The Advent of Desire from Sterility to Fruitfulness, December 19, 2023

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan
Mass for December 19
December 19, 2023
Jdg 13:2-7.24-25, Ps 71, Lk 1:5-25

To listen to an audio recording of this homily, please click below:

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

• Two of the major themes of Advent are desire and the passage from sterility to fruitfulness. Advent is about God’s hunger for us and our hunger for him, which leads us to run out to meet him who is coming, and being transformed by him, to continue with gratitude growing in communion with him. There’s something missing in our life that he comes to fulfill. On Tuesday of the first week of Advent, something we just heard again on Sunday, evoked yet again in the O Antiphon that is our Gospel verse, Isaiah prophesies that “a shoot shall sprout from the stump of Jesse, and from his roots a bud shall blossom.” From a stump — which seems sterile, cut down, as good as dead — we don’t expect much growth, but we see that the Shoot, Jesus himself, would eventually reach across the globe and into eternity and bear far more than 30, 60 or 100-fold fruit.
• Today’s readings — both of which feature sterile women — help us to enter more deeply into this mystery of desire and this exodus from barrenness into fruitfulness. In something as wondrous as a shoot sprouting from a stump that didn’t seem capable of generating a whole forest that would never be cut down, we see two women whose wombs were barren, who after much prayer and longing finally conceived a son.
• In the first reading, we have the wife of Manoah (who unfortunately is never named!), who hadn’t been able to conceive. The angel appears to her doubtless as a response to her prayer and says, “Though you are barren and have had no children, yet you will conceive and bear a son … who will begin the deliverance of Israel from the power of the Philistines … [and who] shall be consecrated to God from the womb until the day of his death.” Her long wait, her many prayers, eventually led to her conceiving the great judge Samson.
• In the Gospel we see an even greater miracle. Elizabeth and Zechariah were sterile and were both late in years. Elizabeth was almost certainly post-menopausal. Zechariah was a priest of the priestly division of Abijah whose turn it was to serve in the temple. The way the cultic priesthood worked at the temple of Jerusalem was that there were about 20,000 male descendants of Aaron, all of whom were automatically priests. They were divided into 24 divisions and they would rotate ministry at the temple, serving twice a year for a week. In every division, there were between 800-900 priests assigned. The day’s duties — offering the morning and evening sacrifices of a one year-old unblemished male lamb together with flower, oil and wine, as well as offering the incense at the altar while those two sacrifices were taking place — were assigned each day by lottery. One could go an entire lifetime of service without one’s name every being drawn (there were 28 chosen each week, 56 per year, out of 800-900 priests; if everyone got a turn and were chosen not by lot but equally, that would be every 14-16 years). When one’s name was selected, however, it was one of the happiest days in the priest’s life. Doubtless as Zechariah was chosen to offer the incense for one of the two sacrifices, he approached the altar with a prayer that he had been carrying within him his entire married life. We wouldn’t be surprised if Elizabeth, before he would begin each week’s service, would have reminded him, “If you’re chosen, don’t forget God to hear our prayers and give us a child to remove the shame of my sterility.” So during the time he was offering the incense filled with this prayer, the angel of the Lord appeared to him and told him, “Your request has been heard and your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son and you must call him John. … Many will rejoice at his birth, for he will be great in the sight of the Lord. He will be filled with the Holy Spirit even from his mother’s womb, and he will turn many of the children of Israel to the Lord their God. He will go before him … to prepare a people fit for the Lord.” Just as God had made a stump sprout, just as he would make rocks give streams of water, turn deserts into oases of life and even raise the Dead Sea to life (Ez 47), so he would turn sterility into fertility. Pope Francis spoke about this miraculous transformation from barrenness to bounty during his homily for the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe in 2017. “Together with Elizabeth, the sterile woman” the Holy Father said, “we contemplate Elizabeth the woman of hidden fecundity. It’s she who is the first to recognize and bless Mary. It’s she who in her old age experienced in her life, in her flesh, the fulfillment of the promised made by God. She who couldn’t have children bore in her womb the precursor of salvation. In her we understand that the dream of God isn’t sterility or stigmatization or shame, but to make rise up in them and from them a hymn of blessing.”
• The Lord wants to work a similar miracle in us and every Advent we prepare for it. He wants to raise to life whatever it in us is barren so that it gives forth life with him. Many times we’re spiritually sterile, we bear no fruit. We labor for months, years and even more to grow in prayer and it seems like we have nothing to show for it. We try to pass on the faith on to others and we end up feeling like barren fig trees. Today Jesus wants to give us hope. The reason why he often waits to grant something intrinsically good for which we desire so ardently is to increase that desire and to make us always conscious of the gift God gives that most of us would take for granted if we received things too easily. The long advent for the fulfillment of those promises are meant to increase, like the candles on an advent wreath increase each week during Advent, our prayer, our hope and — after the prayer is granted — our gratitude.
• But how does this transformation take place? How do we cooperate with what God’s trying to do? I think that’s shown in the other important lesson we learn from today’s readings. In order for the miracle to occur we not only need to ask for it in faith but receive it with faith. That’s what Zechariah didn’t do. He asked the angel, “How shall I know this? For I am an old man and my wife is advanced in years.” Even though he and his wife had been praying for decades, even though an angel had appeared to him to announce the answer to his longings, he wanted verification. He really didn’t want to accept it without another sign. His question is totally different from the question of Mary that we see in the Annunciation. After the same Archangel Gabriel appeared to her, she asked, “How will this be, for I will not know man.” That wasn’t at all a question of doubt, but of modality. It clearly implies she had made a vow of consecrated virginity to the Lord — otherwise, why would she be asking how she would conceive a child, since she would well have known how children are conceived! — and therefore essentially was asking, “How will I become a mother? Does the Lord intend for me to break my vow of virginity in order to conceive?” That’s when the Angel talked about how the Holy Spirit would overshadow her so that she would become the only virginal mother in the history of the world. Zechariah’s question was different. He knew how Elizabeth would conceive a child if she were to become a mom. He just didn’t really want to believe and accept that she would become a mom through him now that she was a senior citizen. For us to bear fruit, we need to trust in the Lord’s promises.
• But what if we struggle with doubt? How can we overcome our temptations not to believe that all that God has promised will take place? That’s the third lesson from today’s readings. It’s found in the medicinal penance the Archangel gave Zechariah. At first it might seem very strange as a response to Zechariah’s doubt. We could imagine that Gabriel would have instead negated or delayed the promise. Instead he said, “But now you will be speechless and unable to talk until the day these things take place, because you did not believe my words, which will be fulfilled at their proper time.” Why would his being struck mute be a proper punishment? The answer is because it would force him to pray, force him to become good soil of faith for the Lord to respond to the Lord’s gifts. Like the kings are forced to silence before the root of Jesse, each of us must approach these great mysteries of God and the fulfillment of his promises with a faith nourished in silence. St. Augustine says that Zechariah was struck mute for the whole of the time when his son, John the Baptist, would be silent in the womb of Elizabeth. As soon as he was born and could start to cry out, Zechariah’s tongue would be loosened so that he, too, could cry out about the marvel the Lord had done for him when he would name is son John, which means God-is-gracious. I’ve always thought that the reason is to help him develop a contemplative heart like Mary, who treasured within her heart what the Angel had said. She believed because she was one who regularly received the Lord’s gifts in the silent dialogue of prayer. Zechariah needed to become more like Mary. That’s a very important lesson for us every Advent. The way for us to go from sterility to fertility is by faithfully receiving all God’s word on good soil, which will enable us to bear not just a son or a little fruit, but 30, 60 and 100 fold. We’re supposed to be tremendously fertile! But to become fruitful soil, we have to make time for silence, to ponder within our hearts and treasure all that God is saying and doing in our lives, in others’ lives, in the world. If we’re too busy, we’ll often be prone to doubt like Zechariah. If we’re running around “hustle, bustle, push and muscle, rushing to and fro” (A Christmas Carol), we’ll never be able to respond with faith and bear the type of fruit that God wants to give us.
• Today we come up to the Lord’s temple. We don’t have this privilege just, maybe, once in a lifetime if we’re lucky to enter into God’s presence, but we have the opportunity every day. We don’t have make this grotto chapel smoke with incense rising up to God because we come with hearts lifted up the Lord with the sweet-smelling fragrance of faith. It’s here that the Lord wants to do a greater miracle in us than in the wife of Manoah and in Elizabeth’s womb. He wants us to bear someone far greater than Samson and John the Baptist within, but the same Jesus whom Mary conceived, so that we will become pregnant with the presence of God-with-us within us, and bear him, his love, his life, his joy to the world.

The readings for today’s Mass were: 

Podcast: Play in new window | Download