Homily, December 8, 2024

Speaker: Fr. John Esper

December 05, 2024

385

From The Pastor

Christmas is a mystery that deserves a time of meaningful preparation. Advent is the period of preparation. The challenge is to look past the immediate activity of a holiday and consider the meaning and movements of what Christmas is and what it means. Christmas, by itself, celebrates the birth of Jesus with all the trimmings and trappings of the holiday, is a big event. It deserves the religious and cultural attention it is given.

On a larger scale, Advent calls us to look beyond the temporal to the eternal. The Incarnation of God born in the flesh through the Virgin Mary is a stunning reality that changes everything we know about the heavens and the earth. Longing for a Messiah to break the chains of oppression, poverty, and Roman occupation to liberate a nation is one thing, but to recognize an eternal Messiah enters a whole new realm.

In the Incarnation, heaven comes to earth. Emmanuel proclaims, ‘God is with us.’ This is more than a social cultural event that brings joy and unity to families and social gatherings. The infinite invisible God has come to earth to unite all peoples and nations as one in the redemptive work of salvation. It is on this level that I invite you to prepare for and ponder the reality of Christmas.

Consider the contrast of how St. Luke introduces John the Baptist. Luke intentionally begins the reading by setting the historical time, place, and people who hold worldly power. Tiberias Caesar, Pontius Pilate, Herod, Phillip, Lysanias, Annas and Caiphas all hold positions of worldly and religious power. We are familiar with these names and we know the roles they play as the gospel unfolds. The power they hold is temporal, worldly, and passing.

Introducing John the Baptist, Luke moves from the temporal world to the spiritual and the eternal. As a nobody living in the desert, ‘the word of God came to John the son of Zechariah.’ John is a man of God, seeking God, who proclaims the work of God in the coming of the Savior. John cries out in the coming of Jesus an eternal and unending salvation that reaches both within and beyond the world.

Infinite and eternal are words of religious and spiritual meaning. They can be used in science, quantum physics and such things, but most commonly refer to God. Words can only fail in any attempt to define and describe God. Divine love is infinite. God is eternal and unchanging. Infinity and eternal reality are beyond the human mind. We are limited to adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing as well as higher theories of mathematics. Infinity is endless, without measure, an undefinable quantity.

The eternal, infinite God enters the world in the coming of Christ. We must ponder this mystery. Redemptive salvation is not a reality initiated from within the created world. God, the Infinite Divine One, entered our world at the birth of Jesus.

Consider the images used by John. They are biblical, poetic, and spiritual. They convey images of transformation only God can accomplish. They are images of restoration, healing, and liberation. Valleys will be filled, mountains will be made low, winding roads made straight, and rough ways smooth. These are spiritual images stirring the imagination to the things of God.

It is in this frame that John proclaims a baptism of repentance. John is calling us to see beyond the sin, hate, and disorder of the world to perceive the limitless power of God in the One who is to come. To repent is to change your mind, to see things in a new way, to become awake to Life within your life. Repentance is like putting an old picture in a new frame. In a new frame, an old picture will reveal a whole new view and insight into its beauty and meaning.

This is the invitation and the work of Advent. The Advent season all but demands we look beyond the temporal and the worldly to see the spiritual and the eternal. The new light Jesus brings into the world serves as a new frame to see the life we are given in the Infinite God come to earth. This deserves our attention and our pondering lest we remain earth bound in the doubts, fears, and disordered realities that constantly constrain us.

God is infinite, immeasurable, and without limit. God is limitless love. This love is real, present, and active in the world. It is active and present in you and in me. That is why we must prepare, peeling back layers of distraction, busyness, preoccupations, judgements, fears, and sin to see the reality of God that surrounds and abides in us. Let the light of Christ shine anew in you as you ponder the birth of Jesus. Reframe your mind, heart, soul, emotions, and manner of life in the gift God gives in the Lord Jesus. The infinite and eternal God has come to live in you so you can bring God to others.

Father John Esper