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Third Sunday of Advent (C)

December 15, 2024

Fr. John Colacino C.PP.S.

Introit

Collect

O God, who see how your people
faithfully await the feast of the Lord’s Nativity,
enable us, we pray,
to attain the joys of so great a salvation
and to celebrate them always
with solemn worship and glad rejoicing.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,
who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
God, for ever and ever. Amen.

First Reading Zeph 3:14-18a

Sing aloud, O daughter Zion; shout, O Israel! Rejoice and exult with all your heart, O daughter of Jerusalem! 15 The Lord has taken away the judgments against you, he has turned away your enemies. The king of Israel, the Lord, is in your midst; you shall fear disaster no more. 16 On that day it shall be said to Jerusalem: Do not fear, O Zion; do not let your hands grow weak. 17 The Lord, your God, is in your midst, a warrior who gives victory; he will rejoice over you with gladness, he will renew you in his love; The Lord, your God, will exult over you with loud singing 18 as on a day of festival.

Responsorial Psalm Is 12:2-3,4,5-6

R/. Cry out with joy and gladness: for among you is the great and Holy One of Israel.

Second Reading Phil 4:4-7

Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. 5 Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is near. 6 Do not worry about anything, but in everything let your requests be made known to God by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving. 7 And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

Alleluia Is 61:1 (cited in Lk 4:18)

Gospel Lk 3:10-18

The crowds, who were gathering to be baptized by John, asked him, “What should we do?” 11 In reply John said to them, “Whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none; and whoever has food must do likewise.” 12 Even tax collectors came to be baptized, and they asked him, “Teacher, what should we do?” He said to them, “Collect no more than the amount prescribed for you.” 14 Soldiers also asked him, “And we, what should we do?” He said to them, “Do not extort money from anyone by threats or false accusation, and be satisfied with your wages.” 15 As the people were filled with expectation, and all were questioning in their hearts concerning John, whether he might be the Messiah, 16 John answered all of them by saying, “I baptize you with water; but one who is more powerful than I is coming; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. 17 His winnowing fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.” 18 So, with many other exhortations, John proclaimed the good news to the people.

Catena Nova

I should like to discover our Lord’s reason for holding a winnowing fan and to inquire into the nature of the wind that scatters the light chaff here and there, leaving the heavier grain lying in a heap—for you must have a wind if you want to separate wheat and chaff. I suggest that the faithful are like a heap of unsifted grain, and that the wind represents the temptations which assail them and show up the wheat and the chaff among them (Origen of Alexandria).

God is present, effective and powerful in all things. He is only generative, however, in the soul. For all creatures are a footprint of God, but the soul is formed like God, according to its nature. Whatever perfection is to enter the soul, be it divine, unique light or grace or happiness, all of it must come into the soul of a necessity through this birth of divine awareness and in no other way. Wait only for the birth of Christ within yourself, And you will discover all blessing and all consolation, all bliss, all being, and all truth (Meister Eckhart).

It would seem that Advent has two different and contradictory moods: penance and joyful expectation. As he goes to the altar during Advent the priest is clothed in purple vestments, and he does not say the Gloria. And yet in other respects Advent is a season of joy. The antiphons are invariably joyful and end with Alleluia. The Sunday Masses become more and more joyful in character…. Early Christianity stressed the holiness of grace and the accent is on joy…. That is the reason why today the Church adorns herself with rose-coloured vestments. Christ is near; He is standing in our midst, and we cannot but rejoice (Pius Parsch).

Joy (in my sense) has indeed one characteristic, and one only, in common with them; the fact that anyone who has experienced it will want it again. Apart from that, and considered only in its quality, it might almost equally well be called a particular kind of unhappiness or grief. But then it is a kind we want. I doubt whether anyone who has tasted it would ever, if both were in his power, exchange it for all the pleasures in the world. But then Joy is never in our power and Pleasure often is (C.S. Lewis).

To be a Christian means to be one who waits for God’s future. Hence for the Christian perhaps all seasons are essentially an Advent season (Rudolf Bultmann).

What must be the first step of the self upon this road to perfect union with the Absolute? Clearly, a getting rid of all those elements of normal experience which are not in harmony with reality: of illusion, evil, imperfection of every kind. …. Primarily, then, the self must be purged of all that stands between it and goodness: putting on the character of reality instead of the character of illusion or “sin.” It longs ardently to do this from the first moment in which it sees itself in the all-revealing radiance of the Uncreated Light. (Evelyn Underhill)

The Advent mystery is the beginning of the end of all in us that is not yet Christ. (Thomas Merton)

Homily

Looking for love in all the wrong places, looking for love in too many faces. Remember that song by Johnny Lee? (Well it dates you if you do!) The lyrics go on to say, Searchin' their eyes, lookin' for traces, Of what I'm dreamin' of, Hoping to find a friend and a lover, I'll bless the day I discover, Another heart- lookin' for love.

That song always reminds me of a friend who came to see me once; when I went to the door I knew right away something was wrong. A look of depression covered her face -- the unmistakable look of a broken heart. It wasn’t long before I was hearing about a relationship gone wrong, of unrequited love, causing my friend a lot of pain. And this wasn't the first time she’d been hurt. She was married to someone who was abusive when he drank -- which was all too often.

It took a while after the divorce to trust someone new. One day she met a man she thought would make a perfect partner. She fell deeply in love. But after a year or so, he left her for another woman, quite suddenly, and without explanation, leaving her desolate. Crushed, she went in search of someone, anyone, to fill the gap in her soul: “Looking for love in all the wrong places, in too many faces.” The latest disappointment brought her to my door that day.

Such is the human heart: It comes equipped with God-sized spaces, spaces longing to be filled with love, love given and returned. We’re always on the lookout for someone or something to fill the one vacuum nature abhors the most, to fill that incredible longing, that infinite desire of the human heart. In religious terms, we’re looking for “salvation.”

There’s a good example of such a search in the crowds that went out to John the Baptist in the desert. Those people were filled with expectation, and were asking in their hearts whether John might be the Messiah. When he told them he wasn’t, that one mightier than [he] was coming, they must have been very disappointed (G).

Truth is, they’d been looking for centuries. Prophets had promised a mighty savior was coming for a long time. No wonder they went looking in all the wrong places, and in too many faces. Pretender after pretender came on the scene. And they were only too quick to think, “This must be the one.” Problem was, they had too many notions about what the Messiah should look like, and do, and go about saving them.

By the time they went out to John, I guess they were desperate. ‘Cause he was nothing like people expected. He was no military figure come to wrestle the Promised Land from Rome’s grasp. Nor did he care much for the self-righteous. He called them a “brood of vipers,” while taking a special interest in tax collectors and soldiers (G). Hardly the kind of people they’d expect the Messiah to rejoice over (cf. I). No, John wasn’t at all what they were looking for.

So it's pretty easy to set ourselves up for disappointment, isn't it? When we set our sights on the wrong kind of savior. That’s what I tried to get my friend to see: How the man she hoped would bring her true love was far less than she thought. In fact, when we got talking about the relationship, she mentioned a number of things that showed me she placed the wrong kind of hopes in a man who could never meet them. (And, no doubt, could any man).

Of course, coming to see others for what they truly are, and not what we want them to be, can be a painful process. But it can free us to look elsewhere, to places and faces more likely to bring us what we seek. My friend began that process the day she stopped by. A week after our talk, she sent me a card where she wrote the following words:

“At some point while we were talking about how it wasn’t a perfect relationship a couple of things were going on. I was saying things that I never realized, yet the words were coming out of my mouth. [You] made me realize these definitely were concerns in our relationship, [which] I minimized or didn’t think about. God definitely took over that conversation in what I said and the realization I finally woke up to. And then a kind of calmness set in. I thought it was because I was relaxing, but [I] realized it was a calmness of my mind, my heart. I can’t put it into words. . .”

The person who wrote that card wasn’t quite the same one I met at the door. The first sign was the bright yellow envelope it came in, with butterflies and a rainbow in the background, and a sticker on the front which said, Rejoice (cf. II). At some level, she knew she was looking for something only God can give: the perfect love that renews the parched desert of the human heart, for God who alone can match the boundless desires of a human heart. Now that doesn’t mean human love isn’t a many-splendored thing. It is. But it’s less than the love of God, as John was less than Jesus, not fit to loosen his sandal strap (G). That’s what my friend began to realize. In religious terms, it’s called “repentance.”

It’s something we must all realize, sooner or later, and there’s no better time than Advent: When we faithfully await the feast of the Lord’s Nativity…to attain the joys of so great a salvation and to celebrate them always with solemn worship and glad rejoicing (Collect). So that, as my friend found, the peace of God that surpasses all understanding will guard [our] hearts and minds in Christ Jesus (II). Who lives and reigns, forever and ever. Amen.

Intercessions (Joe Milner; The Sunday Website)

For the Church: that we may experience joy through recognizing God with us each day and be instruments in helping others become aware of God’s work in their lives.

For a flowering of justice: that we may strive to fulfill our duties to others and use our gifts to ease the suffering and promote the wellbeing of all our brothers and sisters.

For all who feel overwhelmed by life: that God’s message of "have no fear" may renew their hearts and fill their spirits with hope.

For healing of violence: that God will heal and comfort all who have experienced violence, free their hearts from fear, and help us to comfort and support them.

For all who are suffering: that God will heal the wounds of discrimination, guide all young people who are confused or misdirected, and help all who are struggling with addictions to have a new beginning.

For the protection of earth's resources: that God will give wisdom and understanding to all who are developing policies that affect earth's air, water, and natural resources.

For the advent of peace and justice: that God will give insight, vision, and courage to all who are striving to turn swords into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks.

Almighty God, you sent your Son into a world where the wheat must be winnowed from the chaff and evil clings even to what is good. Let the fire of your Spirit purge us of greed and deceit, so that, purified, we may find our peace in you and you may delight in us. Grant this through Christ our Lord. Amen (ICEL; 1998)

Offertory Chant

Offertory Hymn (Anonymous)

Rejoice in the Lord always,
and again I say, rejoice.
Let your softness be known unto all men:
the Lord is at hand.
Be careful for nothing:
but in all prayer and supplication,
let your petitions be manifest unto God with giving of thanks.
And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding,
shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesu. Amen.

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