John, Pumbaa, and a Street Preacher

 Third Sunday of Advent

    [In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.]. For the first week of Advent I focused on waiting.  Last week I focused on preparing.  This week I’d like to focus on St. John the Baptist, who, as I mentioned last week, prepares the way for the Lord’s coming.
    Honestly, I always get the timeline with St. John the Baptist messed up in my head.  Because we hear about the Baptizer so much in Advent, I always picture him preaching at the Jordan before Christ was even born.  Of course, the Scriptures are clear that John was about six months older than our Lord.  So John’s preaching in the wilderness happens sometime around the Year of our Lord 30.  
    The Precursor, as he is also called, demonstrated an extreme care for doing God’s will, even others did not experience that care as normal.  John preached and baptized in the northern part of the Promised Land (the modern-day site is in Jordan and Israel, with the Jordan River acting as a natural border).  He wore camel-hair clothing and ate locusts (I’m sure Pumbaa would chime in that they’re delicious and nutritious and taste just like chicken).  
    People were drawn to this fire-brand in the wilderness.  The Forerunner (another way of referring to St. John the Baptist) drew many to his message.  Average people came to see him and hear him preach repentance, which they did, and many sought baptism.  Even soldiers (those would have been Roman soldiers) went to hear his message.  As, as the Gospel of John relates, this attracted the priests and Pharisees to examine who this character was.  They wondered if he might be Elijah (prophesied by Malachi to come before the Messiah), or even the Prophet that Moses spoke about in Deuteronomy.  But John simply identifies himself as the fulfillment of the prophecy of Isaiah, the voice of one crying in the wilderness to prepare the way of the Lord.
    I often tend to think of John like a street preacher.  I can’t say that I find street preachers usually an example of attracting people to the Gospel.  I remember one street preacher who was preaching as I was walking back from an MSU football game when I was a priest in East Lansing.  He was telling people to repent from their drunkenness and debauchery.  Yelling is probably a more accurate word than telling.  As I walked past I looked at him, and he must have noticed my glance, because he then said something to the effect of, “And don’t think your collar will save you from the fires of hell!”  Perhaps needless to say, I walked on by him, as everyone else did the same.

Statue of St. John the Baptist in Ein Kerem

    Whatever that street preacher lacked, John certainly didn’t.  Even with his strange clothing and diet, people knew that they were not living they way they should, and his message encouraged many to repent and be baptized.  This baptism wasn’t for the forgiveness of sins, but prepared for the baptism of Christ, a baptism the Precursor himself described of the Holy Spirit and fire.  
    I think the question for us as we rejoice while celebrating Gaudete Sunday (that Advent is more than half over), is how we prepare others to receive Christ.  John basically set the table for our Lord, and when the Savior appeared on the scene, John faded away, as he noted, referring to Christ, “He must increase, I must decrease.”  Yes, we hear about him with some disciples while he is in prison, under the watchful eye of King Herod, but John’s importance is only to prepare for Jesus’ coming and manifestation.  
    One of the struggles when trying to bring others to Christ is to make it about us.  I’m obviously not opposed to personal stories that hopefully help connect you to the Gospel.  But I try to make sure that, by what I do and what I say, you can grow closer to Christ.  It’s not about me; it’s all about Him.  We are drawn to certain personalities more than others, and to the extent that they bring us closer to Christ, praise God!  But how it easy can it be to leave people only connected to ourselves, rather than moving them to the Redeemer.
    All of us are called to draw others to Christ, to prepare them to receive the Lord.  It’s not just the jobs of priests, deacons, and consecrated men and women.  In many ways, the witness of the lay faithful can bear more fruit, because your life mirrors other laypersons.  It could be the person at work, the members of your family, or even strangers on the road or in the grocery store.  Does the way you act and the words you say prepare them to hear the Gospel?  Or does it lead to scratching of heads because others know that we’re Catholic, but we’re not acting too saintly?  Are we patient with the waitress who is overworked and taking a little longer to get our food, or maybe even messing up the order?  Do we snap at the customer service representative on the phone, or give the one-finger salute to a bad driver on the road?
    Parents, in particular, have the special vocation of preparing others for Christ by demonstrating what it means to live the faith by the way they treat each other as spouses, and their children.  Do you make time for daily prayer?  Do you speak with respect to your spouse, and build him or her up?  Is discipline, which is necessary, done out of anger or out of love, and do the children know the difference?  While children will, eventually, make their own decisions about whether or not they will practice the faith (just like those who heard the Forerunner could choose to follow him and then follow the Lord, or could walk away and go back to their own lives), how the faith is lived out makes a huge difference.  This is true for the role mothers have (our moms are often so talented and sharing the faith with us), but is also true for fathers.  When dad practices the faith, the children are much more likely to continue to live the faith into adulthood.  
    John the Baptist had a particular vocation to prepare the way for Christ.  But God desires all of us to connect others with our Lord by the way we live, by the words we speak, especially, but not limited to, the way our family develops.  Are we leading people on winding roads away from God, or are we making straight the paths that lead to our God [the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  Amen]?

Maybe I Got it Wrong?

 Second Sunday of Advent

St. John the Baptist

     

    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  It is generally a bad idea to try to get into the head of a saint and analyze his intentions, unless one is a saint oneself.  The saints operate with the will of God at the first and foremost of their minds, and for those who don’t operate that way, what they do can seem crazy or other worldly.  
    Having said that, and with the very real knowledge that I am not a saint, I was wondering what St. John the Baptist was thinking in the Gospel passage we heard today.  You have John, the cousin of our Lord, who pointed Him out as the Lamb of God, and who saw the dove descend upon Him at His Baptism, as the voice of the Father was heard, “This is my beloved Son.”  John says that he has found the bridegroom, and so rejoices.  It seems like John knows exactly who our Lord is.
    And yet, today’s Gospel, some time after the baptism having passed, it seems like John starts to question what had happened earlier.  “‘Are you the one who is to come, or should we look for another?’” John says.  And, at least from an earthly point of view, John’s confusion seems very rational.  After all, John is in prison, and little does he know, he’s about to lose his head.  This is probably not what John had in mind when he thought of the Messiah coming.  
    What did John think would happen?  Biblical scholars say that there were four expectations that Jews had about the Messiah: he would gather the tribes of Israel; he would cleanse the temple; he would destroy Israel’s enemies; and he would reign as king of the Gentiles.  So far, none of that seems to have happened from what John knows.  So John questions (we can say that because the evangelist says it) if maybe Jesus was a special person, but not the Messiah.  
    Of course, we know that our Lord is the Messiah.  We hear in the Gospels how Jesus not only cleanses the temple, but raises up a new temple, His Sacred Body, in the Resurrection.  In His Death, He destroys sin and death, the great enemy of God’s people, forever.  He gathers the Twelve as the new patriarchs of the tribes of the new Israel, the Church; and, as St. Paul talks about in our epistle, the Gentiles are gathered together under the reign of Christ the King.  
    But I’m willing to bet that we have had times where we can sympathize with John the Baptist.  We have recognized Christ as the Lord; we have felt His presence in our life; perhaps we have even seen miracles that He has worked for us or for friends and family.  But then something goes wrong; and then another something; and then life doesn’t happen exactly the way that we expect it to go.  And all the sudden, those experiences we have with the Lord get questioned, perhaps even doubted, and we’re wondering if we bet on the wrong horse.  
    To these questions, we can look to our Lord for the answer.  How does our Lord respond to John’s disciples?  Look to what He has done.  The blind see, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, the dead are raised, and the poor have the Good News proclaimed to them.  God gives us clues that He is who He says He is, and it’s in what He accomplishes day by day.  We have only to be attentive to what is happening.
    God is not detached from our life.  It is very easy to fall into the deist view of God, that God is like a grand watch-maker, who put everything together and wound everything up, but then just lets it all go.  But God still interacts in the life of His People.  He does not simply watch from afar, but changes individuals lives.  In the house explosion that happened just six houses down from St. Pius X on the Monday before Thanksgiving, there is a story about a woman and her boyfriend who lived next-door to the house that exploded.  The boyfriend wanted to go out and do something fun, but the woman didn’t want to go out.  After her boyfriend kept asking her, she relented and they went out and about, only to find out minutes later, that the house next to theirs had exploded, and their home was destroyed.  The woman noted in her recounting that she just had this little voice telling her to go out, so she did.  And it changed her life.
    Sometimes we get so busy that we fail to hear that voice, or we hear it and act on it, but then forget that our conscience is the voice of God in our hearts.  We fail to recognize the works of God that are happening everyday.  Sometimes they get mentioned on the news, like with the woman who left her home shortly before it burned up, but more often than not they are not famous stories or publicized, but are in the daily moments of our life.  Advent is a perfect time for quiet reflection on those ways that God intervenes in our life in ways that can only be seen and heard for those who have eyes to see and ears to hear.
    During this Advent season, we should be making time for God in silence.  It could be in our Monday times of Adoration, or simply in a prayer corner in your home.  But wherever it is, we need silence, even just a couple of minutes, to be able to hear the voice of God and see how He operates in our life.  That may seem especially difficult with kids, but even kids need to nap, and that can be a perfect time to catch some quick time with God.  God knows you’re busy; He knows that you have family and work responsibilities.  But He asks for even just a few moments so that He can share His love with you, and help you to see what He is doing in your life.
    We all can have moments where we wonder what God is doing.  We don’t understand why something is happening in our life.  Do we pay attention to what God has done for us in the past, and what He promises for us in our future, beyond the present struggles?  Do we still trust in what has been revealed by God the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit?

Easy Living: A Christ-centered Life

Fourteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Though I don’t play, I love watching golf.  Lots of people make fun of me for this, saying things like watching golf is like watching the grass grow.  And I will admit that, on a Sunday afternoon after Masses, I do tend to doze in and out of watching the final rounds, but I attribute that more to my fatigue than to the game itself.  Probably my favorite golfer is Jordan Spieth.  He seems like a nice man, went to Catholic schools, and plays quite well.  Watching him play, even on tv, makes golf look so easy, though, from having tried to just hit the ball, I know golf is anything but easy!

Our life in Christ can sometimes seem like golf: the pros make it seem easy, but to the rest of us it’s quite hard.  Maybe we look at the saints and feel that they have set the bar terribly high, and those standards are not something that we could ever do.  But Jesus reminds us in the Gospel that “[His] yoke is easy, and [His] burden light.”  Living under the kingship of Jesus is something which is not meant to be a heavy burden on us.

I mention kingship because our first reading is a prophecy about the king, the Messiah, which was fulfilled in Jesus.  We hear this passage from the prophet Zechariah each Palm Sunday as it is fulfilled in Jesus entering His city, Jerusalem, on a donkey.  The donkey was not a sign of dominance for king (that would have been a strong horse), but a sign of humility and easiness.  A king who rode on a donkey came not to enforce his will by brute strength, but to invite people into his kingdom for its good.

Kingship also reflects that we owe our life to someone else.  As Americans we’re not so keen on monarchies and royalty (unless it’s the Kennedys or the younger British royals), but there was a relationship between king and subject, where they worked together to promote the kingdom.  We owe our life, really everything, to Christ, as I preached a few weeks ago.  And Christ our King, for His part, gives us everything we need to be saints, to be holy men and women, to be the best version of ourselves that we can be, so that we enter the kingdom of heaven.

But there is a prince working to undermine the kingship of Christ, and that is Satan.  He wants us to switch our allegiance to him.  St. Paul talks about that in our second reading.  When he encourages us not live according to the flesh, St. Paul means everything in us that is fallen, that gives in to the temptations of the devil.  Sometimes those temptations can be in our very flesh and blood, like the temptations to gluttony, sloth, and lust.  Sometimes they are more in the heart like greed, envy, or hatred, or even in the mind, like pride.  But they are not of the Kingdom of God; they are not the work of the Holy Spirit, who continues the presence of Christ our King in us.

Sometimes living the life of the Kingdom of God seems so hard, and living the life of obedience to Satan seems so easy.  After all, Satan lets us do whatever we want, because it enforces our selfishness, which keeps us from God.  Let’s be honest: it’s sometimes hard to make it to Mass, especially when sports, or even just vacation, is going on; it’s sometimes hard to hold back on amounts of food or even certain types of food, so that our stomach becomes the deciding factor in our life; given our sex-saturated culture, it can be very difficult not to engage in sexual relationships outside of marriage, not to ask for or send inappropriate pictures on Snapchat, not to live together before marriage; it can sometimes be hard not to hate or even simply hold a grudge against someone who has done something that we don’t like, or to speak ill of that person to others.  It can often seem very easy to give in to these and so many other temptations, and it can seem very difficult to live a Christ-centered life.

In the midst of those challenges, Jesus still says, “‘Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will give you rest.’”  Living for Jesus makes for an easier life, and a life that prepares us for heaven.  Living a life where we give in to our temptations makes life much more difficult, and prepares us for hell.  A life spent trying to be a saint helps us to be more and more free; a life spent following our fallen passions wherever they lead us enslaves us.  Who lives the better, freer life?  The people who want the newest Lebron shoes, a Go-Pro, the newest phone, or Fidget Spinner, and who see if they really need it, and then, if they do, earn the money and buy it?  Or the people who steal it, get caught, then go to jail, then maybe can’t get the job they want, and are restricted to working less satisfying jobs?  

Life in Christ, a life lived by the Spirit of God, can seem tough and difficult, especially when we’re not living it.  And certainly sometimes following God’s will entails challenges and having to say no not only to bad things but also to lesser goods.  But just like watching Jordan Speith play golf, the more we live the life of Christ, the easier it becomes, and the easier it looks to others.  And the more others see a Christ-centered life, the more they will want that freedom for themselves where they live in the Kingdom of God.

One of Those Days

Third Sunday of Advent

Have you ever had one of those days?  You know, the day when your car won’t start; or you overslept, and while racing into work get pulled over for speeding; or when you forget about a test that you have today; or when you end up wearing the delicious lunch that you were so proud you brought to work; or just when everything seems to be working against you in general?

Life can be rough sometimes.  We try to do our best, but sometimes our best is not enough, is not appreciated, or simply doesn’t work out at all.  I think we all have those days.  Misery loves company, and so today we can commiserate (at least a little) with St. John the Baptist.  There he was, just preaching God’s word, preparing the way for the Messiah, baptizing people in the Jordan, and then, because he was preaching against the immoral marriage of King Herod and Herodias, gets locked up in jail: no trial, no chance to plead his cause, just locked up indefinitely.  He doesn’t know it, but at some point in the future, he will become the victim of a hastily-made promise in response to a dance by King Herod’s step-daughter, Salome.  Life was not dealing St. John the Baptist good cards.

We can understand his questioning.  Nothing seems to be happening the way he thought it should.  So he sends messengers to Jesus, just to make sure that his second cousin is really the Messiah.  The floor has seemed to come out from under St. John the Baptist, and he’s grasping for some solid footing.  

But Jesus rarely answers questions with a simple yes or no.  There is always more to His answers than an everyday affirmation or negation.  So Jesus says, “the blind regain their sight, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have the good news proclaimed to them.”  Jesus’ ministry is confirmed not simply by word, but by what Jesus does.  Jesus’ own actions testify that Jesus is the Messiah, and even more than that, is God Himself.  But then Jesus has that curious line: “And blessed is the one who takes no offense at me.”  In other words, blessed is the one who can accept God’s plan for salvation, even when it’s different from our plans.

The kingdom of heaven is still at hand.  It is still present in embryonic form on earth, and is still coming in its fulness with Jesus’ return.  Somedays, especially on one of those days, we may think, ‘God, can’t you just make things work the way they’re supposed to?  Isn’t it time for all of this brokenness and messed-up reality to come to an end?’  But St. James reminds us that it will happen in God’s way and in God’s time.  He reminds us in the second reading to be patient, and be stout-hearted.  Just as the prophets in the Old Testament kept waiting and waiting for the Messiah to come; just as they preached God’s word without often seeing the fruits of their own preaching, so we are called to wait and let God establish His kingdom in His way, which is often not our way.  If it were up to us, the kingdom of God would likely have come in shock and awe years or even decades ago.  But then, if God were doing it our way, the kingdom of God may have come in its fulness centuries ago, and we would not even exist.  

Today we rejoice, because we are more than halfway to Christmas.  We rejoice because our waiting for the celebration of the Nativity of our Lord is close to an end.  We rejoice because our salvation is nearer now than it was years or decades ago.  But we are not there yet.

Still, God is faithful to His promise, and He is preparing, in His time and His way, a new kingdom where there is life even in the desert; where glory and splendor will be the norm; where feeble hands, weak knees, and frightened hearts will be strengthened.  Isaiah prophesied that the kingdom of God would include the blind seeing, the deaf hearing, the lame leaping, and the mute singing.  Jesus was affirming to St. John the Baptist in His response that the kingdom of God had already begun, and that even though it was not present for St. John in its fulness, it was present in its fulness in Jesus.

If we have Jesus, it doesn’t mean that our life will be easy and carefree.  The gospel of prosperity and a happy-go-lucky life is not the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  But the Gospel of Jesus Christ is that we have take hold of the kingdom of God in the midst of brokenness and error, and that the darkness, though it surrounds us, cannot conquer the light of Christ.  And that should cause us to rejoice.  Because even on one of those days; even on the days when everything seems to go wrong, we have Jesus, especially in the Eucharist, and spending time with Him and receiving Him gives us the strength to persevere in our hope and our faith until Jesus returns again, and ushers in the fulness of the kingdom of God at the end of time, when God will be all in all, when God will put a definitive end to sin and suffering, and when perfect happiness will be the reality for all those who persevered with Christ on this earth in the new heaven and new earth.

Keeping up the Intensity

Third Sunday of Advent

            I’ve been mentioning at each set of Masses that I have in this new liturgical year that I want to shift my focus a little bit in the homilies I preach.  Last year I tried to focus on the gift of faith and spreading the Gospel.  That certainly will still come up in my homilies, as it is a perennial aspect of our faith.  But this year I want to focus more on the prayers of the Mass and help us understand how they connect to our readings, our faith, and especially the Christian life beyond these walls.

            In our Advent preface, the prayer that precedes the Holy, Holy, Holy, and which has been prayed for these past two weeks, we ask God that, “we who watch for that day may inherit the great promise in which now we dare to hope.”  As Christians, we are meant to be ready, watching and waiting for Jesus to return.  We should live our lives in such a way that should Jesus come back at the end of this Mass, we would be ready to welcome Him, and not afraid of what our judgment would be.  We shouldn’t need a few days to clean up our act and prepare for judgment, but should be ever ready for Christ to judge us.  But we can struggle with this.  After 1,980 years of waiting, perhaps we second-guess ourselves about Jesus really coming back.  Maybe we don’t live life always ready for Jesus to return.  Maybe our faith starts to falter, and we question a life as a faithful disciple, ever obedient to the commands of the Lord.

            We’re not alone.  St. John the Baptist did the same thing as he was sitting in prison.  He had pointed out the Lamb of God, and prepared people by repentance to follow Jesus.  He had even seen the Spirit descend upon Jesus in the Jordan, and had heard the voice of the Father say, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.”  And now there he was, sitting in prison, and nothing seemed different.  “Maybe it was a mistake,” he thought, “maybe I got the wrong guy.”  And so he sends messengers to ask Jesus if He truly is the Messiah.  The Kingdom hadn’t been ushered in the way John wanted, and so he doubted.

            The early Christians also questioned.  Many of them expected Jesus to come back within their lifetime.  They would pray each Sunday, “Maranatha!  Come, Lord!”  And yet, after all those years of praying, He still had not returned.  That is why St. James tells them in the second reading, “Be patient, brothers and sisters, until the coming of the Lord…Make your hearts firm…Take as an example of hardship and patience…the prophets who spoke in the name of the Lord.”  In the midst of suffering (and there were plenty then), St. James encourages them to stay the course and not back out because Jesus has not returned on their timetable.

            Maybe we’re not as concerned with Jesus’ second coming as the first century Christians; maybe we don’t expect the Messianic reign in the same way that St. John the Baptist did.  But it’s easy to question our faith when our lives are not going the way we want them to, and we feel like Jesus is not living up to His promises.  Maybe our prayer is dry, and it feels like just going through the motions.  Maybe there is great suffering in our life due to illness, a broken relationship with a friend or family member, or maybe we are doubting that we will really be rewarded for being a follower of Jesus. 

            Jesus responds to John that the signs of the Kingdom are different than what was expected: “‘the blind regain their sight, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have the good news proclaimed to them.’”  That may not have been what was hoped for, but Jesus is instituting His Kingdom in His way.  Jesus responds to us, too, “‘blessed is the one who takes no offense at me.’”  In other words, blessed are those who allow me to work in the lives in the way Jesus wants, not necessarily the way we want.  Maybe the dryness in prayer is actually a vehicle to desire God all the more.  Maybe the illness is a reminder that life is short, and a call to repentance and to join in the sufferings of Christ to alleviate past sins.  Maybe a broken relationship is an opportunity for us to acknowledge how our personality and temperament can sometimes drive people away.  Maybe the doubt is an opportunity to go deeper in trust of Jesus. 

            It can be difficult when we’re waiting to keep up the same intensity throughout a long period of time.  It can be difficult when Jesus does not work on the timetable that we want.  But each Advent we are reminded that Jesus will return again, and that we need to make sure that we are ready to welcome Him back.  I hope we never grow tired of saying with our hearts and voices, “Maranatha!  Come, Lord!”

Still Waiting

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.

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.