Fr. Roger J. Landry
Conversations with Consequences Podcast
Homily for the Fourth Sunday of Advent (A), Vigil
December 21, 2019
To listen to an audio recording of this short Sunday 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.
- In human life as 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,” as well as identified himself as the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, showing he wants to have a personal relationship with each of us.
- In Sunday’s readings, we see revealed the names with which Jesus wants us to relate to him, so that we will be able to call upon the Son of God and have a personal bond with him. Both of these names help us to ground our relationship with him on what he seeks to do in us.
- The first name we encounter is Emmanuel. Throughout this Season we’re singing, “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel,” and we need to know what we’re praying. There’s a dramatic scene in Sunday’s first reading. Isaiah the prophet goes to see King Ahaz of Judah during the time when the capital of Judah, Jerusalem, is being sieged by the kingdoms of Israel (Ephraim) and Syria. Ahaz is about to make an alliance with the brutal kingdom of Assyria so that the Assyrians will come to liberate Jerusalem. Isaiah goes 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 describing the miraculous events of Jesus’ conception and birth, St. Matthew wrote, “All this took place to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet, “Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel,” which means, “God-is-with-us.” But Jews pondering Isaiah’s words never fathomed that the fulfillment would be anything more than a sign of the God who bears all of those attributes, that God would literallyfulfill 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, that he would be “descended from David according to the flesh” (today’s second reading) and the very Son of God. The fulfillment of this prophecy would not just be a sign that God was on their side but actually the signified presence of God at their side. This would make the sign announced by Isaiah a sign for all times. God has given this enduring sign that even when we’re experiencing tremendous human difficulty, like Ahaz, we’re never abandoned.
- Jesus of course is 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, and we have to confront with joy the practical consequences of this as we approach Christmas. 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 same Jesus whom the wise men traveled such great distances over several months to adore we have the same privilege to worship — and all we have to do is hop in our cars and drive short distances. The question is whether we take that presence of Jesus as seriously as they did, or whether we take it for granted.
- There is a clear purpose to God’s presence, 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 has come to lift us up, literally to raise us from the dead. 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. The Son of God didn’t become God-with-us merely to “hang with us,” as the teenage colloquialism goes, but to hang for us. He took upon our human nature so that he could give that nature as expiation for our sins. And this is something that is constantly 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 saved us from our sins so that we could be much more fully with him who came to be with us.
- That’s why this Advent it’s key for us to let Jesus save us from our sins in the Sacrament he founded on Easter Sunday night to do so. 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 so great a savior — and whether we come to receive the medicine of his mercy. As we prepare for Christmas, it’s not only a time to prepare gifts for others as a tangible expression of our Christian love for them. It’s also a time when we focus most on the gift God wants to give us and prepare ourselves to give him a gift in return. What gift does the divine Birthday Boy want from us? He doesn’t need anything material — after all, he created the heavens and the earth. He wants from us whatever part of us we haven’t yet given to him. God didn’t give us a “sign” like he gave Ahaz, but gives us something greater, a sacrament, a sign he instituted to bring about what the sign indicates: 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 that he established for us and our salvation, the two 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.
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