Homily from the Parish Priest for the Third Sunday of Advent
Readings for Year B: Isaiah 61:1-2,10-11; I Thessalonians 5:16-24; John 1:6-8, 19-28
One of the really encouraging things about working here at Farm Street is seeing the number of people we have visiting the church and seeing them stop to reflect and pray in different places – Our Lady of Lourdes, Homeless Jesus, Andrew White’s Last Supper, St Theresa, are especially popular. And many more have been coming in during the pandemic – something which has shown the need to keep the churches open; and I must add how grateful we are to our wonderful stewards who staff our desk at the Farm Street entrance - as a place of welcome this service has facilitated such a vital dimension of our mission.
Personally, I’d like to meet more of our visitors and learn something more about them, to appreciate more that need for spaces to reflect on this time when the situation we’re in is affecting us. As it seems now more and more are feeling the need to take time to think about what we’ve gone through. For many I know life is getting harder and harder. Redundancies and being furloughed, family and relationships being challenged to the limit, such a lot of loneliness. And for some I hear it’s getting more and more frustrating as we move in and out of lockdown and feel more and more frustrated. And I wonder how much this might say about the time we’re in collectively, as a human community, and the need to reflect on it in order to prepare well for a new future, a world which undoubtedly will look different on the other side.
The Gospel this Sunday, continuing on from last, is inviting us all to heed the call to stop, reflect, and to prepare well. To go to our desert place. The Gospel takes us there again: it really is when we’re here in our wilderness, in our own desert, that we’re walking alongside the People of Israel who here are not yet encountering the Messiah but are preparing to do so: just glimpsing this sketchy figure John the Baptist. But the Lord is getting closer to them, his voice is getting louder and more persistent; the message is getting clearer, altogether more focussed: we must prepare for the Lord to come into our lives again, to meet us where we are, and to ask ourselves what did we expect out there in the wilderness? Did we expect to find wealth, status, prophecy? Is that what we wanted? Did we expect an immediate answer, remedy, reason for the struggle we’re going through? Do we, here in our own contemporary desert, expect this? Do we expect that the release of a vaccine and eventual end of restrictions on our lives will take us back to where we were before all this happened? What is it we want to learn, how do we want to be changed, be transformed?
St Ignatius asks a similar question in the Spiritual Exercises. What is my deepest desire, my deepest desire, taking account of my life at this time, of what I perceive of the world in all its beauty, the creation of a loving God, and in all its struggles and sufferings, the presence of evil as well as good, of the presence of sin both individual and structural? Under which standard will I be when I come out of all of this? That of desiring the world to be a better place where God’s Kingdom will take root, or carry on as normal, selfishly believing it’s not my responsibility to bring the Kingdom of God to a beleaguered embattled planet earth? What is my deepest desire, he asks us. What perhaps do I make my own idols, where do I see my salvation? What passing pleasures do I put store by? What do I chase in vain?
Because this time is crucial. We prepare to welcome Christ again. We are preparing to welcome Christ at Christmas, the Christ whom we profess will come again in time. What do we expect when he comes? A God who will wave a magic wand and make everything alright? A God who rewards us for our loyalty even if we have not used our gifts fully? Or a God who enters into our world without being known, born homeless and hunted down from birth? A God who knows our vulnerability, our frailty, who is made human in the world alongside ourselves and our societies in all their brokenness.
Facing our wilderness in the midst of the city and the world confronts us with huge challenges. Called to allow ourselves to be led forward as we are with all our cares, worries, doubts and all to the person of Jesus, the one whom we really do believe in becoming one of us can bring us healing and peace.
And that God is already present right under our noses in our world. The sheer goodness of people yearning to care for the weakest in society. The love shown to loved ones especially at this time of grief, anxiety, suffering. The courage of those who put themselves on the line to tend the sick. These are the presence of Christ, the presence of God beckoning us on to embrace his Kingdom. And that must give us hope at this time, a hope we are called to proclaim as we prepare to welcome Christ again to transform us, heal us, make us disciples of his mission in a world groaning to embrace a new era of peace and joy.
Fr Dominic Robinson SJ