Paul's Reflections 3rd Sunday of Advent

I am away, attending to another commitment this weekend. Thanks to Fr Dan Grundy for celebrating masses this weekend.  I will be back for the Aramara Mass on Sunday night this week.

 

Here is a reflection from the Abbott of the monstery of Christ in the Desert. Always good food for thought.

 

God bless,

 

Fr Paul

 

 

   3rd Sunday of Advent

     Cycle B

     2011

 

 

FIRST READING

Isaiah 61:1-2a, 10-11

 

The spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me; he has sent me to bring glad tidings to the poor, to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and release to the prisoners, to announce a year of favor from the Lord and a day of vindication by our God.

I rejoice heartily in the Lord, in my God is the joy of my soul; for he has clothed me with a robe of salvation and wrapped me in a mantle of justice, like a bridegroom adorned with a diadem, like a bride bedecked with her jewels.  As the earth brings forth its plants, and a garden makes its growth spring up, so will the Lord God make justice and praise spring up before all the nations.

 

 

SECOND READING

1 Thessalonians 5:16-24

 

Brothers and sisters:  Rejoice always.  Pray without ceasing.  In all circumstances give thanks, for this is the will of God for you in Christ Jesus.  Do not quench the Spirit.  Do not despise prophetic utterances.

Test everything; retain what is good.  Refrain from every kind of evil.

May the God of peace make you perfectly holy and may you entirely, spirit, soul, and body, be preserved blameless for the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.  The one who calls you is faithful, and he will also accomplish it.

 

 

GOSPEL  Cycle B

John 1:6-8, 19-28

 

A man named John was sent from God.  He came for testimony, to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him.  He was not the light, but came to testify to the light.  And this is the testimony of John.  When the Jews from Jerusalem sent priests and Levites to him to ask him, "Who are you?"  He admitted and did not deny it, but admitted, "I am not the Christ."  So they asked him, "What are you then?  Are you Elijah?"  And he said, "I am not."  "Are you the Prophet?"  He answered, "No."  So they said to him, "Who are you, so we can give an answer to those who sent us?  What do you have to say for yourself?"  He said:  "I am the voice of one crying out in the desert, make straight the way of the Lord, as Isaiah the prophet said."  Some Pharisees were also sent.  They asked him, "Why then do you baptize if you are not the Christ or Elijah or the Prophet?"  John answered them, "I baptize with water; but there is one among you whom you do not recognize, the one who is coming after me, whose sandal strap I am not worthy to untie."  This happened in Bethany across the Jordan, where John was baptizing.

 

 

My sisters and brothers in Christ,

 

Today our focus shifts strongly to look at the coming of the Messiah, Jesus Christ.  John the Baptist again points out the Lord to us by denying that he himself is the Messiah.  Instead, the role of John the Baptist is always to point to the Lord who is to come.

 

The Lord, the Messiah, foreseen by the prophets of ages past, is referred to in the first reading today, from the Prophet Isaiah:  As the earth brings forth its plants, and a garden makes its growth spring up, so will the Lord God make justice and praise spring up before all the nations.  The Messiah is justice and the Messiah in the praise of God.  The Messiah will teach all of us how to be justice and praise for God.

 

The second reading today, from the First Letter to the Thessalonians, tells us to rejoice always; pray without ceasing; and in all circumstances give thanks, for this is the will of God for you in Christ Jesus.  This Sunday is often called Gaudete Sunday because we are told to rejoice.  When Advent was a much more penitential season, the reason for rejoicing was clear.  God\'s people had now completed half of the penitential season.

Today, when Advent is no longer clearly penitential, perhaps the best reason for rejoicing is that God is near us and we continue to receive His word.

 

This same letter tells us:  Do not despise prophetic utterances.  Test everything; retain what is good.  Part of Advent is listening to many prophetic utterances and meditating on them to understand how they point us to Christ.  It is always good advice, when reading the Scriptures, to retain what is good and moves us to the Lord.

 

When we return to the Gospel of today, from Saint John, we can perhaps ask ourselves about the spiritual values that we follow.  Perhaps too often, our spiritual is not really formed by the Scriptures but formed simply by survival and what helps us survive.  This is not entirely wrong.  We need to survive.  In order to survive we need to make some sense out of our world.  Religion can become such a means of survival.  On the other hand, religion as it is found in inspired Hebrew-Christian Scriptures is about coming to know God and allowing God into our lives entirely.

 

Let us ask today that God\'s word may become more alive in us, that we may know the living God and rejoice in Him.  Let us ask God to break the word open for us so that we can see the word for what it really is:  a presence of God, a presence of the Lord Jesus and the power of the Holy Spirit.  In that word, then, we rejoice!

 

 

Your brother in the Lord,

Abbot Philip, OSB