4th Sunday of Advent
VOCATION: Jesus calls us - He calls us to follow Him, to be filled with the Holy Spirit, and to become a missionary disciple....
Homily MP3 version - PDF version
What are the offerings that we bring to God? What is the meaning of "HOSANNAH!" We acclaim God for his greatness and praise Him, while at the same time calling upon Him to rescue us in our distress.... "HOSANNAH!" MP3 version
“May the Lord come in; He is the King of glory. Alleluia!”
Sisters! Brothers! Again, good evening. St. Joseph is our Father’s gift to us today, this 4th Sunday of Advent. The testimony we receive in the Gospel is that St. Joseph was a righteous man. He was a good man, a holy man; who loved God and always wanted to do God’s will. It is not always easy to know what is God’s will or to do it, as we observe happened to St. Joseph; when he found out that Mary had become pregnant before they had begun to live together.
The Law required adulterers to be stoned to death. Any woman who became pregnant by a man not her husband or before marriage was an adulterer. As Joseph searched his religious tradition in order to know what God’s will was for him in this situation, the best he could see or understand was that he should withdraw from his engagement to marry Mary. However, Joseph did not think that Mary deserved to die; so, he decided to withdraw secretly from marrying her.
“May the Lord come in; He is the King of glory. Alleluia!”
Everyone knows that after a few months, it usually becomes obvious that a woman is pregnant. This automatically made a pregnant woman an adulteress if the man who joined with her was not her husband. What can often be unfair in these situations is that there is no external sign on the man who commits adultery. Jesus draws our attention to this disparity, even today, between the treatment of men’s sins and the treatment of women’s sins.
There is another disparity which causes us even more trouble: the disparity between our human will and the will of God. Even when we try to discern or interpret the will of God, what we want to do remains, basically, our will. The will of God remains, in itself, hidden within the Most Holy Trinity. We know that the will of God is manifest in nature, in the order, beauty, and purpose of Creation, but even then, in order to know with certainty what is the will of God; we need to ask God to confirm our discernment. St. Joseph thought the will of God was obvious in Mary’s pregnancy, but as it turned out, her pregnancy was the work of the Holy Spirit in Mary, and the will of God was for Joseph to go ahead and marry her anyway in spite of the Law.
“May the Lord come in; He is the King of glory. Alleluia!”
This need for discernment
and for confirmation from God continues to be the way it is for us. We need to
learn how to ask God to show us his will and to confirm our understanding of
what is his will. If we don’t take this additional step; then, we are likely to
misinterpret what is the will of God like Joseph did. We cannot expect God to
give us signs in every circumstance like the dream He gave to Joseph. The normal
way to ask God to show us his will and to confirm our interpretation of his
will is through prayer and praying with Scripture.
“May the Lord come in; He is the King of glory. Alleluia!”
God is greater than the Law. If we make no effort to know the will of God, when we pray the Lord’s Prayer; we are likely to distort the words and their meaning. Without even realizing it, we can end up praying like this: “MY kingdom come, MY will be done, in Heaven as I want it to be on Earth.” It is good to pray carefully and intentionally the Lord’s Prayer: “Thy kingdom come; thy will be done, on Earth as it is in Heaven.” However, just saying the words over and over again isn’t enough. We need to take the extra step each day of looking for confirmation of our understanding of what the will of God is for us in the real circumstances of our lives.
“May the Lord come in; He is the King of glory. Alleluia!”
Christians have come to understand that the “highway” to always doing the will of God is to make it a common practice every day to surrender our will, to set aside what we want in order to make room for what others want – our spouse, our parents, our siblings; yes, and even our children and our enemies. The more we set aside what we want, the more likely we are to make room for the will of God. This Christian discipline is called mortification, or dying to oneself, or putting to death our own weak, narrow, limited, and selfish human will.
This sounds gruesome, but the Most Holy Trinity actually fill us with peace and joy when we walk in the ways of the Lord; when we deliberately seek to know and to do the will of God.
In a few moments, it will be time to place at the altar our offering to God. It is ourselves that we offer: all that we carry within us, our hopes and our fears, our desires and our regrets, our sins and our repentance, and even our own will. Let us open wide our spirit to God; so that the Lord may do in us all that He desires to do: to lead, to forgive, to heal, and to give life.
“May the Lord come in; He is the King of glory. Alleluia!”
“Our Lady of Ville Marie, pray for us. St. Joseph, pray for us. St. Brother André, pray for us. St. Kateri, pray for us. All you holy women and men, pray for us. O my Jesus, I trust in You! Thank You; You who are God, the Father, + the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.”
In silence now, the Holy Spirit continues to fill us with
the Radiance of the Most Holy Trinity.
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