Third Sunday of Advent
A few weeks ago I went to Rome on pilgrimage as a way of giving thanks to God for ordaining me a priest. I had arranged all my travel, and was waiting at the airport for a driver to pick me up and take me into the City and to my hotel. My flight had arrived on time; I had picked up all my baggage; I walked out ready to see a man holding a sign saying “Fr. Anthony Strouse.” But no so much man was there. So I waited. And I waited. And as I waited I started to go through all the scenarios that could be occurring, and wondering if I needed to make other plans.
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| An icon of St. John the Baptist from a monastery in Israel |
That’s sort of where we find St. John the Baptist in today’s Gospel. He has been proclaiming repentance to prepare people to receive the Messiah, he had pointed out the Messiah as the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world, and he had even baptized the Messiah. And then Jesus started preaching. And then John got arrested.
And you can imagine the puzzle that John’s mind was trying to figure out as he sat in jail, wondering if his cousin, Jesus, was really the Messiah. Was this the way that God rewarded his prophets, by letting them sit in jail? Surely something must be wrong. And so he sends a few of his disciples to ask that coy question: “‘Are you the one who is to come, or should we look for another?’” In other words, John is wondering if he bet on the right horse.
Today as a Church we celebrate Gaudete Sunday, or Rejoice Sunday. We light the rose candle because we are almost done with Advent. The darkness of the purple lightens up to a rose color because of our joy, but our joy is not yet filled, we are not yet to the white of Christmas. We are in a similar place as John the Baptist was in our Gospel. We have joy, as did John because he had pointed out the Messiah, but we’re not there yet, we’re not to the fullness of the joy of Christmas, just as John wasn’t to the fullness of the reign of the Messiah.
But this also applies to us as Catholics awaiting the Lord to come again in glory. We are filled with joy because He has already conquered sin and death by His death and resurrection. We know that a new kingdom, a kingdom of love and truth, justice and mercy, is being established, and has been prepared for us. But we’re not experiencing it yet. We are sitting in the darkness of our fallen world, and we can wonder if Christ is truly going to come again. And if you’re a high school or college student, you are hoping that Christ will come again very soon, so all the stress of finals and exams will be over. We are wondering if we have bet on the right horse. We are wondering if all these stories, which we have heard about Jesus, are true, or if they were just nice stories created to keep us in line.
That is why the Church today also gives us as a second reading the letter from the apostle James. That is when James tells us: “Be patient, brothers and sisters, until the coming of the Lord. 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…Make your hearts firm, because the coming of the Lord is at hand.” How fitting the metaphor is for a university that began as an Agricultural College! We, like the farmer, may not see the seeds opening up under the earth and starting to sprout, especially with the winter snow on top of the earth, but in the spring, if we have patience and give the seed time to grow, we will see the shoot sprout from the earth and bring us the beauty of the flower.
The temptation to doubt the promises that Christ made happen easy enough. When we are praying for something that we feel we need, either for ourselves or for someone else: for some material good; for healing; for family peace and harmony; for a good grade on an exam. All these things are good and yet so often our prayers are not answered the way we would like them to be. It leads us to wonder if this is really the good Lord that we were told about when we were younger, or if that was just a story to help us through the tough times.
These prayers that are not answered as we hoped can often lead us to wonder, like St. John the Baptist, if we have not all been deceived. But just as my driver did arrive after a not-too-long wait, and just as Isaiah promised in our first reading that “Those whom the Lord has ransomed will…enter Zion singing, crowned with everlasting joy,” so too will we, if we are patient and wait with fidelity for the Lord, shall share in the same heaven that St. John the Baptist won by his martyrdom for Christ, and which God has prepared for all of his faithful children. When we put our trust in God, we realize that He actually knows what we need better than we know ourselves. And so when we don’t get that special gift for Christmas; when someone very near to us does not recuperate from an illness; when our families still struggle with division and anger; when we didn’t get that A on the final or that we had prayed for, still, we are patient and wait to see how God will manifest His great love to us in a way that, more often than not, far surpasses the meager joys for which we had prayed.
So rejoice and be glad! God does love you and is answering your prayers in greater way that we expect, even if it doesn’t come exactly how or when we expect it. Rejoice and be glad! Christmas is almost here. Rejoice and be glad! Your Lord is coming and will not delay.
