Third Sunday of Advent
Sunday, December 14, 2025
St. James Cathedral (5:30pm Vigil & 10:00am)
Christ Our Hope (7:00pm)

My friends, I think patience is one of the virtues that is difficult for many of us, if not most of us. Parents struggle to have patience with their children. Spouses struggle to have patience with each other. Siblings struggle with patience. Children struggle to have patience with their older parents. Friends often struggle to be patient with each other.
 
St. James, in his letter to an ancient Christian community acknowledges that this difficulty dates back to the early days of the Christian church. “Be patient brothers and sisters until the coming of the Lord,” he writes.
 
The struggles we have in being patient in human relationships are also reflected in our struggles to be patient with God. As we enter into this Third Week of Advent we celebrate Gaudete Sunday – a word that means “rejoice!” We rejoice because we have turned a corner in our preparations for Christmas. This week we will begin looking toward Christmas with even greater excitement.
 
So, like the younger ones among us who are getting more and more excited about Christmas and perhaps less and less patient with the waiting, we too long for the fullness that God promises in coming among us in flesh and blood.
 
Isaiah reflects that fullness, that utter reversal of the fortunes of those who have been in exile. The coming of the Lord will be a time of full blossoming of the earth, total healing of human infirmities, and the restoration of all that has been lost. With that vision it is hard to be patient for the coming of the Lord. We want that fullness now.
 
But the patience that James urges and that we need today is not the kind of patience that we often desire. I have found that more often than not when someone talks to me about their struggle with impatience, what they are really asking for is more patience to put up with something or someone that really irritates them. They need ways to put up with things so they don’t get angry.
 
The kind of patience James urges today is not the same as putting up with things or people that irritate us. God has made promises to us, his people, and we can become impatient in our longing for those promises to be fulfilled. St. James tells us that as people of faith we need to be like farmers – they plant seeds and they wait for flowering and fruitfulness to happen – in time.
 
In today’s Gospel, John the Baptist sends his disciples to Jesus because he longs to know if the Messiah has come. He’s not sure because Jesus was not acting like the messiah he expected. There was not the same fire and brimstone in Jesus’ preaching as there was in John’s.  Remember last week’s “You brood of vipers!”?But John lived on in hope and sent his disciples to question Jesus. Is he the one or should we look for another?.
 
Jesus tells John’s disciples to report what they “see and hear.” He tells them to “see and hear” that the deaf hear, the mute speak, the blind see, the lame walk, the dead are raised and the poor have the good news preached to them. This is what Isaiah had promised and Jesus says to look around and see that it has arrived in his words and works. Like John’s disciples, we simply have to look and listen – we have to “see and hear” in our day.
 
Those of us who grow tired of waiting may neglect to see and hear the good things God is doing. We could be a little like those “prophets of doom” that Pope John XXIII spoke of as he opened the Second Vatican Council.
 
Often times these days, the state of affairs in our culture, and even in our Church can weary us and can tend put some of us in a constant bad mood. From that place of gloom and doom it is very easy to do what St. James cautions against – to grumble against each other and to judge each other harshly. James knew from his own experience of Christian community that our impatience can cause us to turn against each other.
 
The truth is that everything is not perfect in our lives and in the world in which we live. But if that is our only focus, then we will not only become frustrated and impatient, but we will miss the blessings that abound. And recognizing our blessings is what has really been at the heart of this Jubilee Year of Hope.
 
If Jesus told us today to report “what we see and hear,” what would we say? Some would report that chaos is all around, that the country is going to hell in a hand basket, that our family and friends disappoint us, that our parents don’t trust us, that our job is unfulfilling, that our spouse is not meeting our needs, that our health is not as good as we always thought it would be…and on and on. You know these folks. I know these folks. In fact, at one time or another, I’ve been these folks. Maybe you have too.
But if that doom and gloom becomes our only frame of reference, our only focus, then we will never be able to see and hear the presence of the healing, loving, reconciling presence of Jesus among us.
 
In today’s Gospel Jesus calls you and me blest. We are the ones who live after John the Baptist, and are even greater than he, because we live in the kingdom that Jesus brought.
 
This Sunday is a great day of rejoicing because as we turn our attention toward the coming feast of Christmas, we realize that God has come among us – and because of that God’s light will ultimately triumph over whatever might be dark and gloomy in our lives and in the life of our world.
 
My friends, if believing in Christ means anything, it means we know that God is slowly accomplishing his work. Perhaps it is not happening in the way and in the time frame that we would like, but we can be sure it is happening.
 
We turn to the Table of the Lord now, and come with faith, trusting that Jesus is the source of our hope and the fulfillment of God’s promise. He is the answer to the deepest desires and hungers of the human heart..
 
God has indeed reached out to us in Jesus, and in these gifts of bread and wine, the very presence of Christ, we “hear and see,” in sacramental signs, what God is up to among us: nourishing a body of patient and hope-filled believers to spread His Good News.

Father Gary F. Lazzeroni