3rd Sunday Advent B - Homily 6

Homily 6 - 2020

I rang up a friend Friday evening, just as it was becoming dark. She told me she was sitting out on the verandah with a cup of tea. Her grown-up children were all living elsewhere. The washing-up was finished; her husband had gone to bed. She was alone. I didn’t ask her which verandah. It didn’t matter. If she was facing the west, she would have been gazing at what was left of the sunset. If it was the other verandah, she would have been looking across about a hundred meters of grass and cleared land towards the Murray river bordering their property. She was just sitting, possibly absorbing the beauty.

She put me in mind of today’s Gospel passage — of the “man sent by God … as a witness to speak for the light”. That light, he said to his questioners, “stands among you — unknown to you”. We know who that one was, Jesus. In a sense, he stands among us still. The crucial issue is, Is he unknown to us? Well, we would not be here today but for the fact that we know him; we know a lot about him; we have known him all our lives, from when we first learnt our catechisms — but more people seem to be walking away from us than coming to join us. How come people went out well beyond their comfort zones to hear John, the wild eccentric, in the empty lands on the “far side of the Jordan”? Was it just his message? Or was there something else about him that led people really to listen, that fascinated them, that riveted their attention and enabled him to “witness” to the “one coming after him”? Was it that he spoke to their longings, with an inner authority, that kindled their hope?

I think of my friend up there on her verandah, the one who fairly regularly sits out on that verandah, alone. To me, she has come to speak with an inner authority, with wisdom.

The First Reading today gave us Isaiah. Did you hear that bit where he said, “I exult for joy in the Lord, my soul rejoices in my God”? Simply knowing the Catechism never led me to do that. But sometimes, when I sit alone, I find that I do.

And then there was today’s Response to the First Reading, not a psalm this time, but the canticle of young, pregnant Mary, sung when she went to visit Elizabeth. Like Isaiah, she proclaimed, “My soul glorifies the Lord, my spirit rejoices in God, my Saviour.” That response revealed immensely more than her familiarity with the doctrines cherished by all orthodox Jews of that time. It spoke of relationship, of a knowledge enabled purely by love, a love honed and deepened as, quietly and alone, she pondered in her heart, and allowed her experience to speak to her of the God she sensed present and acting in the ordinary details of her day.

Paul, too, came to the party in today’s Second Reading, “For all things give thanks to God”. Can we honestly do that if God is not real to us, really real? He prefaced that suggestion by saying, “Be happy at all times”. And he wasn’t joking. Perhaps, that constant, deep-down, joy is tied to his third recommendation, “Pray constantly.”

Might that ability be the fruit of other times when we make the effort to sit, like my friend, in silence, undisturbed, pondering? It leaves watching television for dead.