Third Sunday of Advent (B), Conservations with Consequences Podcast, December 16, 2023

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Conversations with Consequences Podcast
Homily for the Third Sunday of Advent, B, Vigil
December 16, 2023

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

The following text guided the homily: 

• This is Fr. Roger Landry and it’s a joy to have a chance to ponder with you the consequential conversation God wants to have with us this Sunday, when, like every Advent, for the second Sunday in a row, we encounter St. John the Baptist who proclaims to us, “I am the voice of one crying out in the desert, ‘Make straight the way of the Lord.” The Old Testament priests and Levites from Jerusalem who came the great distance downhill into the Jordan valley were engaging in a tense conversation with him trying to figure him out. “Who are you?,” they asked. John replied that he wasn’t the Messiah. He wasn’t Elijah come to life again. He wasn’t the Prophet Moses, the three figures Jews had been waiting for as a result of Old Testament prophecies. So they asked him again, “Who are you, so we can give an answer to those who sent us? What do you have to say for yourself?” That’s when John announced he was the forerunner of another, the voice of One calling all of us to conversion, of One who was coming after him who would baptize with the Holy Spirit and whose sandal strap he was not worthy to untie. Church tradition has always referred to John the Baptist as the precursor of the Lord, because as his father Zechariah said at his birth, he would “go before the Lord to prepare his ways, to give his people knowledge of salvation through the forgiveness of sins.” The interrogation of the forerunner of the Lord is one that we do every Advent, as we focus, first, on his identity and divine mission and heed his summons to make straight the paths for the Lord’s coming; then, we ponder how we are interrogated about what who we are and what we have to say for ourselves, since each of us, like John, is meant to be a voice of Jesus the Word, announcing him to others and helping them clear the path for Jesus to come into their life.

• John the Baptist was a herald. In the ancient world, before X, Instagram and Facebook, before text messages and websites, before televisions and radios, before newspapers and posters, how would people be informed that a dignitary was coming to their town? Heralds would be sent out to alert everyone, to call them to attention, so that the one coming might be expected and desired, so that they could repair the roads and the bridges or build new ones, so that they could clean everything up, and so that the people could notice and greet the one who was coming when he arrived. This is the service that John the Baptist fulfilled for the Lord’s coming 2000 years ago and the Church has him do for us every Advent.
• As Catholics, however, we’re called not merely to receive and be grateful for the work of the Lord’s forerunner, but we’re also called to imitate him in becoming precursors in our own right. Jesus constantly has need of heralds to announce his existence, his coming, his kingdom, and his presence as God-with-us. All of us, by our baptism and strengthened by our confirmation, have been consecrated to carry out this role. Jesus went to John and sanctified him from the beginning in the womb of his mother Saint Elizabeth. The same Lord has chosen us, redeemed us and sanctified us at the beginning of our lives in the womb of our mother, the Church, (which is the baptismal font), so that we might be his witnesses in the world, so that we might smooth out his paths and prepare others for his coming. We are called, as John the Baptist said in today’s Gospel, to be a voice for Christ, to announce to others, “In your midst there is one whom you do not know, one for whom you are searching, who can make you happy, one who will never deceive you, the only one who has the words of eternal life.”
• The renewal that is meant to take place in us each Advent begins with our receiving John the Baptist’s call and making straight the paths for Christ to come to us, but it doesn’t stop there. The fruit is for us to echo John the Baptist’s call and help others likewise to prepare the way for the Lord. This is the greatest gift we could give to anyone at Christmas. We’re now living in a world in which so many of the baptized are living day-to-day and even on Sundays as if God doesn’t exist, as if Jesus hasn’t come, as if God-with-us is not really here to save us, sanctify us, and shepherd us to be with him forever. Some may say they believe in him, they may profess themselves to be Christian, but at a concrete level, the practice of the faith has grown cold. They’ve ceased to live a sacramental life. In many cases, they’ve ceased to pray, both individually or in their families. They’ve ceased, in short, to live as a Christian, even if they remember the words of various Advent and Christmas hymns and maintain a nostalgia for Christian values and past experiences. Many of them have just drifted away from Christ because, for one reason or another, they didn’t really experience the fullness of his burning love. Or they turned away because they were scandalized by the behavior of someone was supposedly Jesus’ follower or ambassador. This is a people that very much needs precursors to introduce them anew to Jesus Christ!
• And we’re called to be those forerunners. Popes Paul VI, John Paul II, Benedict XVI and Francis have for the last 60 years been calling everyone in the Church to a new evangelization, which begins with our entering into a new and full loving relationship with Christ and then together with Christ and the Holy Spirit inviting the whole world to enter into loving friendship with him and with us in him. This relationship with Christ is what everyone in the world needs, and yet so many people are so distracted about what’s most important that they’re no more alert than the ancient inn keepers to Christ’s coming.
• What are the steps in this new evangelization, to our being precursors, to our becoming the voice of Christ, to our helping others to make straight the paths for Christ to save them? The Popes have mentioned several. It’s important for us to note them as we ask the Lord for his help that we may be effective and faithful precursors like John the Baptist before us.
  • The first step is prayer. All methods are empty, all words are cheap, without the foundation of prayer. This Advent we pray for our fallen away family members, friends and parishioners that they may receive the grace of conversion and a renewed desire to enter into a full-time relationship with God.
  • The second step is witness. People today trust witnesses more than teachers. Because we’re often cynical from seeing so many hypocrites in politics, at work, and among the clergy, people pay more attention to those who walk the walk rather than those who just talk the talk. That’s why it’s so important for us not just to call ourselves Christians but to live and behave as Christians. To put God first. To pray. To love Jesus in the Mass. To be humble enough to go to confession when we sin. To be charitable and sacrifice ourselves for others. To live by the commandments. To enflesh the Beatitudes. In short, to be men and women who remind others of Jesus Christ. For this witness to be effective, it must be marked by profound joy, something we pray for on the Third Sunday of Advent, which is called Gaudete Sunday or the Sunday of joy. People are looking for true and lasting happiness. Jesus came so that his joy may be in us and our joy be made complete. We must be walking advertisements of the Good News.
  • The third part of the new evangelization is actually to speak about God, to have the courage to tell others about Jesus, his burning love and the truth that sets us free, to remind them that he is very much alive and active in prayer and the sacraments.
  • Fourth, to be an effective precursor, we can’t merely speak to the masses. We need to be willing to become a true friend of the ones to whom we’re introducing Jesus, the ones for whom Jesus died but of whose love they may be unaware. This type of one-on-one work is indispensable, like Jesus himself used with Nicodemus, with Zacchaeus, with the Samaritan woman, with Simon the Pharisee. Like Jesus did with them and with the disciples on the Road to Emmaus, we need to be able to enter into their conversations, to make their hearts burn as we interpret their pains within the light of the Scriptures and Jesus’ own suffering, death and resurrection.
  • Lastly, we should do all of this knowing that the Holy Spirit has been given us so that we might do so with tongues of fire, hearts full of love for those with whom we’re speaking, and the gifts of knowledge, wisdom, understanding, prudence, courage, reverence and awe of the Lord.
• The ongoing Eucharistic Revival taking place in the Church in the United States is a grace-filled opportunity for us to do this. Now in its Parish Phase, each of us has been asked by the US Bishops to invite at least one person back to the practice of the Sacraments, to help them to recognize that among us is one they don’t recognize, namely, Jesus Christ himself, who is with us in our monstrances and tabernacles to enter regularly into consequential conversations with us, who wants to nourish us with himself in Holy Communion, who wants to strengthen us to become his precursors in the middle of the world so that we, like John, might be able to introduce them to him, who has come so that his joy might be in us and our joy perfected. This Advent, during the Eucharistic Revival’s parish phase, is a tremendous opportunity for us to respond to the gifts of the Holy Spirit to become like John.
• The most beautiful moment in St. John the Baptist’s life was when he encountered Jesus, coming toward him at the Jordan. He shouted out, “Behold the Lamb of God! Behold Him who takes away the sins of the world! Behold the One of whom I was speaking!” On Sunday we will have this same encounter. May the Lord fill our hearts with joy and courage so that we might be able to be the precursors of Christ’s saving, Eucharistic, loving presence in the world, in the lives of our friends and family, and make straight the way for them to receive and embrace with love that Lamb who is coming to save us and fill us with himself!

The Gospel passage on which the homily was based was: 

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