Lifting High the Gates for God-with-us-to-save-us, Fourth Sunday of Advent (A), December 18, 2022

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Convent of the Missionaries of Charity, Bronx NY
Fourth Sunday of Advent, Year A
December 18, 2022
Is 7:10-14, Ps 24, Rom 1:1-7, Mt 1:18-24

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

The following text guided the homily: 

• We are a week before Christmas and the response that the Church is trying to provoke in us during this home stretch of the Advent Season is encapsulated, as it normally is, by the Responsorial Psalm: “Let the Lord enter; he is the king of glory.” Throughout this Psalm 24, it talks about raising gates: “Lift up your heads, O gates; rise up, you ancient portals, that the king of glory may enter.” This points to the fact that the gates of the Temple of Jerusalem were too small to permit the entrance of the Ark of the Covenant, which was interpreted at the time as if the people in Jerusalem were not yet ready to receive God into their temple. And as we prepare for the great feast of the Lord in a week, the Church is seeking to make us ready to welcome the Savior. Many times, we know, we can open ourselves up too little to receive God. The Psalm today is exhorting us not to hold back, but to open ourselves totally to accept God as he comes.
• Joseph was asked in today’s Gospel to lift high the gates by the Angel after St. Joseph 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 had come to be 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, some 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, if we open high the gates, 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 we encounter is Emmanuel, which comes originally from the dramatic scene in today’s first reading. Isaiah the prophet goes to see the young 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 — ancient Mesopotamia — so that the Assyrians would come to liberate Jerusalem. Isaiah went to Ahaz to tell him not to seal that deal, but to have more trust in God than in the King of Assyria. Ahaz didn’t want to listen to God’s word through the prophet, instead seeking scores of other prophets to tell him what he wanted to hear. That’s why God told Ahaz through Isaiah to ask for a sign as “deep as the netherworld or high as the sky.” All of a sudden Ahaz, who has been tempting the Lord through preparing to make this alliance, seems to get religion. “I will not ask!,” he replied. “I will not tempt the Lord!” Rather than refusing to be presumptuous, he didn’t want to ask for a sign because once it was be granted it would be much more difficult for him to ignore what the Lord had been telling him. After complaining that Ahaz was now wearying God just like he was fatiguing his people, Isaiah told him that God would give him this sign: “A virgin shall conceive and bear a son and shall name him Emmanuel.”
• That sign was not altogether remarkable. On the surface it seemed anything but an extraordinary miracle as high as the sky or as deep as the netherworld. It’s not particularly rare that a virgin conceives a child. Throughout the centuries, there have been many children have been conceived on honeymoons. The sign value for Ahaz would be more in the name given to that child: Emmanuel, which means “God is with us.” That child would be a sign that God is on the house of Judah’s side, that we don’t have to act as if God has left us alone.  (We don’t know whether there was an immediate first fulfillment of this prophecy: some scholars have said it was Ahaz’s son Hezekiah, but Hezekiah was already not only conceived but nine years old by this point; others that it might refer to one of Isaiah’s children, but Isaiah’s wife had already conceived several children by this point. Regardless, Ahaz did what he was determined to do. He ignored God’s counsel through the prophet and formed the alliance with the King of Assyria. After liberating Jerusalem from the kingdoms of Israel and Syria, Assyria made Judah a vassal kingdom, sieged Jerusalem itself, and after Assyria was defeated by the Babylonians, the Babylonians came after its vassal, took possession of Jerusalem, destroyed the temple, murdered many residents and transported those who survived off as slaves.)
• The true and definitive fulfillment of the sign given to Ahaz, however, we see in today’s 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.” From the time the prophecy had been given, it was always linked to the coming of the Messiah, because a short time later in Isaiah, there’s the description of a “child born to us, a son given to us,” who would have dominion on his shoulder and be called by others “Wonder-counselor, God-hero, Father-forever, and Prince of Peace.”  But they never fathomed that the fulfillment would be anything more than a sign of the God who bears all of those attributes; that God would literally fulfill that prophecy in two ways was so far beyond their imagination: 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” (as St. Paul said in 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.
• 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, and through the poor and needy (Mt 25:31-46). 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, to lift up our gates to allow our merciful Redeemer in. 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, 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. 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).
• Today at Mass, one week before the celebration of Christmas, 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. Let us ask the Lord for the grace as we draw near to Christmas fearlessly to lift up our gates to receive these gifts with faith and to be strengthened by him to help others lift their gates high as well. 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 readings for today’s Mass were: 

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