Third Sunday in Advent, Year
C. Zeph. 3:14-18a; Phil. 4:4-7; Luke
3:10-18
AIM: To help the
hearers experience Christian joy.
Is there anyone here who does not
remember Mother Teresa, now Saint Teresa of Calcutta
ASing joyfully, O Israel!@ we heard in the first reading. ABe glad and exult with all your
heart.@ The responsorial psalm continued
this theme: ACry out with joy and gladness.@ Paul repeats it in the second
reading. Writing from a Roman prison, hardly a place of joy, he tells the
Christian community at Philippi : ARejoice in the Lord always!@ And joy is evident also in the
gospel description of the people=s reaction to the preaching of John
the Baptist: AThe people were filled with
expectation@ B or, as another translation has it,
they were Aon tiptoe of expectation@ [New English Bible] B Aand all were asking in their hearts
whether John might be the Christ.@
Would a stranger visiting a Catholic
church on Sunday morning find people Aon tiptoe of expectation,@ radiating Mother Teresa’s Aunambiguous joy@? In some places, perhaps. But in
many others definitely not. Why are there so many bored, joyless faces in
Catholic churches B on both sides of the altar? One reason, surely, is the
emphasis we place on obligations. Catholics who come to Mass on Sunday
simply to fulfill a legal obligation – to get their card punched -- are hardly
likely to experience much joy.
Now don=t get me wrong. Obligations are
important. They are the bridges that carry us over life=s valleys, when zeal and enthusiasm
slacken. Sunday Mass, however, is meant to be more than just an obligation. It
is a celebration. A religion which never gets beyond fulfilling a list
of obligations will always be joyless. Though our religious obligations are
defined in minimum terms, Catholics who are concerned simply with fulfilling
these obligations experience them as heavy burdens, without which life
would be much more pleasant.
A religion of minimum obligations only
is based on the idea of a remote God who makes unpleasant demands on us, and
punishes us when we fail to measure up.
If we don=t want any trouble, therefore, we=d better satisfy God=s demands. Catholics who think of God like that tend to
think that once they have satisfied God=s demands, they are free to live the
rest of their lives as they please. Such people are living with God on the
fringe of their lives. At the center are their own plans, their own desires,
their own Apursuit of happiness.@
At this point I must tell you something
that may surprise you. As long as God is on the fringe of your life, he will
always be a threat to you. Why? Because he will always be trying to move from
the fringe into the center. That is why there are so many joyless faces
in church on Sunday morning. Most of the people behind those faces probably
think of God as someone threatening and remote, on the fringe of their lives,
whom they are trying to appease by fulfilling a list of minimum obligations. Such
a God is always a threat. He seems always to be asking for more; wanting to
move from the fringe into the center.
Have you
ever felt threatened by God? Would you like to end that threat? To make your
religion a source of joy, rather than a burden? You can B and it=s very simple. All you have to do is
move God from the fringe of your life into the center. If your religion is based upon fulfilling a
list of minimum obligations, that will sound very threatening. Once God is at
the center of my life, you=re probably asking, won=t he take over and smother me with
his demands?
In reality, precisely the opposite is
the case. A religion which places God at the center is the only kind of
religion that can produce joy. Show me a follower of Jesus Christ who radiates
the Aunambiguous joy@ that even a secular journalist saw
in Mother Teresa, and I will show you someone who never asks: >How little can I give to God and
still satisfy my obligation? How late can I come to Mass, for instance, and how
early can I hurry away, and still have it Acount@?= People whose religion brings them
joy, and who radiate that joy to others, ask a very different question: >If God has given me all that I have
and am, apart from my sins, how much do I dare keep for myself?=
That is the question Mother Teresa
asked when, at age thirty-six, she felt called by God to leave the security of
her Principal=s job in a convent school for wealthy
girls in Calcutta in order to devote the rest of her life to the service of the
poor. She had no money and no companions. It took her over a year just to get
permission to leave her convent for new work. At her death, however, there were
almost 3000 women in 132 countries worldwide who had joined her Missionaries of
Charity B and that in a day in which, in our
country alone, over 100,000 women left the convent to pursue other
paths.
Comparatively few people are called
in the special away that Mother Teresa was B though some are. Somewhere in this
church right now there is a young person whom God is calling to be a Sister, a
religious Brother, or a priest. Ahead of you is a wonderful life! Respond
generously to God=s call, and you will discover that the Lord will never be
outdone in generosity. How do I know that? I know it from my own experience. When
I was just twelve years old, the Lord put into my heart the desire to be a
priest. Since then, I=ve never wanted anything else. I=ve been a priest now for over 61
years. And I=ve never regretted it: not one single
day. The late Chicago Andrew
Greeley, writes: APriests who like being priests are among the happiest men in
the world.@ I can confirm that from my own
experience. [I’ve written about that experience in a book called No Ordinary Fool: A Testimony to Grace.
It’s the story of my difficult journey to the Catholic Church: I was a priest
in the Episcopal Church for six years before I became a Catholic, and later a priest.
And it’s the story too of a man who, more than 64 years after ordination, is
still in love with priesthood.]
Let me tell you finally about another
man who was in love with priesthood. He died in Rome South Vietnam in 1975, he had just been made archbishop of Saigon . He was arrested and imprisoned for thirteen
years. He writes:
AWhen I was arrested, I had to leave
immediately with empty hands. The next day I was permitted to write to my
people asking for the most necessary things: clothes, toothpaste. I wrote, >Please send me a little wine as
medicine for my stomach ache.= The faithful understood right away. They sent me a small
bottle of wine for Mass with a label that read, >Medicine for stomach aches.= They also sent me some hosts, hidden
in a flashlight.
AThe police asked me: >You have stomach aches?= >Yes,= I told them. >Here=s some medicine for you,= they said.
AI will never be able to express my
great joy! Every day, with three drops of wine and a drop of water in the palm
of my hand, I would celebrate Mass.
AEach time I celebrated Mass, I had
the opportunity to extend my hands and nail myself to the cross with Jesus, to
drink with him the bitter chalice. Each day in reciting the words of
consecration, I confirmed with all my heart and soul a new pact, an eternal
pact between Jesus and me through his blood mixed with mine. Those were the
most beautiful Masses of my life!@
Those words challenge us. Does the
Mass mean, for us, even a fraction of what it meant to that imprisoned bishop?
______________________________________________________
The bishop=s story is taken from Francis Xavier Van Than, Testimony
of Hope (Boston
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