The Childlike Trust of Advent, First Tuesday of Advent, December 5, 2023

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan
Tuesday of the First Week of Advent
December 5, 2023
Is 11:1-10, Ps 72, Lk 10:21-24

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

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

• Today in the readings, we continue to focus, as we do each Advent, on the qualities of our response in preparing to run out to meet Christ who comes to us in history (Bethlehem), mystery (prayer, the Sacraments, his word, and other) and majesty (on the clouds of heaven at the end of time).
• Today the Church wants us to focus, first, on childlike trust. In the Gospel, Jesus praised his Father for his “gracious will” to reveal the mysteries of the kingdom to the “childlike,” to those who trust in him as beloved children, to those who are docile, uncomplicated, simple, pure, and unrebelliously dependent on his providential care and love. These mysteries are hidden from the “wise and the clever” of the world, not because God doesn’t want them to receive the revelation and come to salvation but because they obscure their own perception of revelation through their self-made complications. The fullness of revelation, Jesus says, is the knowledge of the Father and the mystery of his love. The fullness of revelation is seen in the image of the Father, Christ himself, who incarnates that wisdom. The plenitude of revelation happens when we enter into Christ’s own relationship with the Father by the work of the Holy Spirit. Elsewhere in the Gospel Jesus says that unless we convert and become like little children, we will not inherit the kingdom of God. Unless we learn to trust in him, unless we see things with simple and pure faith, unless we learn to depend on him and recognize that we’re never going to be “self-sufficient,” we won’t be able to understand his kingdom and receive it. Jesus says these words in the Gospel right after he castigates those in Chorazin and Bethsaida for not converting after all his miracles. They witnessed him and his works, but it didn’t lead them to conversion and faith because they sought “adult” explanations that were, in fact, erroneous. The Church wants us to recover the pure vision, the wonder, the trust that should characterize everything we do as Christians. Jesus says that when we do recover that vision, we will be filled with joy. At the beginning of the Gospel, St. Luke tells us, “Jesus rejoiced in the Holy Spirit.” He was full of joy at the reality that it was God the Father’s “gracious will” to reveal the mysteries of the kingdom to the “childlike.” And at the end of today’s Gospel, Jesus turned to his disciples and told them, “Blessed are the eyes that see what you see! For I say to you, many prophets and kings desired to see what you see, but did not see it, and to hear what you hear, but did not hear it.” The great heroes of Old Testament times all hungered to receive “all the things” that had been handed over to Christ by the Father. They longed to see and hear the fulfillment of all the prophecies in the Messiah who would be Son of God and Savior in a way far greater than they had imagined. Jesus rejoiced at the disciples’ good fortune. If that’s true, how much greater is Jesus’ joy that we not only behold him in his Real Presence, hear his words in the Gospel, but have a chance to touch him and be touched by him in a way far more profound than even his disciples when he was proclaiming these words for the first time! This is why St. John, in his first letter, overflowing with joy, wrote, “What was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we looked upon and touched with our hands concerning the Word of life … we proclaim now to you … so that our joy may be complete.”
• In the first reading we see one way in which we really need to have that childlike trust, accepting these images Jesus will give. The Prophet Isaiah tells us about the “shoot” that will “sprout from the stump of Jesse.” Jesse was David’s father and David began the Davidic line of kings. Just two generations after David, however, there were attacks to that line and eventually the kingdom of Judah and Israel would be chopped down. Jesse’s line was just a “stump,” but Isaiah foretells that a “shoot shall sprout” from it, fomenting among the Jews the longing for the Messiah, the longing ultimately for Jesus. Isaiah tells us that he would be filled with the spirit of God, that the Spirit would rest on him, the “spirit of wisdom and of understanding, … of counsel and of strength, … of knowledge and of fear of the Lord.” When Jesus entered the Nazareth synagogue to preach for the first time, he cited Isaiah and said, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,” and gave the purpose of that anointing: “because he has anointed me to bring glad tidings to the poor, …  to proclaim liberty to captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free,  and to proclaim a year acceptable to the Lord.” He was the shoot who would bring justice to the world, not judging, as Isaiah describes, by appearances or deciding by hearsay. That new ordering of things in his kingdom would bring about a revolution. It requires true childlike trust to embrace what Jesus says. Isaiah describes the impact of the Messiah’s coming by means of unimaginable consequences in the animal kingdom that were meant to be a metaphor for what would happen among human beings living childlike by the Spirit: wolves and lambs, leopards and kids, calves and lions, cows and bears, children and cobras, would play together without fear, without bloodshed, without destruction. If that’s what the shoot from Jesse’s stump would bring to the animal kingdom, how much of a greater impact should he have on human beings, as he helps us to live according to his justice, to enter his kingdom, to receive that same Spirit that fills with wisdom, understanding, counsel, strength, knowledge and awe of the Lord! There are many who on hearing these words will treat them like pie-in-the-sky utopianism, but we’re supposed to receive them conscious of the fact that the power of the Spirit of the Lord and his gifts can bring about that state in which enemies learn how to love each other rather than destroy each other. That’s what the one who is coming in history, mystery, and majesty wants to accomplish. That’s a revolution that will be led by spiritual children. Isaiah says that when the shoot sprouts, “a little child [will] guide” both calf and young lion, a “baby shall play by the cobra’s den and the child lay his hand on the adder’s lair.” That’s not only a prophecy about the child Jesus, but also child-like children of the kingdom will lead this revolution by turning lions, cobras and adders into siblings.
• The second thing today’s readings teach us is about how we, having received that gift of revelation as children, are meant to share it. As we, in Christ, are filled with the spirit of wisdom, understanding, counsel, strength, knowledge and awe of the Lord, the Spirit sends us forth just like he did the apostles on the day of Pentecost. Like St. John, we can’t keep within “what was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we looked upon and touched with our hands concerning the Word of life.” We must “proclaim” it, not just so that others’ eyes and ears may be similarly blessed but so that “our joy may be complete,” because we cannot hold it within. At the end of today’s prophecy from Isaiah, he says that “the root of Jesse,” Jesus, will be “set up as a signal for the nations. The Gentiles shall seek out, for his dwelling shall be glorious.” We’ll sing about this as we draw closer to Christmas in the O Antiphon for December 19, when we pray, “O Radix Iesse, qui stas in signum populorum, super quem continebunt reges os suum, quem Gentes deprecabuntur: veni ad liberandum nos, jam noli tardare.” “O shoot from the stump of Jesse, who stand as a sign of the peoples, about whom the kings remain silent and the Gentiles praise: come free us, do not delay.” Jesus will be a sign for the nations, even more, an efficacious sign or sacrament, of God-with-us. And we’re called to take him as that sign to others.
• We finish by recognizing how blessed our eyes are to behold the Lamb of God here on the altar! How blessed are our ears to hear him speaking to us today! How blessed are we to have received the outpouring of the Holy Spirit who once again today seeks to come down upon us to make us one body, one spirit in Christ. We turn in prayer to Jesus whom we’re about to receive and beg him for all the graces He knows we need to become more childlike and joyful and to move us inwardly to spend our lives bringing that joy out to those around us, so that we might live with them in the kingdom when Isaiah’s prophecies will be fulfilled.

The readings for today’s Mass were: 

Podcast: Play in new window | Download