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Third Sunday of Advent

 

Homily for the Third Sunday of Advent
St. Ignatius Church, Tokyo - Fr. Firmansyah, SJ

Well, here we are in the third week of our journey into Christmas. A week symbolized by the color of rose, the color of joy, of love, admiration and appreciation. This color indicates to us the meaning of entering the third week of Advent. We are invited to enter deeper into the heart of Christmas: the joy which comes from knowing that our hopes and expectations are fulfilled by the coming of Jesus into our midst. Thus, in this third week of advent, our journey into Christmas is characterized by our own personal reflections to recognize God’s fulfillment of our hopes, right here and now, throughout the course of our daily lives.

 

Jesus told the disciples of St. John the Baptist that to recognize the Messiah they need to look for the signs of fulfillment. He told them that “the blind regain their sight, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have the good news proclaimed to them.” These are the signs of messianic fulfillment. Signs which indicate how the presence of the Messiah in this world will create waves of empowerment for those who were considered as “the blind, the lame, the lepers, the deaf, or the dead” in their society. Indeed, these people are the ones who are considered as powerless in the society and precisely to these people Jesus addressed his messianic activities. He empowered them and turned their cry for help into cries of joy. The presence of the Messiah empowers us to be not helpless but, joyful person.

 

However, the blind, the lame, the lepers, the deaf, or the dead are not only people who lived during Jesus’ era. They become also the symbols of our experience living in today’s world; a world characterized by the actions of deleting and not creating; characterized also by the virtue of forgetting and not forgiving. Living our daily life in this world often-times forces us to turn a blind eye towards injustice. It forces us to become lame when we only want to stay in our own safe zone. We become accustomed to our own internal “lepers” which cripples us from within. We reject the cry of help from others and thus become deaf to them. And without knowing it we turn ourselves little by little into becoming a mechanical living being. But don’t be discouraged.

 

My dear brothers and sisters, our journey now into the birth of the Messiah is the journey we need to take if we want to experience the true heart of Christmas. It is the journey during which we restore our hope by appreciating the signs of salvation God has shown us concretely and yet subtly throughout the course of our daily lives. These are the moments described by St. John the Baptist, moments during which we are led to recognize the work of God’s saving grace in its raw form. My dear brothers and sisters, rather than searching for a fulfillment of our hopes in a particular gift during this coming Christmas, let us be aware of these St.-John-the-Baptist moments in our lives, moments through which God concretely communicates to us and moves us to the path of the true joy of salvation. God calls us to salvation. Let us live a life worthy of that call.

 

 

Jesus said to them in reply, “Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind regain their sight, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have the good news proclaimed to them.

(Matthew 11:4-5)

 

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