Third Sunday of Advent

Beloved in God, today’s Holy Liturgy opens with these words from St. Paul’s letter to the Phil-ippians: Gaudete in Domino, semper. Iterum dico, gaudete. Rejoice in the Lord always. Again I say, rejoice. Indeed we should rejoice, for the Lord is nigh. That “the Lord is near” is the central theme of today’s liturgy; as the Nativity of Our Savior draws near, the Church is at pains to emphasize why joy should be brimming in our hearts: our redemption comes with the Child of Bethlehem. The gladness of heart urged upon us is not a boisterous and superficial affectation: it is that gladsome serenity in our souls which is the com-panion of holy peace. St. Paul bases Christian joy on the assurance of salvation which is brought to us by Christ: he desires it to be so firmly established in the soul that no reason of human anxiety or sadness can ever overcome it, since the great peace of God must henceforth predominate every other feeling. “Let your mod-eration be known to all men”; that is, let your mind and manner, your tongue and your Chris-tian motivations show forth toward others this great hope which you place in the coming of Christ into your hearts by grace. In the verses immediately preceding the lesson which we read today, St. Paul reminds the Philip-pians: “As you know, we are citizens of heaven.” And he makes a plea to two women, Evodia and Synteche, to “come to a mutual understanding in the Lord.” Though we do not know the matter of their disagreement, St. Paul pleads with the faith-ful of Philippi to assist them in reconciling their difference. “All men should notice how kind you are,” says Paul. To express such kindness re-quires genuine moderation, unfeigned humility, true forbearance, a willingness to waive one’s rights. In Paul’s mind, kindness signifies that outwardly we reveal what inwardly we believe: we are citizens of heaven and await hopefully the coming of our Savior. Since we have been so called, we live together in one mind with hearts “full of gratitude.”
These then are the signs of an authentic Christian spirit: spiritual joy deriving from the hope we place in our Redeemer and the virtues we practice deriving from the grace of Christ’s advent among us. Yet for St. Paul this advent of our Lord is not so much His birth in Bethlehem as His second coming. The great joy of Christians is to see the day drawing nigh when the Lord will come again in His glory to lead them into His kingdom. The oft-repeated veni of Advent is an echo not only of the prophets but also of the con-clusion of the Apocalypse of St. John: “Come, Lord Jesus,” the last words of the New Testament. Today’s gradual interjects a note of solemnity between Paul’s epistle and the Sunday’s Gospel, the completion of the account that began last week. “Thou, O Lord, that sittest upon the Cherubim, stir up Thy might and come!” This is an allusion to the Ark of the Covenant which guided the Hebrews through the lines of their enemy. Appropriately, the Church takes up their old battle cry: “Rouse your power, and come,” reminiscent of the collects for the past three Sundays calling upon God to bestir Himself to come and save us. The gradual chant forebodes hostility, the ene-my of God among us, prowling about and seeking the ruin of souls. It seems in keeping then that the Gospel should open with the evil intrigues of the Pharisees of Jerusalem. How different is their question from that of last Sunday, put by the disciples of St. John! “Are you He-who-is-to-come?”, they asked Jesus; while today the Jews question John with curt contempt:“Who are you?” John for his part bears out Jesus’ commenda-tion of his humility: he states that he is simply the unnamed and unknown messenger sent by God to prepare the people for the coming of the Lord as the prophet Isaiah had foretold. He then quotes the text of Isaiah in which the Prophet describes the arrival of the Messiah as that of an oriental monarch. IN those times when an eastern potentate was to visit a neighboring monarch, heralds were sent out to call workers to smooth the desert paths and prepare a straight path on which the royal visitor could walk. John was fulfilling this prophecy; he was calling on the people to prepare their hearts for the arrival of their Lord. Shining through John’s words we see that love of truth which made him humble, for humility is truth. The Jews were seeking not so much the true Messiah as a one of their own desire and making. Hence, John, no “reed swayed by the wind,” told them fearlessly: “I am a herald’s voice in the desert, ‘Make the Lord’s way straight!’” But, they retorted, who gave you the right to bap-tize? – for baptism was an act of formal initiation and required divine permission. I am not the founder of a new religion, replied John; “I am only baptizing with water.” My baptism is nothing more than an act of penance, and penance is what is needed to please God and to prepare the way for the Redeemer. Even now, He, the Re-deemer, is here: “one among you whom you do not recognize.” You ignore him because you are blind with pride, jealousy and worldly desires. As for myself, “I am not even worthy to unfasten His sandal straps.” Try to understand what I say and learn humility, and you will find the truth. Despite his virtue and exceptional holiness – in fact, due to it – the very one whom God chose to walk in the spirit of Elias, His herald, effaces himself: the Baptist desired to remain unknown and without importance. Everything should shrink into the background before the only one of importance: the long-awaited Messiah, Him for Whom our hearts must be made ready by straightening the paths of our crooked lives. And how this will be done the great Father of the Church, Gregory the Great, teaches us in a sermon he gave on today’s Gospel: “The way of the Lord to the heart is made straight when His words of truth are received with humility. The way of the Lord to the heart is made straight when our life is lived in harmony with His pre-cepts. Hence was it written: if anyone love Me, he will keep my word, and My Father will love him, and We will come to him, and make Our abode with him. Whosoever therefore lifts up his heart in pride, whosoever burns with the fever of ava-rice, whosoever soils himself with the defilement of lust, closes the gate of his heart against the en-trance of truth, and lest the Lord gain entrance, he fastens the gates with the locks of evil habits.” It is a far cry from Bethany beyond the Jordan to Charles Town in West Virginia, and twenty centuries separate us from today’s Gospel ac-count. But the voice of Christ’s herald rings out sharp and clear, across land and sea, down through the centuries of time: “Prepare ye the way of the Lord!” Let us do this, in the modesty of true Christian virtue, by putting off the old man, taking up the armor of light, rejoicing in the Advent of God’s Kingdom of grace and glory.