Preparing by the Precursors for the Nuptial Encounter, Third Thursday of Advent, December 16, 2021

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Sacred Heart Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan
Thursday of the Third Week in Advent
December 16, 2021
Is 54:1-10, Ps 30, Lk 7:24-30

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

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

• On the last day of the first part of Advent — as tomorrow, on December 17, we enter liturgically into the proximate preparation for Christmas — both the precursor of the Lord (John the Baptist) and the precursor of the precursor (Isaiah) take us to the heart of why Jesus became man and was born of the Virgin. It wasn’t so that could have an annual occasion of beautiful self-sacrifice as we give gifts to each other. It wasn’t merely so that people could acknowledge a baby wrapped in swaddling clothes as God-with-us and Savior. It was ultimately so that God, after the infidelity of Adam and Even and all of us through sin, could restore us to a covenant of love with him.
• Today God tells us through Isaiah, “Fear not, you shall not be put to shame. … He who has become your husband is your Maker; … your Redeemer is the Holy One of Israel, the God of all the earth. The Lord calls you back. … With great tenderness I will take you back. … With enduring love I take pity on you, says the Lord, your redeemer. … My love shall never leave you nor my convent … be shaken.” This prophecy about God’s spousal love for us God likewise announced to us through Hosea, who wrote, “So I will allure her; I will lead her into the desert and speak to her heart. … On that day, says the Lord, She shall call me “My husband,” and never again “My baal.” … I will espouse you to me forever: I will espouse you in right and in justice, in love and in mercy; I will espouse you in fidelity, and you shall know the Lord” (Hos 2:16-22). We will focus on this reality also at the Vigil Mass for Christmas, when God will tell us anew, in fulfillment of today’s passage from Isaiah, “No more shall people call you ‘Forsaken’ or your land ‘Desolate,’ but you shall be called ‘My Delight’ and your land ‘Espoused.’ For the Lord delights in you and makes your land his spouse. As a young man marries a virgin, your Builder shall marry you; and as a bridegroom rejoices in his bride, so shall your God rejoice in you.” This prophecy about the nuptial Covenant God was making with his people was fulfilled in Jesus, who called himself the Bridegroom (Mt 9:15). St. Paul in his letter to the Ephesians describes Jesus as a husband who loved his Bride the Church and laid down his life to make her holy, cleansing her by water and the word, so that she might be holy and without blemish (Eph 5:25-27). This is all very powerful imagery to describe something not metaphorical but absolutely real: Christ Jesus was the fulfillment of God’s total loving commitment to us, his desire to enter into a covenant of love with us in which we will commit to love him with all our mind, heart, soul and strength, to love and honor him in good and bad times, in sickness and health, in poverty and prosperity all our days. The ultimate purpose of Advent is to help us renew our first love for God as we ponder his love for us. It’s a time in which to examine whether we’ve been true to him and to recommit ourselves. It’s a time in which to see if our relationship with him is passionate, faithful, indissoluble and fruitful.
• To help us make that assessment, the Church gives us every Advent the figure of St. John the Baptist, who identified himself as “the friend of the Bridegroom who stands and listens to him [and] rejoices greatly at the bridegroom’s voice” (Jn 3:29). This expression means the “best man,” whose job at the time of Jesus was to help protect the bride and get her ready to receive the bridegroom when, after a year or two of work subsequent to the exchange of vows, he comes to take her to the wedding reception and to their common life. John’s role as Jesus’ precursor is to help us as the Bride of Christ get ready for Jesus the Bridegroom in history, mystery and majesty. In history, so that as he takes on our humanity, we can become sharers in his divinity; in mystery, so that through the consummation of his nuptial bond with us the Church in the Eucharist, when we become one flesh with him, God may make us rejoice at his love and fruitful; and in majesty, when he comes at the end of time or the end of our life to bring us, we pray, to the eternal wedding banquet. God wants to help us be ready for all three. John the Baptist is the herald who proclaims, as Jesus would describe in a parable about the five wise and unwise bridesmaids — describing how people prepare well or poorly to seize his kingdom — “Behold, the Bridegroom is here! Come out to meet him!” (Mt 25:6). And we go out not as bridesmaids or friends of the wedding chamber, but the Bride.
• In today’s Gospel, Jesus praised John the Baptist, saying that he wasn’t a weak reed swayed by the wind, or a well-dressed charlatan, but rather a prophet and more than a prophet, in fact, the Messenger chosen by God to prepare Jesus’ way by helping prepare his bride. He does so by calling us to continual conversion, to make straight the paths, to lower the mountains of pride, fill in the valleys of any forms of minimalism, straighten whatever is crooked and smooth whatever is rough. His work is to help us to get our lives and priorities in alignment with Jesus the Bridegroom, so that when and in whatever way the Bridegroom comes, like the wise Bridesmaids, we may be ready to go with him into the wedding feast of his presence.
• The spousal union with Christ, becoming one flesh with him, is what makes sense out of Jesus’ extraordinary comments at the end of today’s Gospel: “I tell you, among those born of women, no one is greater than John; yet the least in the Kingdom of God is greater than he.” We heard St. Matthew’s version of these same words a week ago, on the Second Thursday of Advent. John is great because he is the greatest of the prophets pointing to God and announcing the Messiah; but the least in the Kingdom, the least wedded to that Messiah and Son of God, is greater. This doesn’t mean morally greater, but there is a status of being in the kingdom, of entering into the spousal bond with the incarnate King through the Sacraments, that is greater than any state that was able to be achieved in Old Covenant times. The bride’s relationship to the Bridegroom is greater than the best man’s. This shouldn’t go to our head as a thing of pride, but should fill us with amazement and a sense of responsibility to live out the graces we’ve received, remembering our nuptial dignity, as John lived out his graces.
• Today at Mass John the Baptist announces to us anew, after having prepared us for conversion, the arrival of the One who has given his life to make us holy and immaculate in his sight. He points us to the Bridegroom and says, “Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world!” “Behold your Maker who doesn’t expose you to shame, make you blush, disgrace you or reproach you, but who loves you.” As we prepare to receive that Bridegroom in Holy Communion, let us ask him for the grace to praise him always for having rescued us and for never having stopped loving us. Let us praise him for making us one flesh, one body with him, even greater by those gifts than the greatest born of woman.

The readings for today’s Mass were: 

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