Preparing to Greet the Lord by Name, 4th Sunday of Advent (A), December 19, 2010

Fr. Roger J. Landry
St. Anthony of Padua Church, New Bedford, MA
Fourth Sunday of Advent, Year A
December 19, 2010
Is 7:10-14; Rom 1:1-7; Mt 1:18-24

The following text guided today’s homily:

PREPARING TO GREET THE LORD BY NAME

• Shift of Advent season on Dec 17 from an emphasis on Christ’s second coming to a concentration on his first.
• In order for us to live this week of preparation well, and to receive all the power that God wishes to give us at Christmas, we have to focus correctly on what the celebration of the birth of Christ is meant to do in us.
  • Lots of false ideas.
  • If a total stranger from the Australian aborigines, or the unevangelized jungles, were to come and observe most of us carefully in southeastern Massachusetts, including many Christians, they’d likely be stunned to discover this feast is a celebration of a little baby born in a far away land and wrapped in swaddling clothes. They’d almost certainly think that it’s about a very old, white-bearded, fat man dressed in red. That’s because most of us spend far more time shopping during the Advent season than we do praying, kids do much more longing for what will be left under the tree for them rather than getting amped up for Mass, adults do far more to help retail stores meet their bottom line than they focus on becoming rich in what pertains to God.
  • The Christmas season is not principally about giving or receiving presents, visiting or receiving visits from family members, sending and receiving cards from friends and acquaintances, drinking eggnog, etc., as good as these things are. It’s not about a generic generosity that pervades the season, as welcome as it is.
  • What is it about? The secret is found in the two names given to Jesus in today’s Gospel.
• Emmanuel
  • God-with-us. Isaiah. Matthew.
  • God loved us so much that he came into our world. He took on our nature, totally, from the beginning, being conceived in the womb, born, raised in a poor home, working an honest profession, before he inaugurated his public ministry, suffered, died and rose. He wanted to share our entire human experience and redeem it all.
  • But “God-with-us” is meant to be much more than “God came into our world.”
  • “God with us” is meant to give us an occasion like the shepherds, magi and others, to “visit” Jesus.
  • He came truly to share our life, to be “God-with-us” full-time. That was his mission. And he did it. Before ascending, he said, “know I am with you always until the end of time.” Eucharist. Grace.
  • The problem for most of us is at a practical level we don’t want him to be with us full-time. We want him to be with us part-time and we want to set his hours. We’ll visit him for an hour on Sunday, we’ll make a few minutes for him at the beginning and end of the day, but we don’t really allow him to be with us.
  • But doing so is the reason why he came. And it transforms everything when we do. We wouldn’t sin if we knew he was there with us. We wouldn’t be afraid or feel alone if we truly knew he was with us. Our life would become far more joyous if we knew he was there with us urging us on, convincing us we won’t fail, that even our supposed failures will be used by him for good, encouraging us to be bold, to put out into the deep.
  • If we’re going to prepare well for Christmas and really receive the gift God the Father wants to give us in his Son then we first need to see that Jesus has not come merely to be God with us but God with me in a very personal way full-time.
• Jesus
  • Joseph is told by the angel he will name him.
  • Yahweh saves.
  • Jesus’ presence is not static. It’s not merely hanging with us but hanging for us. He saved us.
  • But many times we look at this as an isolated moment. Not.
  • Continuous act of salvation.
• The celebration of Christmas is less than a week away, and the Church, on this fourth Sunday of Advent, gives us TWO NAMES to guide us on this home stretch. The names are essential for us to capture the true “reason for the season.” They also contain within them the lessons for us how best to prepare and respond to the realities they indicate.
• The two names both refer, unsurprisingly, to Christ. The first was chosen by God the Father over 700 years before His Son took flesh in Mary’s womb. The prophet Isaiah announced: “Hear, then, O House of Israel. … The Lord himself will give you a sign. Behold a virgin will be with child and bear a son and shall call him Emmanuel” (first reading). 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” (today’s Gospel). The apostle then tells us what the name means: “God is with us.”
• “God-is-with-us.” Since the time the prophecy was given about this name, the Jews thought that a child born of a young woman would be a SYMBOL that God was “with them” in the sense of being “on their side.” The Messiah, a son of David according to the flesh, would, they thought, be this instantiation of God’s solicitude. They would never have been able to fathom that God was intending to fulfill that prophetic title LITERALLY. God, the Creator, was going to take on the nature of his creature. God himself was going to enter the human race and be “descended from David according to the flesh,” the same David he had chosen centuries before to be anointed as King of Israel.
• But there was a clear PURPOSE to God’s PRESENCE. That is given to us in the second name we encounter in today’s Gospel. The angel tells St. Joseph, Mary “will bear a son and you are to name him Jesus.” This name, Jesus (the Greek transliteration of the Hebrew Yeshua) 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 an expiation for our sins. But 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. Our sins prevent communion with God and hence Jesus, in coming to save us from them, was making possible the fulfillment of the prophetic name Emmanuel.
• This truth, however, is not meant to be merely intellectual or merely historical. Emmanuel means “God IS with us,” not “God WAS with us.” Jesus means that “God saves,” not “God saved.” Our sharing in the mystery of Christmas, therefore, depends on whether we enter IN THE PRESENT into THIS SALVIFIC PRESENCE. The two titles point to the greatest gift we’ll receive this Christmas, but the question is whether we’ll receive the gift, open it up, and take advantage of it.
• “Jesus” indicates that God came to save us from our sins, and, as I’ve been stressing throughout Advent, Jesus founded a sacrament on Easter Sunday evening to do so, but we need to respond to that offer of merciful love. So many Catholics have been given that gift but leave it as an unopened package in the corners of their lives. That’s one of the reasons why their celebration of Christmas isn’t nearly as joyful as God wants it to be. 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. Jesus is like the world’s greatest oncologist walking into a cancer ward. The path to healing is for each patient to allow the doctor to treat him and seek to heal him. This may involve surgery, or chemo, or radiation. In a similar way, we need to allow the divine physician to operate on us in the confessional and then to follow his instructions to eliminate the various carcinogens that put our life in danger. Jesus, who created us without our will, won’t save us against our will. Each of us must recognize that need for salvation and come to receive it in the way that Jesus himself set it up. The divine physician, through two of his priests, will be seeing his patients again on Christmas eve in the confessional at 2 pm. Our Christmas joy will be directly proportional to our REALIZATION of Jesus as savior and our RECEPTION of Jesus as savior.
• Jesus, moreover, is “God-with-us”, and there was no expiration date to his presence. In fact, prior to his Ascension into heaven, he told us, “Know that I am with you always, until the end of time” (Mt 28:20). 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: 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.
• The Mass is the greatest privilege this side of heaven, when we have the chance to do something that those present in Bethlehem couldn’t even dream of. They were able to worship the God-man on the “outside,” in the stable. We have the chance to receive him and worship him INSIDE. Jesus established the sacrament of the Eucharist so that he who is God-with-us could be with us in a communion of love. The question for us is what priority the Eucharist plays in our life. The Church says that God-with-us in the Eucharist is the “source and summit of the Christian life,” the beginning and the end of any existence that is truly Christian. If we truly believe that God-is-with-us in the Eucharist, both on the altar and in the tabernacle, then our weekly and even daily schedules will bear witness to it. I think all of us here, if we were present 2,000 years ago around Bethlehem, would have rearranged our priorities to go to the manger where Jesus was surrounded by Mary and Joseph, the shepherds, Magi and angels. The same Jesus is here as who was there. At every daily Mass. From heaven, Mary and Joseph, the shepherds, and the wise men, all look down with loving adoration. The joy we will experience at Christmas will depend upon whether we strive to come to be with God who did so much and became so humble to be with us.
• Most of us have already prepared gifts for many people, and this is good and a tangible expression of our Christian love for others. But all of these good deeds should not get us to forget the need to prepare the best gift for the divine Birthday Boy. What does Jesus want from you? He wants whatever part of you you haven’t yet given to him. He wants you to receive these two great gifts which he established for you and your salvation. These gifts correspond to his two names. Jesus, God-who-saves, wishes to save you from your sins in the confessional. God-with-us wishes to be with you in Holy Communion and Eucharistic adoration.
• Jesus, Emmanuel, is near. May we greet him, sincerely, by name! And through the prayers of Mary and Joseph, may we develop the type of personal relationship with Jesus that they had, so that we might experience his salvation and be with him in this world and forever in the next. Amen.

The readings for today’s Mass were: