Third Sunday of Advent-B
Preachers and homilists are charged with the heavy burden of proclaiming the Word of God on the Third Sunday of Advent primarily because the minds and hearts of the faithful are no longer interested in a message of waiting. In preparing for Christmas, waiting becomes a hindrance, which cannot be tolerated if all necessary tasks are to be completed. And so, the message of Advent is often watered down to meet the expectations of the flocks that Christmas is already here.
In this instance, the primary fault with meeting the people where they are is the misconception that people cannot prepare and wait simultaneously. Preparing for Christmas 2023 is transitory, while the hope for a better life far outlasts the yearly celebration Advent urges us to recognize.
Christians need to be reminded, especially during this time of the year, that the meaning of Advent is at the core of their beliefs. Isaiah prophesies the predicament of human futility and proclaims that the Lord will promise to relieve them from their pain. “The spirit of the Lord God is upon me because the Lord has anointed me; he has sent me to bring glad tidings to the poor, to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to captives and release prisoners, to announce a year of favor from the Lord.”
Look around; some people are poor, brokenhearted, and held captive. Better said, all humanity is flawed in some way, brokenhearted, and are captives and prisoners. For faithful Christians, their brokenness is in tension with the hope that God will vanquish their fallen condition. As an Advent people, the Church realizes the Kingdom of God is here but has not yet come to its fulfillment.
To those who have not accepted the invitation to be part of the Kingdom of God, the principle of waiting for a remedy to their problems is anathema. Instead, the cure for their affliction does not reside in a Savior, but in the modalities the world offers. Their search leads them to dark alleys and into valleys that have no end until they realize that the messiahs followed are frauds.
The hope for a Christian is the realization that although we share the same maladies as unbelievers, there is a certainty that our Lord will, at last, destroy our poverty, our broken-heartedness, and our captivity forever. When we are baptized as Christians, we are infused with hope, and our spiritual DNA reflects the ‘not yet’ aspect of disciples of Christ. If anything describes a disciple, you would be hard-pressed to find a more descriptive term than Advent people.
The third pink candle symbolizes our hope. Today is traditionally called Gaudete Sunday, a name taken from Latin that means rejoice. Unlike our ancestors before the birth of Christ, who could only hope and plead with God, we rejoice because we already know God has already visited his people by the Incarnation of his Son. How lucky we are to simultaneously rejoice in the possibility of salvation with the hope that our existence is headed toward a much better life in eternity.
There doesn’t need to be a contradiction between preparing for Christmas and honoring the waiting period asked of us by the Advent season. The upcoming celebration of the birth of Christ reminds us that the ‘not yet’ will be engulfed by the ‘forever.’