Learning from St. John the Baptist How to Do the Father’s Will, Third Tuesday of Advent, December 14, 2021

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan
Tuesday of the Second Week of Advent
December 14, 2021
Memorial of St. John of the Cross, Priest and Doctor of the Church
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: 

• The essential dynamism of Advent is that Christ is coming, we need to make straight the paths to go out to meet him, and, having encountered him, to be transformed in him so deeply that we begin to journey more closely with him henceforth. The Lord comes with his mercy and we go out to meet him with our conversion in such a way that we will “turn with” him who is God-with-us. Today’s readings spur us to make that necessary conversion, to lower the mountains of our pride and fill up the valleys of anything spiritual shallowness that shirks from seeking to become holy like God is holy.
• In the Gospel, Jesus gives a parable of two sons. The first refuses to do the father’s will but eventually repents and does, whereas the second merely gives lip service, saying he’ll do it but not following through.  This is an illustration of what Jesus had said elsewhere, that it’s not enough for us to say “Lord, Lord,” but we need to “do the will of [his] Father in heaven.” Jesus illustrates the choice we must make by referring to St. John the Baptist. He came preaching conversion, a message that the prostitutes and tax collectors were acting upon but many of the scribes and elders were not. Similarly, it’s important for us to ask ourselves whether we’ve acted on John’s call to conversion. All of Advent, heeding the words of St. John the Baptist, is meant to bring us to change our behavior, not just to say “Amen!” to the Lord but to make our life an illustration of the prayer “Thy will be done!” The real model of this, of course, is Mary, who not only said “Let it be done to me according to your word,” but then let her entire life develop in accordance with that word. Regardless, today’s parable could be called the parable of a second chance: that after an initial refusal, or many failures to do what God was wanting, God has given us this Advent in order to go out and work in the vineyard, building his kingdom, bringing others to the same type of conversion in correspondence to grace as we have done.
• In the first reading, we see not only the need for conversion but the help and hope God gives us. God through Zephaniah pronounces woe on the “rebellious,” “polluted” and “tyrannical” city that “hears no voice,” “accepts no correction” “has not trusted in the Lord” and “has not drawn near to her God.” These are four different descriptions of sin. Sin is a failure to listen to God’s voice and obey it, as Pope Benedict powerfully described in Verbum Domini. When we sin, we often become too proud to receive fraternal correction even for our own good. We fail to trust in God and in his promises. And we marginalize him or withdraw from him. This Advent we’re called to do the opposite: to listen, to seek correction from God and others, to trust ever more in the Lord and draw near to him. Zephaniah describes that if we seek to do this, God will meet us with his mercy. He will “change and purify the lips of the peoples,” Zephaniah says, so that “they may all call upon the name of the Lord,” “serve him with one accord” and “bring offerings” to him. God promises, he says, to create a “remnant” that will be “humble and lowly,” who will “take refuge in the name of the Lord,” who “shall do no wrong and speak no lies,” who shall not speak with deceitful tongues but “pasture and couch their flocks.” Essentially this humble, faithful remnant will speak the truth and do their job, serving God, their families and others. The remnant God is creating are those who say “yes” to his will.
• Today the Church celebrates the life of someone who not only said yes to God but acted on that word, even and especially when it was hard. St. John of the Cross’s father died when he was two and he, his mom and two brothers grew up in poverty. Eventually he began working in a hospital while taking simple classes which the hospital administrator paid for. He eventually became a Carmelite, but the worldliness and in some places sinfulness of the Carmelites — who professed a public yes to God only to say no in private practice — led him to think that he might be called to be a Carthusian. That’s when he met with St. Teresa of Avila, the foundress of the Discalced Carmelites, who asked him to work with her to reform the whole order so that after their initial refusals to live their life in a truly holy way, they might. And he suffered for his efforts. Many of the Carmelites did not want to be reformed — most wanted to follow their own ways — and they weren’t open to the fact that this reform was coming from God. To quote Zephaniah, they were “rebellious,” “polluted” and “tyrannical” and would “hear no voice,” “accept no correction,” “trust in the Lord” and “draw near” to him.  On one occasion, the unreformed Carmelites essentially imprisoned John for months in a dirty, dank cell with just a sliver of light coming in. On a second occasion, they brutalized him as he prepared for death. But the religious name he had taken in the reformed Carmelite, St. John of the Cross, was well chosen: and it was through bearing that Cross that he discovered God’s power and wisdom, writing some of his greatest spiritual works — his four great poems on the interior life that led to his four great commentaries — during those sufferings. He persevered in faithful, hopeful, loving prayer despite terrible persecutions. Even in the midst of his sufferings, he never ceased to have trust in God. Learning the ways of the Lord, he wrote about ascending Mount Carmel together with the Lord, heading out into the Dark Night with the Living Flame of Love and singing the Canticle of Love. He didn’t stop following the Lord even when those supposedly acting in his name were persecuting him. He kept saying his yes, his amen, his fiat, even when they were saying no. He wrote once, in a short series of aphorisms called The Degrees of Perfection, “Remember that everything that happens to you, whether prosperous or adverse, comes from God, so that you become neither puffed up in prosperity nor discouraged in adversity.” He saw that even his adverse tribulations came from God and maintained his courage to the end, where he died maltreated and abandoned by seemingly everyone but God. And in the process, John became Jesus the Master’s greatest teaching assistant in the school of prayer. Some of his pithy aphorisms in his Degrees of Perfection I’ve never forgotten from the time I first encountered them in my early 20s. They show us how to open ourselves to the downpour of God’s grace in every circumstance and how not to be scandalized in Jesus even when things around us aren’t going according to what we think ought to be the Messiah’s plan: “Remember always that you came here for no other reason that to be a saint; thus let nothing reign in your soul that does not lead you to sanctity.” “Never give up prayer, and should you find dryness and difficulty, persevere in it for this very reason. God often desires to see what love your soul has, and love is not tried by ease and satisfaction.” “Do not commit a sin for all there is in the world, or any deliberate venial sin, or any known imperfection.” Those were the ways the Lord taught him, in prayer and in life, and he faithfully lived them and taught them to us. He is a model of the type of faithful person to which John the Baptist summons us. He is a teacher of those called to be the faithful remnant who speak the truth and do their job, serving God, their families and others, who say “yes” to God’s will.
• Today as we prepare for Holy Communion, we thank the Lord for giving us the command to “do this in memory of” him and we ask for the grace not just to mouth our responses but, like St. John of the Cross, to make our whole life a wholehearted existential yes!

The readings for today’s Mass were: 

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