Changing Our Minds and Believing, Third Tuesday of Advent, December 16, 2014

Fr. Roger J. Landry
St. Bernadette Parish, Fall River, MA
Tuesday of the Third Week of Advent
December 16, 2014
Zeph 3:1-2.9-13, Ps 34, Mt 21:28-32

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below: 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

• Today, we finish the first phase of Advent, which extends from the First Sunday through December 16, in which we focus fundamentally on Christ’s coming to us at the end of time and the way we prepare for it by meeting him in the present and learning from the longing of the Jews for him before he came in history. This is a time in which God seeks to help us to wake up from our sleep, to become vigilant and alert, and once we’re no longer drowsy or somnambulating, to hear and heed his consoling words that he is coming with mercy and as a result we’re called to prepare via conversion for his arrival. The two great figures of the first phase of Advent are Isaiah and John the Baptist, both of whom fulfill the office of the “voice” of the One (Jesus) crying out, “Make straight the way of the Lord.”
• Today on this last day of the first phase, Jesus challenges us with a parable as to whether we’ve acted on this summons, whether we’ve awakened, whether we’ve converted, whether we’ve received the consolation of his mercy. He tells a parable of two sons. The first refused to do his father’s will to go out and work in his vineyard, but eventually he had a change of heart and went. The second son immediately and courteously replied, “Yes, Sir!,” but never went. When Jesus asked which out of the two did the father’s will, everyone replied the first, and Jesus used it as a diving board to talk about our response to John the Baptist’s message and ministry. He said that there were many tax collectors and prostitutes, those who initially spurned God’s commandments, but who, like the first son, at the preaching of John repented and made straight the paths for Christ’s arrival. But there were also many of the chief priests and elders of the people, who, like the second son, repeatedly professed “Amen!” to the commands of God with their lips but who didn’t heed John’s appeal to “change your minds and believe him.” That phrase “change your mind” is metanoia, the revolution of the way we look at things which was John’s and Jesus’ first words in preaching. Many of the most outwardly observant Jews were like the second son who professed their faith in God with their lips but whose deeds were far from him.
• That brings the question clearly to us. Have we changed in the way God wants us to change this Advent? Have we awakened from our “same old, same old” to embrace the call to conversion? Have we made straight the paths for God by a good confession? There have been many people coming to the confessional over the course of this season, including many who like the tax collectors and prostitutes of yesteryear, have been leading lives distant from God. Has their conversion inspired us to a deeper conversion of our own ways. Has their repentance and new life forced us to “change [our] minds and believe”?
• The type of metanoia God wants is sketched out in the first reading from the Prophet Zephaniah. God sends us prophet to say to those in Jerusalem, which is supposed to be the city of God, a city of faith, a city of holiness: “Woe to the city, rebellious, polluted [and] tyrannical! She hears no voice, accepts no correction. In the Lord she has not trusted, to her God she has not drawn near.” We all need to lower the mountains of our pride every Advent. We need to recognize that often we say “no” to God and refuse to do his will. We pollute ourselves through sin. Rather than love and serve others, we tyrannically try to boss them around. We close our ears to God’s voice through not prioritizing prayer. We accept no correction from God or anyone working in his name who says something we don’t want to hear or do, whether the Pope, or the Bishop, or the Pastor, or the Confessor, or the Husband, Wife, Father, Mother, Son, Daughter, Best Friend, Boss or anyone else. We don’t trust in the Lord enough but trust in ourselves, or trust in money, or trust in world gurus. We don’t draw near to him, but stay away.
• God sends Zephaniah to convict us of the way we’ve said no to God through our deeds, regardless of what we’ve told him with our lips. But he doesn’t stay there. Also through the prophet he promises redemption, when “I will change and purify the lips of the peoples, so that they may call upon the name of the Lord [and] serve him with one accord.” He says at that time we will “not be ashamed of all your deeds,” because as we sing at the Easter Vigil, they will bring us so great a redeemer. He promises that, with his help, we will “no longer exalt [ourselves] on [his] holy mountain,” but will be a “people humble and lowly who shall take refuge in the name of the Lord,” who will “do no wrong and speak no lies.” That’s what Jesus will do through his coming, provided that we stop our rebellion, pollution and tyranny, hear his voice, accept his correction, trust in him and draw near.
• Ultimately the Lord wants us to be faithful in both our words and our deeds. He wants us to say “yes” to his will and actually do it. That’s what our conversion is. That’s why we start every Mass by humbling ourselves and confessing that through our own grievous fault we have greatly sinned in our thoughts, in our words, in what we’ve done and what we’ve failed to do. Then we open our ears to hear the Lord’s voice in the Liturgy of the Word and then we watch as the Word becomes flesh on the altar and then seeks to take on our own flesh in a one-flesh union between bride and bridegroom so that our whole life may be a fiat, a “let it be done to me according to your word.” As we finish this first phase of Advent, we thank the Lord for all the graces he has given to us up until now and ask him to solidify our reawakening, our holy vigilance, our desire for conversion and holiness, so that as we begin tomorrow our immediate preparation to go to the Little Town of Bethlehem, we may truly mean the words we’ll sing, “O Holy Child of Bethlehem, descend to us we pray. Cast out our sin and enter in. Be born to us today!”

The readings for today’s Mass were: