Fr. Roger J. Landry
Conversations with Consequences Podcast
Homily for the Third Sunday of Advent (B)
December 12, 2020
To listen to an audio recording of this short Sunday homily, please click below:
The text that guided the homily is:
- 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, 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 to him at the Jordan were trying to figure him out. “Who are you?,” they asked. He wasn’t the Messiah. He wasn’t Elijah come to life again. He wasn’t the Prophet Moses. 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 he announced he was the forerunner of another, the voice of the one calling all of us to conversion, of the 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.”
- In the ancient world, before Twitter and Facebook, before text messages and the internet, 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 who is coming might be expected, desired and welcomed, so that they could repair the roads and the bridges or make new ones, so that they could clean everything up, and so that the people may 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 still.
- 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 become precursors in our own right. Jesus constantly has need of heralds to announce his presence and coming. And 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 Elizabeth, because he would later be his indomitable herald. The same Lord has chosen us, has redeemed 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 Sunday’s as if God doesn’t exist, as if Jesus didn’t come, as if Jesus, God-with-us, is really not here to save us, sanctify us, and shepherd us to be with him forever. They 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 maintain a nostalgia for Christian values and some 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 all been calling everyone of us 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 Christ and with us in Christ. 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.
- 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, among televangelists, especially because of the clergy sex abuse crisis, 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 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. 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 Jesus, to have the courage to speak to others about Jesus, to tell them about 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.
- Lastly, we should do all of this with an authentic Christian spirituality, which means confidence and openness to the Holy Spirit’s working within us, who fills us with love for those with whom we’re speaking.
- 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 the Lamb who is coming!
The Gospel on which the homily was based was:
A man named John was sent from God.
He came for testimony, to testify to the light,
so that all might believe through him.
He was not the light,
but came to testify to the light.
And this is the testimony of John.
When the Jews from Jerusalem sent priests
and Levites to him
to ask him, “Who are you?”
He admitted and did not deny it,
but admitted, “I am not the Christ.”
So they asked him,
“What are you then? Are you Elijah?”
And he said, “I am not.”
“Are you the Prophet?”
He answered, “No.”
So they said to him,
“Who are you, so we can give an answer to those who sent us?
What do you have to say for yourself?”
He said:
“I am the voice of one crying out in the desert,
‘make straight the way of the Lord,’”
as Isaiah the prophet said.”
Some Pharisees were also sent.
They asked him,
“Why then do you baptize
if you are not the Christ or Elijah or the Prophet?”
John answered them,
“I baptize with water;
but there is one among you whom you do not recognize,
the one who is coming after me,
whose sandal strap I am not worthy to untie.”
This happened in Bethany across the Jordan,
where John was baptizing.
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