans, but death. The tomb. Eternal damnation for our sins, which is worse than extinction, than annihilation. Better not to have been born than to end up in hell.
And so our Lord's final enemy that he wants to defeat for all of us, to give us a chance to defeat it as well, is death. This threw John for a loop.
And what does Jesus do in answer to John's request? Go and tell John. And he points directly to Isaiah thirty-five, and I quote: the blind regain their sight, the lame walk, the deaf hear, and the poor have the good news proclaimed to them.
And each phrase corresponds to Isaiah's prophecy. Eyes of the blind, ears of the deaf, the lame leap, and the joyful proclamation now replaces sorrow.
This is a sign of hope that Jesus is sending John. For if the Lord God of hosts can give sight to the blind, can give sound to the ears, and allow the lame to leap like deer, and if the Lord God of hosts from nothing can bring about the universe, then he can definitely be born into this world to bring you and me to that world that we can't even begin to imagine.
Our Lord, in order for us to be with him in heaven, descended from it. And he will descend again, only this time not in humility, not in hiddenness, but a glorious, universal manifestation of the God who has loved us and who has brought us into existence from nothing.
May he bless you through the intercession of the one who he has made Queen of Heaven, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Go in peace, thanking the Lord for his goodness to you.
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