3rd Sunday Advent B - Homily 4

Homily 4 - 2014

A great advocate for disabled people died last week – Stella Young. You may perhaps have heard her or seen her on Television. She was only thirty-something, but a real dynamo. Despite her disability, she was a great comic. As someone wrote of her, “What a gift it is to be able to make people laugh. Stella Young had that ability. So much so that after a sentence or two you hardly noticed that she was a disabled person, 'a crip' as she daringly called herself. Her parents named her well, Stella (a star), for she shone like a star wherever she went. Even before she spoke, her smile, her whole face, radiated fun.” St Paul’s invitation in today’s Second Reading, “Be happy at all times!”, led me to think of her. So too did the Gospel, that said of John, “He came as a witness, as a witness to speak for the light.” In her own way, Stella’s indomitable spirit bore witness to the light of God present in us and in all things.

There will be a lot of everyone wishing each other happiness over the next couple of weeks. Paul expressed the hope that the Thessalonians would “be happy at all times” – not just at Christmas. Is it as easy as that? – or wishful thinking? I do not know what Stella’s secret was. But I do think that Paul was on to something; and that perhaps Advent is an appropriate time to think about it. Let us look at some of the things he suggested to the Thessalonians.

He said, “Pray constantly.” Now there is prayer … and there is prayer. I think he meant, “Get in contact with God. Stop talking so much – and listen more. See if you can sharpen your sense of God present constantly with you.” When two people are in love, they are somehow never far from each other. We cannot keep God constantly in the forefront of our consciousness. We would get in an enormous mess if we did. But it is possible to do it sometimes. And sometimes can become often. And the more often it becomes, it can sort of "sit there" in the back of the mind, and slip easily to the front whenever opportune. That presence to us of the God who loves us is a guaranteed source of growing happiness, of constant joy.

Paul then added, “For all things give thanks to God”. For “all things”! Can you thank God for all things? Perhaps, that is a function of growing, too. I think it flows from the constant, or at least frequent, sense that God is somehow with us; and that the God who is with us loves us, respects us, takes us seriously, treats us as adults; and is simply, always and necessarily source of life - somehow. But to know that we need to have learnt to listen and to observe. We need to have learnt to be comfortable letting go of our programmed expectations of God, comfortable with a God of surprises. Perhaps that is what Paul was referring to when he said, “Never treat the gift of prophecy with contempt”. Prophets think ‘outside the square’, and can challenge us to find God where and when we least expect. “For all things give thanks to God.” Life is so different when we become spontaneously grateful.

All this can be learnt, but it takes time. As we heard today in the Response to the First Reading, the Advent Mary was able to proclaim exuberantly, “My spirit rejoices in God my saviour”. Get to know God well enough, and we cannot but “rejoice in God”. Mary did just that. As the Christmas stories will soon remind us, she learnt to “treasure” her experience and “ponder it in her heart”. There is time for us. What we begin in Advent, we can continue over the rest of the year.