Watch this homily!
If you came looking for some comfort this
morning, you’re in luck. And if you’re ready for a challenge, you
won’t be disappointed. There’s enough comfort in today’s scriptures
– and enough challenge – to change the world and, maybe more to the
point, to change each of us.
Isaiah is the comforter today with his
blessed vision of peace. And John the Baptist is the challenger –
John, the disturber of the peace.
Isaiah raises the curtain on a scene that
sounds more like something out of J. K. Rowling or J. R. R. Tolkien
than Holy Writ. With broad and beautiful strokes Isaiah paints
a picture of the peaceable kingdom – God’s dream, God’s plan for the
human family. It definitely seems closer to fantasy than to reality,
but that is not our judgment to make. Remember: this is God’s
kingdom, not ours. In God’s kingdom the poor are on top of the heap
and the meek are the ones with all the power. Here, mortal enemies
become friends, wolves live alongside lambs, lions graze in the
pastures with cows, children play by the cobra’s den, and all God’s
children live in peace, “for there shall be no harm or ruin on all
my holy mountain,” says the Lord.
Fantasy? It seems so, doesn’t it? It’s
certainly a large leap from the world as we know it. But, my
friends, Advent is about making leaps. In Advent we prepare to
welcome once again God’s almighty Word, our Savior, who in the
midnight of a very dark world, made the huge leap from heaven to
earth - becoming one of us - forever changing the very nature of
reality or, perhaps I should say, forever giving reality
possibilities it never had before.
Once the Word became flesh and dwelt among
us, our human nature, graced but wounded, received a whole new lease
on life. It took on new possibilities. What once seemed sheer
fantasy – a peaceful world with justice for all and the human family
living as one family – what once seemed sheer fantasy became a
possibility, a divine possibility, as divine as the Word that became
one of us.
But, you may be saying, let’s be real.
Christ came two-thousand years ago and nothing has really changed
except, perhaps, for the worse, or so it seems. Even we who believe
in Christ are hopelessly divided among ourselves - scandalously so -
and tragically, his followers, far from being peacemakers, have
actually killed untold millions of people down through the ages. In
his name!
But, my friends, we must not let human
failings blur the vision or define what is real. Remember, the
vision is God’s, not ours, and the power to realize it is in Christ,
and Christ has become one of us and we, through Baptism, have become
one with him. So, yes, human blindness, selfishness, and greed do
get in the way, but no flaws or failings of ours are equal to the
grace of Jesus Christ. And therein lies hope; therein lies the
antidote to the powerlessness we feel and the cynicism which can
close our hearts and shut our eyes to the Great Vision.
I began by saying that Isaiah was the
comforter today and John the Baptist the challenger, the disturber
of the peace. Perhaps that wasn’t entirely fair. It’s true that
John’s harsh, finger-pointing words, “you brood of vipers, who can
save you from the wrath to come?” are as much a reproach to us as
they were to the Pharisees and Sadducees who first heard them.
But John does more than point
the finger of blame. He also points with serene confidence to
the Lamb of God, the Christ – the one far greater than him, the one
whose sandals he is not worthy to carry. This one, says the Baptist,
is the real Baptizer because he will baptize with the Holy Spirit
and with fire. And, my friends, we have received that Baptism. We
have! It should be a fire within us and a transforming Spirit.
But our baptism will not burn within us if we do not let it, and it
will not change us unless we want to be changed. There are so many
ways we can negate the power, the divine power, of our Baptism.
And that brings me to a question I’d like
to ask: what reality do you choose to live in? The reality of
things-as-they-are-and-always-have-been? The tired-out reality of
the status quo? The cyclical reality of fear and selfishness which
invariably lead to hatred and violence in all their many forms?
Or do you dare to dream of – and choose - a whole new kind of world
that has become possible with the coming of the Christ?
The French writer, Georges Bernanos, in his
great novel The Diary of a Country Priest, speaks
eloquently to this point. “Faith,” he wrote, “is not a thing which
one ‘loses,’ we merely cease to shape our lives by it.” And there is
a lot of truth there. And wisdom. But hope is not the same as faith.
Unlike faith, we can lose hope. We lose hope when we no longer shape
our lives by faith. For faith holds onto the Great Vision, the Great
Dream – God’s great dream - and embraces it no matter how fantastic
it might seem, or how unreal. Faith puts no limits on the real.
Faith believes in the great Advent and Christmas message that
“nothing is impossible for God!”
My friends in Christ, each year we
celebrate Advent and Christmas because we need to be teased and
tantalized by a vision which can seem more fantasy than reality. But
we must never stop believing in that vision because, for reasons we
will never understand, God believes in us and uses us to make the
Great Dream come true!
Father Michael G. Ryan
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