A New Kind of Joy

Third Sunday of Advent

Zeph 3, 14-18a / Phil 4, 4-7 / Lk 3, 10-18

Joy is in the air – at least, it should be according to our readings.  From the prophet Zephaniah we hear:  “Shout for joy, O daughter of Zion!”  And St. Paul practically shouts to us:  “Brothers and sisters:  Rejoice in the Lord always.  I shall say it again: rejoice!”  So the message is clear.  It’s joy.  It’s Gaudete Sunday.

To be honest.  I always come to “Gaudete” Sunday with some hesitation.  That’s because I’ve heard so many sermons preached in a way that tried to make joy into one, big should in my life.  “You should be joyful!”  And if you’re not, there’s something wrong with you spiritually.  But to me, joy can’t be made into that kind of ashould.  You will be joyful! – is too contrived.  It just doesn’t work.

Yet “Gaudete” Sunday does make me think about joy.  It makes me curious about the kind of joy so easily associated with this time of year.  Joy does seem to be the goal of all our eating and drinking – the goal of our music.  Whether we sing “Joy to the World” or “Rudolf the Red-nosed Reindeer” – I do think we want joy to come out of it all.  And of course there’s our gift-giving.  We don’t give gifts to get a groan.  We want smiles.  We want joy all around.  So the season does seem to say to us:  You will be joyful!  Joy is the reason for the season!

But again to be honest, isn’t that a kind of forced joy?  And isn’t it a disappointing joy – when you look from a Christian perspective?  From that perspective what gives us joy comes from someplace else altogether.  I want to tell you a kind of Advent story.  It’s about something that happened here at St. Peter’s this past Monday.

Last Monday we had a teaching Mass for those in RCIA.  We went through the Mass with commentary explaining why we do what we do.  We ended about 8:40pm and I left to go home.  Going out the back door I came upon a homeless woman who was setting herself up in the doorway for the night.  I asked her if she had tried to find a place in the women’s shelter.  She said she had stayed at the women’s shelter.  But she added there are usually a lot of younger women with their children at the shelter.  Since she had a kind of virus that made her cough a lot, she thought it better that she not expose the children to the virus.  Monday night was not too cold but Tuesday was predicted to dip into the 20’s.  So I encouraged her to plan on staying at the shelter the next night.  Then I left.

I kept thinking about that woman and her reason for not staying at the shelter:  to protect the children from her virus.  She was willing to spend the night outside – out of care for the children.  I thought to myself:  what a simply loving thing to do!  There and then I felt myself immersed in the mystery of the Incarnation:  God’s selfless love taking shape in human form.  There and then I felt joy in God’s presence that had come to me through this homeless woman.

That kind of joy comes as a gift – as sheer grace.  There can be no duty attached to it – no forced should – just gratitude – a simple gratitude.  That’s a new kind of joy – a leap of the heart at what God is doing in our very midst.  A new kind of joy – in God who is Immanuel – joy in God who is truly with us.  Oh come, oh come, Immanuel!

Fr. Pat Earl, SJ

What is Advent For?

SECOND SUNDAY of ADVENT

Fr. Pat Earl, SJ

Bar 5, 1-9 / Phil 1, 4-6, 8-9 / Lk 3, 1-6

I have something very simple to say.  I think it goes to the heart of Advent.  In our opening prayer we prayed that nothing would get in the way of our getting to know the Lord Jesus.  And we prayed to have God’s own wisdom so we could come to feel how closely Jesus accompanies us in our lives.  So let’s ask ourselves what gets in the way of our learning to recognize Jesus’ presence in our lives?

That’s what Advent is all about.  This whole season is all about helping us to become aware of Jesus’ presence in us.  And this is important to note:  it is not that at Christmas Christ will somehow come to us – as if he were not with us already.  Rather, it’s that during Advent we learn to come to Christ – we learn to recognize how Christ is already present to us in very real, concrete, fleshy ways.  That’s what Advent is for.

What gets in our way?  To begin with the obvious, we allow ourselves to become so busy, we fail to give ourselves quality time to spend with ourselves.  We fail to stay with what’s happening within us in any serious, sustained way.  So if anything is happening there, we’re the last to know it.

What I think gets in our way in a big way is a kind of false religiosity we have allowed to shape how we think about and imagine God’s presence in our lives.  That false religiosity is typically very churchy and ultra-spiritual.  But the gospels – and this season of Advent – are all quite clear and down-to-earth about where we are to find the living Christ taking on real flesh in our lives.  Christ’s living presence is as simple as the love we have for one another.  It’s as simple as the loving, caring things we do for one another.  I’m talking about everyday stuff – like getting up and going to work to provide for others.  I’m talking about taking time to listen to one another, even though we’re tired.  I’m talking about phoning or e-mailing someone who might be lonely or sad or unemployed.  The gospels and Advent call these things Incarnation – Word becoming flesh – God’s Glory coming down-to-earth.

For me it is the blessing and the curse of being a priest to see the blindness so many have to their own goodness and holiness.  It’s so obvious that Christ is living in them.  It may seem odd but I especially experience that in the sacrament of reconciliation.  There people are so humbly good.  You are so humbly good.

I want to conclude with a story from an Indian Jesuit, Anthony de Mello.  It’s an Advent parable.  Listen and learn how to use Advent.

A group of tourists sits in a bus that is traveling through incredibly beautiful country – lakes and mountains, green fields and rivers – But the shades of the bus are pulled down.  The tourists haven’t the slightest idea of what lies beyond the windows of the bus.  So they spend their time squabbling:  who will have the seat of honor; who will be applauded; who will get everyone’s attention.  And they remain that way till journey’s end.

A Special Time

FIRST SUNDAY OF ADVENT

Fr. Pat Earl, SJ

Jer 33, 14-16 / 1Thess 3, 12-4, 2 / Lk 21, 25-28, 34-36 

We are beginning a special time of year.  And special times bring special expectations.  Our expectations make us alert to things.  We become alert – aware of the good things in our lives.  And that is so good for us.  We need to do that:  to let the goodness in our lives come to life for us.

Advent is just such a time – a time for letting the goodness in our lives really come to life for us – letting people, places, events come to mind and heart.  A word we will frequently be hearing throughout the Advent season is “awake”.  In the gospel Jesus says to us: “Be watchful!  Stay alert!  I say to you and to all: ‘Stay awake!’”  But our awakening presumes we’ve been sleeping – somehow not alert.  Advent is there to call us from our sleeping – to call us out of our un-awareness.

Advent wants to be a kind of cold shower for us to shock us out of our un-awareness.  And Advent wants especially to shock us out of our myths about God.  It wants to shock us out of what we have settled into calling God’s presence.  This is the presence we have made of God.  The myth is the God of our own creation – usually a very American god – reliably nice and polite – and very therapeutic.  This god makes us feel good all over.  This is a comforting, churchy god made in the USA.  Advent wants to stun us into recognizing God’s real presence – God’s holy, awesome, living presence.  It wants us to smell God where we normally don’t.

Advent wants to change us.  It wants to fill our minds and imaginations with confusing, perplexing images – images of a world where God is seen, sensed and smelled in human flesh – yours and mine – and even in daily bread.  This fleshy God confuses beyond all expectation.  This God of Advent says: “Take me, eat me, become me.”  This God says to us:  “I am already in you; you are already in me.”

We will know Advent is having its affect on us when – at an hour we do not expect – in a manner we cannot imagine – in a closeness that baffles and blesses us – the Son of Man will come to us – will come into our real, ordinary, daily lives.  He will have our own smell.

The grace of Advent will be given to us – as we come to recognize and realize we are where Jesus is most at home.  His first choice of residence is:  us.  We are his chosen tabernacle.  This wonderful church, this sanctuary, this tabernacle – they all have their use in recalling to us Jesus’ real presence:  “I am already in you; you are already in me.”

Let us awaken and be watchful.  Let us in Advent prepare ourselves for finding in our own lives God’s preferred place of residence.  Let us learn to smell God there – in our own lives.  Indeed, we are the Body of Christ.