ARE YOU READY TO MAKE DEVOTION TO INA PENAFRANCIA?
CLICK THE LETS GO BUTTON AND PRAY THE NOVENA TODAY
GOSPEL: Saint John 1:6-8; 19-28
A man came, sent by God. His name was John. He came as a witness, a witness to speak for the light, so that everyone might believe through him. He was not the light, only a witness to speak for the light. This is how John appeared as a witness. When the Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, ‘Who are you?’ he not only declared, but he declared quite openly, ‘I am not the Christ’. ‘Well then,’ they asked ‘are you Elijah?’ ‘I am not’ he said. ‘Are you the Prophet?’ He answered, ‘No’. So they said to him, ‘Who are you? We must take back an answer to those who sent us. What have you to say about yourself?’ So John said, ‘I am, as Isaiah prophesied: a voice that cries in the wilderness: Make a straight way for the Lord’. Now these men had been sent by the Pharisees, and they put this further question to him, ‘Why are you baptising if you are not the Christ, and not Elijah, and not the prophet?’ John replied, ‘I baptise with water; but there stands among you – unknown to you – the one who is coming after me; and I am not fit to undo his sandal-strap’. This happened at Bethany, on the far side of the Jordan, where John was baptising. REFLECTIONS: This is Gaudete Sunday, the Sunday of Joy. What do we rejoice about in Advent? Isn’t it supposed to be a penitential time? The Christian must always seek to be joyful, even during penitence, because we are a Church oriented towards the Resurrection, towards the love of God for us. There are two types of “joy”: the self-directed “joy” I feel when I am gratified by something; and then there is true joy, which involves rejoicing in another. The first reading says that the Lord is going to clothe us in wedding garments. The joy we feel as Christians is the joy of someone who is getting married. This is the joy of giving oneself, not a joy that measures the value of something in terms of how beneficial it is to me. John the Baptist in the Gospel reading is a prime example of a person who is walking in the joy of the Lord. His entire mission is to point out Christ. He will not tell us who he is himself, only who he is not. He describes himself as a “voice”, but the words he speaks are the words of another and they are dedicated to showing the way to Christ the true light. Adam and Eve tried to make themselves the centre of existence, the light of their own world, but they fell into darkness. John the Baptist, by contrast, moves to the side and allows Jesus to come in. He allows the light to shine. John prepared the way for the Lord to come and Jesus will come into our lives too this Christmas if we stand aside and let him in, just as John stood aside! Our mission is not to serve ourselves but to point to another. In the age we live, humanity blesses its own name. We must learn to bless the name of the Lord Joy is always a proper state for the Christian, even in the midst of penitence This is Gaudete Sunday, the Sunday of Joy. Advent and Lent are both seasons of penitence, but both are broken by joyful celebrations on the fourth Sunday of Lent and the third Sunday of Advent. The Church is always joyful because it is primarily oriented towards Easter, towards new life. Therefore it is always turned away from the abyss and looking towards the heavens. Rejoicing is the proper state of the follower of Christ, not the state of sadness! Even in the midst of tribulation the Christian is capable of joy, but this is not to say that we are out of touch with reality. Our joy is a joy that is full of wisdom and fully cognizant of the negative realities in the world. The root of the word “gladness” in Italian (“letizia”) is also used for compost - it is something fertile! Christian gladness is a fertile state of being: it leads to something better and more beautiful. The joy that we experience in Advent is like the joy of getting married. It is not a joy focussed on oneself but a joy that involves self-giving The first reading prepares us for this new understanding of gladness or joy. It says: “I exult for joy in the Lord, my soul rejoices in my God”. The speaker is to be wrapped in the garments of a wedding ceremony, like a groom wearing a crown, or a bride wearing her jewels. The Lord treats me as if I am about to enter a wedding ceremony and encounter another person. The joy of entering a wedding relationship is a particular type of joy. We can imagine a person living in solitude who enters into relationship with others only if those relationships are beneficial to himself. Entering into the marriage relationship is joyful but it involves donating myself to the other. A meagre meal eaten in company is more joyful than exquisite food eaten alone or in anger. The marriage relationship is like the earth that produces green shoots. It is fertile to the extent that it involves self-giving and dying to oneself. John is a person whose focus is not on himself. He is a voice, but he allows another to speak through him. Let us consider the Gospel in this light. Once again the text is focussed on John the Baptist. The passage is a bit curious in that it involves a series of negations. A man named John is sent from God to bear witness to the light. We are told that John himself is not the light, and when the officials ask him who he is, he denies that he is the Christ, Elijah or the prophet. “So who exactly are you then?” John replies, “I am the voice of one crying in the desert.” This does not tell us who John is either! He is only the voice - the words come from somebody else. John the Baptist bears witness to the light, but he himself is not light. How important this discourse is! John is the point of entry for the public ministry of Jesus. He has learned to be free from himself. God is working through him. In fact, Jesus says that his equal has never been born – he is the most extraordinary man in history up to that point. But he knows how to keep himself apart and be the voice for another. How liberating it is not to take oneself too seriously! Adam and Eve tried to make themselves the centre, the light, and they fell into darkness. They failed to see that we are invited to a wedding relationship with him, not to a self-gratifying relationship with reality What is the problem with Adam and Eve in Genesis 3? They try to place themselves at the centre of life, and as a result they become lost in darkness. How wonderful and illuminating is the figure of John the Baptist! He prepared the way for the Lord to come, and the Lord always comes when we put ourselves to one side. For we are invited to a marriage, not to a self-gratifying relationship with the Lord. We are called to fix our gaze on him and not on ourselves. We are asked to be his witnesses, not advocates for ourselves. How boring it is to listen to Christians who wish to speak primarily about what they have done, and who speak too little about what God has done. It gives us infinitely more dignity when we keep ourselves in our proper place, when we know how small we are, when we appreciate that our lives are directed not towards ourselves, but towards something else. Our age is an age in which humanity blesses its own name. Advent is about learning to bless the Lord’s name when he comes. And he will certainly come if we move to the side. We are living in an epoch where the human being has made himself the centre, the light, the focal point of reality. How can a creature as impoverished as I am put himself at the centre of reality! What we need to discover, instead, is that we are central only as far as the love of God is concerned. God is central, but he wishes to love us, marry us, to place a crown on our head and a ring on our hand. He wishes to unite with us and make us vest ourselves in the robe of justice, with the beautiful mantle of his love. And we must make ourselves small, make space for him in our lives. We must be able to say, “I was sent by God. It is not me who determines my mission and direction in life. My task is obedience and to follow the plan God has laid out for me. My task is to bear witness to the light, not present myself as the light”. In the spiritual life we often encounter people who have a messianic complex to some degree or other, people who present themselves as saviours of others. But only Christ can save! Let us learn to relativize our own significance! It is thanks to God that we are able to do the little that we do! If we pretend to be able to raise up others, then we take upon our shoulders an unbearable burden, and we will certainly disappoint. The Advent of the Lord is about blessinghis name when he comes, and being free from preoccupation about our own. This is peace, and detachment, and freedom. GOSPEL: Saint Mark 1:1-8 The beginning of the Good News about Jesus Christ, the Son of God. It is written in the book of the prophet Isaiah: Look, I am going to send my messenger before you; he will prepare your way. A voice cries in the wilderness: Prepare a way for the Lord, make his paths straight. And so it was that John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. All Judaea and all the people of Jerusalem made their way to him, and as they were baptised by him in the river Jordan they confessed their sins. John wore a garment of camel-skin, and he lived on locusts and wild honey. In the course of his preaching he said, ‘Someone is following me, someone who is more powerful than I am, and I am not fit to kneel down and undo the strap of his sandals. I have baptised you with water, but he will baptise you with the Holy Spirit. REFLECTION
In the first reading the Prophet Isaiah tells the people of Israel that their time of exile is over. All of us are in a state of exile in the sense that we are in various states of sin, discontent, dissatisfaction with our lives, conflict, unhappiness, lethargy. How do we escape from this state of exile? In the Gospel we are told that there is “Good News”. John the Baptist preaches a baptism of penitence for the forgiveness of sin and he tells us that Jesus will baptize us with the Holy Spirit. This is indeed Good News because it announces that our exile is over! Jesus is coming into our lives and he alone forgives sin. The water of John the Baptist accomplishes external cleaning, but only Jesus can touch our spirits and heal us within. The exile that each of us experiences is the exile due to sin, due to going our own way, due to our self-referential lives. In the Old Testament, two verbs are reserved for God alone: “to create” and “to forgive”. We can change the external circumstances of our lives as much as we like, but the only solution to our exile is to allow the Lord to come to us and pardon us for the ways we separate ourselves from him. Isaiah tells us that the Lord is coming with power. How does he manifest his power? By shepherding his flock! By picking up the lambs and looking after the mother ewes! This Advent let us allow the Lord to come and minister to us. Let us devote time to prayer, reflection and acts of penitence so that we will not miss the Lord when he comes to us with his tender pardon. Isaiah announces that the end of the exile is near. The people of Israel are to return to their land. All of us are in exile and we need to return to our true home. Where is this home? How do we get there? St Mark will be accompanying us for the forthcoming year, and on Sunday we read the very first lines from his Gospel. “The beginning of the Good News about Jesus Christ, the Son of God”. This verse using the very same term found in the opening words of the Greek version of the book of Genesis, “In the beginning . . ” And the story of Jesus begins with good news. To understand better this good news, let us look at the first reading from Isaiah. The prophet is announcing the end of the days of exile. “Console my people, console them. Speak to the heart of Jerusalem and call to her that her time of service is ended, that her sin is atoned for, that she has received from the hand of the Lord double punishment for all her crimes.” The oppression is now over and better days are about to begin. Isaiah is told to climb a high mountain and relate the joyful message to Zion. What is this good news? Isaiah is to announce the return from exile, but he is also to relate a message of a much deeper and far-reaching sort. And this message is relevant for each of us today. The human being is typically in a state of exile. Redemption involves a return to an original state. We are all lacking in fullness; we feel dissatisfied with where we are to some extent; we are all in need of being restored to our own true land and to feel at home with ourselves. The people of Israel are in a similar state of exile and Isaiah announces to them that the Lord himself will come. The return from exile is a great thing, but the happier news is that the Lord himself will come to take care of us. He will come and exercise his dominion, revealing his power to everyone. And the way in which he will manifest his power is striking! He will be a shepherd to us and gather the lambs in his arms! When the Lord comes, he will establish a relationship of tenderness with us. The real exile we all experience is the exile of being in a state of sin. Only God can bring us home from this exile by forgiving us at the depth of our being The text of the first reading is explicitly cited in Sunday’s Gospel. “Look, I am going to send my messenger before you; he will prepare your way. A voice cries in the wilderness: Prepare a way for the Lord, make his paths straight.” John the Baptist appears and proclaims a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. In the first reading the Lord had told Isaiah that Jerusalem’s sin was atoned for and that she had already received double punishment for all her offences. The punishment for sin was finished and the time of the pardon had come. Often we implore the Lord to free us from our various exiles and resolve our problems, but the basic thing we need is pardon and the wiping away of our sin. The fundamental message of John the Baptist was the forgiveness of sin. The people were baptized by him and confessed their sins. The real issue in life is to find pardon, to find the one who loves us over and above any guilt that we might have. In the Old Testament there are two verbs that are set aside for God alone. One is bara’ which means “to create”, an action this is exclusively reserved to God. The other verb, salah, means “to forgive”. Only God is capable of authentic forgiveness. Sometimes we think that if we change our external circumstances, then everything will be all right. But what we need desperately is the touch of the Lord’s pardon within All of us seek a better situation of life, a better “box” in which to live. But the changing of our external circumstances will not bring about that which we really need, which is to be loved completely and unconditionally. John the Baptist announces a baptism of water that prefigures a baptism of the Spirit. Water washes our bodies and signifies all of the external acts that we can do in order to say, “Lord forgive me! I have made a mistake! Accept me in my weakness! Take me as I am! Purify me!” Water cannot touch us within, but when the Lord comes he touches us at the level of our very spirit, the deepest part of us. The Spirit of Jesus enters us at our most intimate level and he enters as forgiveness, acceptance, love. The Church has a host of saints who console us and inspire us. All of these saints are filled with the sense of the pardon of God, with a profound awareness of the love of God for each of us. The Holy Spirit speaks to our hearts and says, “The time is over! You no longer have to handle the sad and irresolvable matter of sin. Tribulation is over! The Lord is here! Pardon is here!” When a person is visited by the Holy Spirit, he is visited by the Spirit that regenerates, the Spirit who is love. This Advent let us straighten the ways so that the Lord can enter. Let us devote time to prayer and reflection, acts of penitence, so that we will be attentive to him when he comes with his pardon In this time of Advent we are challenged to pay attention to what is going on in our lives, to straighten the paths, take care of our relationship with the Lord, cultivate habits that help to keep us in contact with Him, devote time to prayer, exercise the acts of penitence that every Christian is asked to undertake in order to combat our lethargy. Our Lord is coming and he loves us! Let us be attentive to his coming! He takes the lambs in his arms, we are told, and all of us are lambs that need to be carried by Him, forgiven by Him. As Isaiah says, the Lord leads the mother ewe to its rest. How the Lord wishes us to bring to fruition many things in our lives, but in our haste and fretfulness we do not bring them to birth. The Lord gives us the time we need to bring our works to joyful completion. His coming permits us to do all things, for his coming is our pardon GOSPEL: Saint Mark 13:33-37 Jesus said to his disciples: ‘Be on your guard, stay awake, because you never know when the time will come. It is like a man travelling abroad: he has gone from home, and left his servants in charge, each with his own task; and he has told the doorkeeper to stay awake. So stay awake, because you do not know when the master of the house is coming, evening, midnight, cockcrow, dawn; if he comes unexpectedly, he must not find you asleep. And what I say to you I say to all: Watch REFLECTIONS
The Gospel warns us to be watchful for the coming of the Lord. Does this mean that we have to be super-alert and in a constant state of tension? No, the watchfulness that the Lord wishes of us is of a different kind. Advent is a time to be vigilant in the sense that I desperately need the Lord to visit my house. When I try to run my house by myself, then I make my house – my body and my life – into a den of thieves. John Paul II said that the tragedies, wars and concentration camps of the twentieth century all came from the fact that humanity exalted its own autonomy and did not allow the Lord to be in command of its house. The same is true for you and me. The first reading tells us that without the Lord we are like people unclean, like withered leaves that blow away in the wind. But when we welcome the Lord, we become the clay in the hands of the master potter who forms us into objects of great beauty. This is the watchfulness that we need in Advent! It is not a time to fear the coming of the Lord in the way that a criminal might fear the arrival of the police! It is a time to be vigilant in the sense of doing everything we can to allow the Lord to enter our lives, filling them with meaning and joy. Advent is about being watchful? But what kind of watchfulness do we need? Like someone who is super-alert and saturated with caffeine, or a different sort of watchfulness? Advent is the time of preparation for the coming of the Lord. As we say in the Creed, the Lord will come definitively at the end of time to judge the living and the dead. Sunday’s Gospel warns us to pay attention and stay awake, for we do not know when the master of the house will return. This warning puts us under a certain amount of tension and stress. During life, there are often moments when the Lord shakes us up and makes his presence felt, when changes come and the Lord visits us. A superficial reading of this text leads us to conclude that the message is one of being watchful. Like someone who is saturated with caffeine and refuses to allow the minimum detail to escape his attention! But what is the motive for this watchfulness? What is the manner of the Lord’s coming come at the end of time? Why in Advent do we orient ourselves towards the end times? The first reading from Isaiah tells us exactly the kind of watchfulness that is needed in Advent! The first reading from the last part of the book of Isaiah gives us a beautiful key for approaching this Gospel. It speaks of a cry that arises from the people of God. They have returned to Israel after the Exile. Even though they have reacquired their lands, they are destitute and in a precarious situation, a small weak group surrounded by more powerful kingdoms. The prophet cries out, “You, Lord, yourself are our Father, Our Redeemer is your ancient name. . . . No ear has heard, no eye has seen any god but you act like this for those who trust him. You guide those who act with integrity and keep your ways in mind. You were angry when we were sinners; we had long been rebels against you. We were all like men unclean, all that integrity of ours like filthy clothing. We have all withered like leaves and our sins blew us away like the wind. No one invoked your name or roused himself to catch hold of you. For you hid your face from us and gave us up to the sower of our sins. And yet, Yahweh, you are our Father; we the clay, you the potter, we are all the work of your hand.” This passage contains the key to the kind of watchfulness that is needed in Advent! We desperately need the Lord’s visitation. His coming is not like the arrival of the police or army at your house. He is not a robber who comes and takes unexpectedly. He is our dear master who protects and nourishes us! He is the only one who governs our house well. The twentieth century shows us what humanity is like when God is not made welcome in its house Without the Lord, what are we? What is the human being when he is not watchful for the presence of the Lord, when he considers the visit of the Lord to be an intrusion or imposition on his freedom and autonomy? St John Paul the Great, at the beginning of the new millennium, spoke of the state of humanity during the 20th century. It was the epoch in which the human person exalted his own autonomy to extent of gravely dehumanising entire populations, a century stained by torture, displacement, the horrors of the concentration camps. During this period of loss of beauty and the humiliation of the human person, we continued to pursue ideals of autonomy and progress, but everything revolved around the human being detached from his maker. Today humanity continues to experience tragedies of this kind. When I try to make my house my own, I turn it into a den of thieves. But when I welcome the Lord into my house and put him in command, then my life is transformed into something beautiful What does all of this mean? Quite simply that we need God! We need him to be in command of our lives! Isaiah says, “Why, Yahweh, do you leave us to stray from your ways and harden our hearts against fearing you? Return, for the sake of your servants, the tribes of your inheritance. Oh that you would tear the heavens open and some down - at your Presence, such as no one has ever heard of before.” The importance of Advent is that it is a time to allow ourselves to be visited by God, to be “rediscovered” by God. He wants to erupt into our lives and we need to throw open wide the doors of our existence to him. Come Lord Jesus, my house is yours! When I try to make it my own, I destroy it and turn it into a den of thieves. I make it into a place without direction or beauty. When you return to my house, I discover my mission of service and the meaning of my life. When you come, all is well again. Let us open ourselves this Advent and read the Gospel in all of its positivity. What is more beautiful than the arrival of a welcome guest, the return of someone that we love? |
SUNDAY REFLECTIONS:Your virtual guide to reflect on the Readings for this sunday Archives
March 2015
Categories |