Fourth Sunday of Advent (A), Conservations with Consequences Podcast, December 17, 2022

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Conversations with Consequences Podcast
Homily for the Fourth Sunday of Advent, A, Vigil
December 17, 2022

To listen to an audio recording of the brief homily, please click below:

The following text guided the homily: 

• This is Fr. Roger Landry and it’s a joy to have a chance to ponder with you the consequential conversation God wants to have with us this Sunday as we enter into the dialogue the Angel of God had with Joseph after he had discovered that Mary was pregnant. Appearing to him in a dream, the angel told him, “Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary your wife into your home. For it is through the Holy Spirit that this child has been conceived in her.” Joseph was indeed afraid. Some commentators have piously stated that he was afraid because he knew Mary must have conceived miraculously and didn’t consider himself worthy to be associated with the unfolding of such a mystery. Most others, myself included, think that Joseph was afraid, rather, because he loved and totally reverenced Mary and couldn’t understand how she would have become pregnant except in a natural way with someone else, and hence his desire to divorce her quietly rather than allow her to be stoned to death so that she would be able to be with whoever the father was. That’s why the angel needed to say, “For it is through the Holy Spirit that this child has been conceived in her.” The angel wasn’t reiterating what St. Joseph someone already knew but giving him new information about how Mary was now with child. And we see at the end of the text that when Joseph awoke, “he did as the angel of the Lord had commanded him and took his wife into his home.”
• The Church gives us this Gospel on the fourth Sunday of Advent in preparation for the birth of Christ not just because it historically preceded the birth of Jesus but so that we, too, will not be afraid to take Mary and her Son into our home, into our life, now, at Christmas, and beyond. Even when we know Jesus’ origin and have no doubt whatsoever about Mary’s sinlessness, many of us can still be afraid. We can think we’re unworthy. We can be concerned that if we receive Christ, his mother, and St. Joseph into our life, we will out of our element, we won’t know how to behave, we’ll lose our personality and distinctiveness. But the opposite is true. Christ came so that we might have life and have it to the full. Mary will love us with the love she had for her Son and that love will help to purify us of whatever disappointment or even hatred we have for ourselves. St. Joseph will protect us and provide for us like he did for the Holy Family. But we have to confront that fear, the fear that can impact even the greatest of saints.
• The rest of the Gospel shows us how to relate to Jesus whom we’re called to receive with his Mother into our homes. It has to do with the two names by which the Gospel passage tells us we’re called to relate to him. In human life, we know it’s difficult to have a meaningful conversation when we don’t know the name of the person with whom we’re speaking. It’s similar with God. God doesn’t want us trying to converse with him as some type of cosmic higher power or generic force. Throughout salvation history we see him revealing his name. He reveals himself to Moses as YHWH, “I am who am,” and further identified himself as the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, showing he wants to have a personal relationship with each of us. In this Sunday’s Gospel of the appearance of the angel to St. Joseph, we see revealed the names with which Jesus wants us to relate to him as we welcome him, as we allow him to grow within us, as we ground our relationship with him on what he seeks to do in us.
• The first name is Emmanuel. Throughout the Advent Season we’re singing, “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel,” and we need to know what we’re praying. The Gospel tells us, “All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet: ‘Behold the virgin shall conceive and bear a son and they shall name him Emmanuel,’ which means ‘God is with us.’” That phrase goes back to a prophecy in the Book of Isaiah that the Church will hear in this Sunday’s first reading. Isaiah the prophet went to see King Ahaz of Judah during the time when the capital of Judah, Jerusalem, was being sieged by the kingdoms of Israel (Ephraim) and Syria. Ahaz was about to make an alliance with the brutal kingdom of Assyria to liberate Jerusalem. Isaiah went to Ahaz to tell him not to seal that alliance, but to have more trust in God than in the King of Assyria. Isaiah told him that God would give him this sign: “a virgin shall conceive and bear a son and shall name him Emmanuel.” Regardless, Ahaz rejected the sign, ignored God’s counsel through the prophet and formed the alliance with the King of Assyria, a cascade of bad choices that eventually led to the destruction of Jerusalem and the exile.
• The true and definitive fulfillment of the sign given to Ahaz, however, we see in the Gospel, seven centuries later, in the miraculous events of Jesus’ conception and birth. Jews pondering Isaiah’s words over the centuries would have thought they meant that a young woman making love for the first time would conceive a son and that that child would be a sign of God’s presence among them. They never anticipated that God would literally fulfill that prophecy in two ways: that a virgin would conceive a child and remain a virgin; and that “God-with-us” would actually be God with us, that God would take on our nature and come to abide with us. The fulfillment of this prophecy would not just be a sign that God was on their side but the reality that God would in fact be physically present with them. The fulfillment would make the sign announced by Isaiah a sign for all times, an enduring sign reminding us that even when we’re experiencing tremendous human difficulty, like Ahaz was, God is really with us.
• Jesus of course remains with us in many ways — through creation, through grace, through Sacred Scripture, through his image in others, through those he ordained to act in his very person, through his mystical body, the Church. But there is one way above all others by which Christ remains with us, something we’re called to ponder more deeply during the three-year Eucharistic Revival the Church in the U.S. is living. Jesus is truly and substantially present for us in his body and blood. The Eucharist is Emmanuel, God-with-us. The same God who was in Mary’s womb we receive in our bodies at Holy Communion. The angel reminds us this Sunday not to be afraid to receive Emmanuel within us, but to receive him in such a way like Mary that we will allow him to grow, to help us magnify the Lord and rejoice in God our Savior, and to share him with others.
• But Jesus’ presence has a purpose and that leads us to the second name of the Son of God that we need to ponder. God-with-us doesn’t come among us to leave us where he finds us. He was born so that we might be reborn and live a new life with him. This is attested to in the name the angel tells St. Joseph to give to the son of Mary: “You are to name him Jesus.” This name, Jesus (the Greek transliteration of the Hebrew Yeshua or Joshua) means “God saves,” and the angel tells Joseph quite clearly what God through this infant will save the Jews from: “He will save his people from their sins.” God-is-with-us, therefore, for the purpose of saving-us-from-our-sins. Note that the angel doesn’t say, “Save his people from the consequence of their sins,” but “from their sins.” He wants to save us from sin, to separate us from sin, and to make a life of holiness with God possible. Note, too, that both names are present tense. Emmanuel means “God is with us,” not “God was with us.” Jesus means “God saves,” not “God saved.” Not only does the name Jesus interpret the name Emmanuel, but the name Jesus also makes possible Emmanuel, because Jesus is saving us from our sins so that we could be much more fully with him who came to be with us.
• And just like the name Emmanuel by which the Son of God wishes us to relate to us leads us to the Eucharist he founded on Holy Thursday, so the name Jesus leads us to the Sacrament of Confession he founded on Easter Sunday night. Our appreciation for Jesus’ coming into the world is directly dependent on whether we realize we need him — that we’re sinners in need of a savior — and whether we come to receive the medicine of his mercy in the Sacrament he established to do so. That’s why throughout Advent we’ve been hearing St. John the Baptist call us to make straight the paths for Christ to come, for the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world to take away our sins. As we prepare for Christmas, we should be focused above all on the gift we hope to give to the divine Birthday Boy, what he most wants. He took on our humanity to save us from our sins and therefore let’s give him what he wants through the best confession of our life this Advent, cleaning our soul so that we may better receive him.
• As we prepare for Mass this Sunday, let us not be afraid to relate to God as he indicates. The Lord has given us something far greater than the “sign” he gave Ahaz. He has given us sacraments, efficacious signs he instituted to bring about what the signs indicate: God’s presence with us in all our difficulties in the Eucharist and God’s saving us from our sins in Confession. He wants us to receive the two great gifts corresponding to his two names: the gift of his presence in the Holy Eucharist (Emmanuel, God-with-us) and the gift of his saving forgiveness in the Sacrament of Penance and Reconciliation (Jesus, God-saves). Living these two Sacraments well will help us to experience the meaning and enduring reality of Christmas. O Come, O Come, Emmanuel. O Come, Lord Jesus.

The Gospel on which the homily was based was: 

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