THIRD SUNDAY OF ADVENT - YEAR A

Readings: First: Is 35, 1-6a, 10; Second: Jas 5, 7-10; Gospel: Mt 11, 2-11

Theme of the Readings

As we come closer to the coming of Christ, the liturgy today places us between waiting and hope. John the Baptist was aware of his mission as precursor. He lived in the hope of the Messiah, whose way he prepared, but hope did not give him certainty. This is why he sent emissaries to ask Jesus: "Are you the one who is to come or are we to wait for another?"(Gospel). Jesus answers the Baptist's question by quoting part of one of the most beautiful poems of messianic hope: "The blind see again, and the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised life and the Good News is proclaimed to the poor" (First reading and Gospel).

In the second reading, James exhorts us to wait patiently for the coming of the Lord, as the sower waits for the rain to make the seeds germinate. In Judea, those rains are early (beginning of autumn) and late (beginning of spring).

Doctrinal Message

For Christians the coming of the Messiah has changed from waiting to hope. The one and only Messiah, Jesus Christ, fulfilled the expectations of men in his historical coming two thousand years ago. Thus in the minds and hearts of Christians there can be no waiting for another Messiah, notwithstanding the fact that every now and again voices are heard to the contrary. As Christians we can be certain these are false messiahs, invented for selfish or ulterior motives.

We Christians do not live by waiting but by hope because Jesus, Messiah and Savior of the world, is a wonderful mystery of presence and absence, of humanity and divinity, or possession and intense desire. Christmas both recalls and activates the fulfillment of the waiting, while referring us simultaneously to a hidden and unexpected coming, which can only be the object of a loving and sincere hope, a hope not based on a dream, but in the experience of a desire partially fulfilled. 

We Christians put our hope in the transformation of nature, but above all, in the transformation of humanity and of history. We believe in a new heaven and a new earth, where justice reigns. In the first part of his poem Isaiah wrote: "Let the wilderness and the dry-lands exult, let wasteland rejoice and bloom" (First reading). Jesus does not quote this text, but a later one: "The eyes of the blind shall be opened, the ears of the deaf will be unsealed." Let us wait, above all, for the new humanity to be brought into being by the Messiah and continued in those who follow in his footsteps, in his way of life. This is why, perhaps, at the end of the quotation from Isaiah, Jesus adds: "Happy is the man who does not lose faith in me." He was probably referring to John the Baptist and his disciples who had varied opinions on the Messiah. He was also addressing us and our contemporaries who have such difficulty understanding the mind and way of life of the Messiah and Son of God, born in a cave, dedicated to serving mankind and to evangelizing the poor. 

Pastoral Suggestions

In our times, we are probably confronted by two pastoral problems regarding Jesus, the Messiah, awaited by the nations. The first is the offer of other messiahs in the form of ideologies, be they religious, materialist, or atheist as, for example, Marxism, a frustrating and deceptive messianic fraud. The second is the presence of other messiahs who, if not concurrent with Christ, have a parallel existence in non-Christian cultures and religions.

Today's liturgy provides an answer to these problems. It is not about giving believers magical prescriptions or formulas to use like arrows against the adversary. Rather, our task as priests is to present the faith of the Church clearly and comprehensively, to defend it in the souls of the faithful, and to clarify the attitudes our faith imposes on us when relating to others who think and believe differently. "To detest error, but to love the errant."

The transformation of the world has already begun. The new nature and humanity are already present in history and in our own experience thanks to the work of recreation and redemption accomplished by Jesus Christ. If we, Christians, live with integrity, we are already new creatures, capable of seeing, of hearing, of walking. We have been cleansed, and have been resurrected to a new life. What an opportunity to make an energetic appeal to a life of Christian integrity!

Sometimes Christians complain about the state of the world, and forget that as Christians we are by vocation called to be the yeast in the dough, the salt of the earth, and the light of the world. If all is not well with the world, it is because not all Christians are light, yeast and salt in this life and in their environment. We Christians have a task to do to maintain humanity's ecology in balance, as well as that of our planet. It will be sad and a great loss if we celebrate Christmas with joy and nostalgia, but fail to increase our evangelical light, or to be more efficacious yeast, or to be salt to preserve goodness, truth and beauty among men.

Source: http://www.clerus.org/clerus/dati/2004-05/21-13/CICLOA.html by P. ANTONIO IZQUIERDO L.C. (1948-2013)

[참고: 이 파일은 저서명 "가톨릭 교회의 말씀 전례에 따른 성경공부 해설서"(엮은이: 소순태, 출판사: 가톨릭출판사)의 각주의 연장으로 마련되었습니다].