Arising and Coming to Christ, December 21, 2023

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan
Mass for December 21
Memorial of St. Peter Canisius
December 21, 2023
Song 2:8-14, Ps 33, Lk 1:39-45

To listen to an audio recording of this homily, please click here: 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

• There’s a great irony of proclaiming in today’s first reading from the Song of Songs, “The winter is past,” on the day winter begins, with the winter solstice occurring at 10:27 pm tonight on the East Coast. But it’s a good description of the faith and hope that pervades the season of Advent. Jesus is the Rising Sun — O Oriens we call him in the O Antiphons — and his light, eternal “Light from Light” shines in the midst of the greatest darkness and makes the darkest day of the year radiant.
• We see this happen in the Gospel. Even though John the Baptist is in the darkness of Elizabeth’s womb, Jesus comes within the womb of Mary and irradiates that darkness with his light and joy. We see the same dynamism in the first reading, the Song of Songs, which is an allegory of the dramatic loving dialogue that’s supposed to happen between God and each one of our souls. Much more than a husband and wife who have been apart for a year run across airports to embrace each other, so our longing is meant to be even greater for God because his longing is greater for us. There’s darkness in separation, but the hope of reunion shines in the midst of that darkness, and when the encounter happens, the long night is forgotten.
• Throughout Advent our desire is supposed to be growing like we see in the Song of Songs. The main purpose of the Advent wreath is to indicate what’s supposed to be happening within us: that week by week, the flame of our intense desire is meant to be doubling, tripling and quadrupling. And that’s what we see in the relationship between Bridegroom and Bride in this passage, which has inspired so many mystics, like St. Bernard, St. John of the Cross and St. Therese, to use it as a paradigm for the loving relationship we’re supposed to have with God. Jesus is coming as a Lover “springing across the mountains, leaping across the hills, … like a gazelle or a young stag.” He was doing that in the Gospel within Mary’s womb before he had even the tiniest of feet. He speaks, continually saying, “Arise, my beloved, my dove, my beautiful one and come!” He wants to see us, to hear our voice, to have us “sing a new song” (today’s Responsorial Psalm, literally the “song of the dove,” the song inspired by the Holy Spirit that we’re called to sing to our Emmanuel). This is the whole essence of Advent. Jesus is coming out of love for us because he seeks to espouse us to him forever. He’s coming because he loves us, because he finds us beautiful, and wants, by water and the word,  to make us like a dove, “pure and immaculate in his sight” (Eph 5:25-27).
• In our world, in our souls, the darkness that Christ wants to heal is wherever Christ doesn’t shine. St. John tells us in his Gospel about Jesus, “The light came into the world, but people preferred darkness to light, because their works were evil” (Jn 3:19). Jesus is coming into the world precisely to bring us into the light. That’s what Zechariah — in his famous Benedictus that the Church proclaims each morning and normally ponders especially on Christmas eve morning — will say about the One whose way his son will prepare: “Because of the tender mercy of our God by which the Daybreak (Oriens) from on high will visit us to shine on those who sit in darkness and death’s shadow, to guide our feet into the path of peace.” Jesus is coming to take those of us who are sitting in darkness and the shadow of death into the path of peace, joy and light. But he does so not by force but by engaging our freedom. He wants us to arise and come to him who is coming to us.
• We all need that resurrection. Many Christians don’t live with the joy that comes from the light, like children enjoy a sunny day. John the Baptist comes to get us moving inwardly toward conversion, to recognize our darkness and our need for light. Christ comes to deliver that light. He comes to illumine even the shadow of death from the inside, by his own rising. He’s coming into the world so that, just as the light of the sun rises every morning, so we can rise with him. Just as Mary proclaims in her Magnificat that he exalts the humble, so he even raises the dead. Rather than looking like we’ve always come from a funeral, we Christians should look as if we’re perpetually come from a resurrection — and not just Jesus’, but our own. We all need to hear Jesus say, “Arise, my beloved, my pure one, my beautiful one, and come.”
• Mary shows us how to live this type of life, to arise and go out to meet Christ in such a way that we begin to journey with him to bring his joy to others as he continues to bound over obstacles for the sake of his lost sheep. Mary is given to us as a special gift to help us to learn how to meet Christ in this way. I’ve always been moved, in pondering the mystery of the Visitation, by how the Holy Spirit fills St. Elizabeth and gets her to cry out, not “Who am I that my Lord, my Messiah, the eternal Son of God comes to me?,” but “Who am I that the Mother of my Lord should come to me?” Her awareness of the presence of her Lord was mediated through the one bringing Him to her. That same Mother seeks to bring to us that same Son to lead us to a similar joy in rising. And she prays for us to be transformed by that encounter so that when we go to others, they may be able to recognize the presence of the Lord within us, too, and get a glimpse of his light. This is something that the doctor of the Church we remember today, St. Peter Canisius, did among the Christians of Germany, Austria and elsewhere, helping to bring the light of Christ into the darkness caused by the sins that helped precipitate the Protestant Reformation and the light of the faith to the theological errors and schism of the Reformers. He was chosen by the Church for the life-risking mission to smuggle the decrees of the Council of Trent into Protestant territories, because the light of his holiness was something that Protestants too grasped: just as Elizabeth recognized not only the Lord but the mother of the Lord, so they saw not only the Lord but a true apostle. We thank the Lord for how St. Peter Canisius brought the light of the Lord — the light of his teaching through his famous Catechism, the warmth of his love through caring for so many of the sick, poor and plague victims, the brilliance of his presence in prayer — to re-evangelize Austria and Bavaria and we ask the Lord, through his and the Blessed Mother’s intercession to help us arise, as beloved of God, to come to Jesus and then to go with him into wherever we find the darkness so that he can illumine them and bring them to life.
• The way Jesus tries to help us to enter in this mystery this every day is in the Mass, when we enter into his death so that together with him we can rise from the dead. The ancient Christian Churches were always built to the East with the cruciform or basilical churches built literally ad orientem (to the East), toward where the Sun rises, to symbolize how Christ rises from the dead and takes us with him. When the priest and people faced the East together, the people were able to experience Christ’s rising like the Sun in a very poignant way, when after the words of consecration, the priest would elevate the host above his head. The people would see him from behind lifting Jesus upward and holding him above so that the light of his presence might illumine our life. Today the same reality applies. After the consecration, as I have the humble but awesome privilege to raise Christ, the Rising Sun, to the highest point of which I’m capable, see the Sun at “high noon,” recognize that this is a response to all our Advent prayer, and then, arise, as his beloved, and come to him!

The readings for today’s Mass were: 

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