Seeing with the Light of Our Light and Salvation, First Friday of Advent, December 6, 2019

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Sacred Heart Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan
Friday of the First Week of Advent
Memorial of St. Nicholas
December 6, 2019
Is 29:17-24, Ps 27, Mt 9:27-31

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

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

• We encounter again today the double-dynamism of Lent: Christ’s coming in the past, present and future — history, mystery and majesty — and the way the Church has been teaching us how we’re called to go out to meet him in each of these three moments.
• Today Christ was passing by two blind men who had gone out to meet him, crying out, “Son of David, have mercy on us!” But then Jesus had them journey to encounter him physically. It would have been easy for Jesus just to go to them where they were — like he stopped for the woman with the hemorrhage elsewhere in the Gospel — and work the miracle there. But he went into the city to make them make the effort to follow him. When they do, that’s when Jesus approaches and asks them the question of faith, “Do you believe that I can do this for you?” When they express their faith, Jesus helps them to see. This is a pattern we see throughout the Gospel. Jesus could have been born right next to the Shepherds, but instead he comes down from heaven to Bethlehem and has them move some distance to run by faith. Two days ago, we witnessed Jesus’ multiplying the loaves and fish, which began with his having all of the people bringing him the lame, the blind and those with illnesses climb a mountain before they received their miraculous cures. He comes, but he still makes us get up and go to meet him, to stoke our faith and our desire.This is a very important spiritual lesson both for Advent as well as for life. Jesus with his mercy comes to us in history, mystery and majesty but we have to recognize our need for it and be willing to make the effort to come to receive it. Like St. John the Baptist will announce this Sunday, we need to make straight the paths.
• Jesus’ messianic work can be summarized by healing our blindness. The Season of Advent can be encapsulated by God’s desire to give us the vision to walk by the light of faith. In the first reading, Isaiah tells us, “On that day … out of gloom and darkness, the eyes of the blind shall see,” and we need to see ourselves among the blind whom the Savior comes to heal. I remember one talk at the UN a couple of years ago during conversations on the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. A former Ambassador, now disabled, spoke about how when we think about the disabled, we ought to be thinking not just about “others” but about each of us. He said if we live long enough, we’re going to start to have eye problems, need hearing aids, end up using canes and handicapped ramps and wheelchairs, and may likewise be dependent on so many things that today we take for granted. He said we need to remember that all of us will one day be handicapped. What is true at a physical level is certainly true spiritually. We’re all to some degree spiritually blind, incapable of seeing God where we ought. We’re deaf to his frequency with regard to many of the things he’s trying to say to us. Even though we can walk, fear cripples us from walking in certain directions. Jesus wants to address all of those at his coming, but we need to learn from the blind men how to cry out for mercy. And so today we need to ask the Lord Jesus to open us up to see the history of his birth, the mystery of his presence in the Sacraments, his word, in the Church and others, and in future majesty when he comes again with the eyes of faith.
• The Lord to whom we need to look, to whom we direct that prayer, the Messiah who will make the eyes of the blind see, is, as we pray today in the Responsorial Psalm, our “light and salvation.” He’s the one who saves our lives and illumines everything. And once we begin to see things in his light, four things happen, as we prayed later in the Psalm:
  • First, we’re filled with courage.  “Whom should I fear? … Of whom should I be afraid?,” we prayed. Because the Lord is illumining our path and nothing in all of creation can separate us from his love, we have every reason not to remain in the darkness of fear. Courage is not the absence of fear, but the ability to do what we need to do despite our fear. When we see Christ with us, who triumphed even over death, how could we not have the courage of the martyrs?
  • Second, we’re enabled to see God’s sacredness all around us: “One thing I ask of the Lord; this I seek,” we prayed: “To dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, that I may gaze on the loveliness of the Lord and contemplate his temple.” When the Psalm was being written, the Temple was understood to be the Temple in Jerusalem built by Solomon. But we know that when Jesus came, he opened our eyes to see that he is the true Temple and that we become part of that temple through baptism. To contemplate his temple means to see that the whole world is charged with his grandeur. To dwell in the house of the Lord all our days means to dwell in him. That’s what he wants us to see!
  • Third, we’re filled with thanksgiving because we behold God’s generosity everywhere.  “I believe that I shall see the bounty of the Lord in the land of the living,” we prayed together. The Lord gives abundantly and when we see with his light we begin to grasp just how generous he is, that he is constantly giving every meal we meet, every day we have, every friend we make, every prayer answered. And he even loves us enough to give us the Cross and some privations precisely so that he can fill us with even greater spiritual gifts.
  • Fourth, we’re filled with faith and hope to live the Advent of life. We prayed, “Wait for the Lord with courage; be stouthearted, and wait for the Lord.” Because the Lord is our Light and Salvation, we are able audaciously to wait for him with strong hearts, with “proud” hearts that remember our dignity restored by the immensity of his life. Waiting for him courageously in that way is what Advent is about. We’re waiting for him to do for us something even greater than what he did for the men in today’s Gospel.
• Today the Church celebrates the feast of someone who lived this way, courageously seeking to align his life with the Lord as his light and salvation and to help others to do the same. St. Nicholas was born in the town of Patara in the Roman Province of Asia, which is now southern Turkey. He grew up in the light of faith, formed in a good Christian home. After his parents both died when he was young, and before he would enter training to become a priest and then later become the Bishop of Myra (modern day Demre, Turkey), he was already following the Lord, acting on the Lord’s summons to love God with all he had and love his neighbor as Christ does. We see this, while he was still a layman, in the famous story of his help for a poor family in Patara. The culture of the time looked at women as burdens of the men who were responsible for them. In order for a girl to marry, the father had to provide her with a dowry so that her new husband would be able to pay for her upkeep, at least for some period of time. Families without money for a dowry often couldn’t get their daughters married. One poor father didn’t know what to do for his three daughters for whom there was a danger, if he were to die or be incapable of work, that they would be driven or drawn into prostitution for survival. Nicholas heard of the family’s situation and one night threw a bag of gold coins through the family’s open window, enough for the dowry for the oldest daughter who was soon married. The next night, Nicholas threw in another bag, sufficient for the dowry of the middle daughter, who likewise was married. The third night Nicholas tossed a third bag to help marry the third daughter of the father, who was waiting this time to find out who was the anonymous benefactor. The generosity of Saint Nicholas is continued through the generosity of Santa Claus (a translation of St. Nicholas) every Christmas, when all of us, like St. Nicholas, pay forward the generosity we have received from Christ. As a bishop he continued courageously to see things in Christ’s light, to live and walk in the light, let the light of his deeds of charity shine before all so that they might glorify the Father in Heaven, and help others to see and live in the light as well. He was one of the fathers at the Council of Nicaea, that helped respond to the heresy of Arianism, which taught that Jesus really wasn’t God, just the greatest man who had ever lived. He worked hard so that the Church and the world would look at Jesus not just as a prophetic carpenter, not just as the Messiah, but as their Light and Salvation, God from God, light from light. Today he wants to help us like he helped the people of his day.
• The Lord is coming to us today as our light and salvation and the way we’re called to go out to meet him is with a faith like that of the blind men, following him here to Church, where after having taught us, he’s about to feed us with himself. Unlike the instructions Jesus gave to them to make sure no one knew about what he did for them, he tells us to go and tell the whole world. Illumined by his word and strengthened by our communion with him, let us, like St. Nicholas, seek to bring his radiant light and gift of salvation to each person we meet today.

The readings for today’s Mass were: 

Gospel MT 9:27-31

As Jesus passed by, two blind men followed him, crying out,
“Son of David, have pity on us!”
When he entered the house,
the blind men approached him and Jesus said to them,
“Do you believe that I can do this?”
“Yes, Lord,” they said to him.
Then he touched their eyes and said,
“Let it be done for you according to your faith.”
And their eyes were opened.
Jesus warned them sternly,
“See that no one knows about this.”
But they went out and spread word of him through all that land.