Christ’s Call to Arise from the Darkness and Live in the Light that Lifts Us Up, December 21, 2019

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan
Mass for December 21
Memorial of St. Peter Canisius
December 21, 2019
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, but it will make far greater sense if we understand the Song of Songs from the perspective of today’s O Antiphon* (see explanation below): O Oriens, splendor lucis aeternae et sol iustitiae: veni et illumina sedentes in tenebris et umbra mortis. “O Rising Sun in the East, splendor of eternal light and sun of justice, come, illumine those sitting in darkness and the shadow of death.” Jesus is the Rising Sun and his light — his eternal “Light from Light” — shines in the midst of the greatest darkness and makes the darkest day of the year radiant. Even when we’re walking through the dark valley of the shadow of death, Jesus comes to bring us into the kingdom of light.
• We see this happen in the Gospel. Even though John the Baptist is in the darkness of Elizabeth’s womb, Jesus comes in 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 and St. John of the Cross, 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 raise us from sitting in darkness and the shadow of death, and come to him who loves us, who finds us beautiful and pure. He wants to see us, to hear our voice, the voice that leads us to “sing a new song” in 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. The O Antiphon says “sitting in the darkness and in the shadow of death,” pointing to the fact that there’s no dynamism, there’s no movement, there’s no action, just inertia. People are staying put. 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. But how does Christ illumine the shadow of death? He does so from the inside, by himself 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 as to how the Holy Spirit fills St. Elizabeth and gets her to cry out, not “Whom 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 so that when we go to others, they may be able to recognize the presence of the Lord in us 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 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.
• 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. As I raise Christ, the Radiant Dawn, to the highest point of which I’m capable, see the Sun at “high noon,” and recognize that this is a response to our prayer, “O Rising Sun in the East, splendor of eternal light and sun of justice, come, illumine those sitting in darkness and the shadow of death!” Amen!

* (There is a lack of alignment among the O Antiphons between what is used as the Gospel verse and what is used for Magnificat antiphon during Vespers. Vespers preserves the original order of the seven O Antiphons: O Sapientia (Wisdom, Dec 17), O Adonai (Lord and leader of the house of Israel, Dec 18), O Radix Iesse (Root of Jesse, Dec 19), O Clavis David (O Key of David, Dec 20), O Oriens (O Rising Sun, Dec 21), O Rex Gentium (O King of the Nations, Dec 22), O Emmanuel (O God-with-us, Dec 23). There is no O Antiphon for Vespers on December 24, because it is first Vespers of the Solemnity of the Nativity of the Lord. In the Gospel verses, however, while the first four days are the same (Dec 17-20), the Mass liturgies change the order of the others: O Rex Gentium is not only said on Dec 22 but repeated on Dec 23, O Emmanuel is moved from Dec 23 to Dec 21, and O Oriens is moved from Dec 21 to Dec 24, so that the words “illumine those who sit in darkness and the shadow of death” will correspond to the words of Zechariah’s canticle in the Gospel. I write this explanation because, as far as I have been able to find through internet searches, there is no other explanation of the disparity between the O Antiphons at Mass and at Vespers.)

The readings for today’s Mass were: 

Gospel
LK 1:39-45

Mary set out in those days
and traveled to the hill country in haste
to a town of Judah,
where she entered the house of Zechariah
and greeted Elizabeth.
When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting,
the infant leaped in her womb,
and Elizabeth, filled with the Holy Spirit,
cried out in a loud voice and said,
“Most blessed are you among women,
and blessed is the fruit of your womb.
And how does this happen to me,
that the mother of my Lord should come to me?
For at the moment the sound of your greeting reached my ears,
the infant in my womb leaped for joy.
Blessed are you who believed
that what was spoken to you by the Lord
would be fulfilled.”