3rd Sunday Advent B

See Commentary on John 1:6-8, 19-28 John 1:1-5John 1:6-15 & John 1:19-28


Homily 1 - 2005

The official delegations from the capital asked John the Baptist two very basic questions: Who are you? Why are you baptising?

Their first one: Who are you?  What is your sense of yourself, of your identity, of the deepest meaning of yourself as a person?  John’s answer was clear: A voice that cries in the wilderness: Make a straight way for the Lord!  He was a voice crying out from the wilderness of life, from the midst of people caught up in illusion and distraction, adrift from their roots, their purpose, their meaning, submerged in what he would later identify as the sin of the world.  He saw himself as a voice crying out on behalf of God.  It was the voice of one in relationship with God, one whose sense of self whose sense of meaning arose from that deep bond with God.  He saw himself as a man trusted by God, entrusted by God with a mission: Make a straight way for the Lord.

And that mission gave the answer to their second question: Why are you baptising?  Why do you do what you are doing?  John saw his role, the meaning of his life, as preparing and inviting people to encounter God; and in encountering God, to find themselves and their meaning, and to break free from the illusory world that is sin.

Next week’s Gospel will present Mary to us.  We could well ask her the same two questions: Who are you? Why do you do what you are doing? 

To the first question: Who are you? What is your radical sense of yourself? Mary’s answer would be: I am the handmaid of the Lord.  As was the case with John, so too her sense of who she was was rooted inextricably in her union with God.

And if we were then to ask her: Why do you do what you are doing? What is the meaning of your life? What is your mission in life? she would answer: to shape the human face of the mystery we call God.

Perhaps Advent is a good time as we ask ourselves the same two questions: Who am I? Why do I do what I am doing?

When I ask myself: Who am I? I hope that my answer would truthfully be: I am one loved and trusted by God.

When I ask myself: Why do I do what I do? I again hope I could truly answer: I am one who wants to help others to see him more clearly, love him more dearly and follow him more nearly.

Both questions are in fact hard to answer, and depend very much on accurate self-knowledge.  And the pursuit of that is proving to be a life-long task.  But I believe it is a worthwhile task, not just for myself but for all of us.  It is the only way to evaluate and to prioritise the myriad lesser things that fill our lives.  It is the only way ultimately to break free from the power of the sin of the world.

And now we move into Eucharist.  Who are we? I hope that Eucharist serves to remind all of us that we are persons in the deepest possible relationship with the God to whom we freely offer our lives in union with Jesus.  Why do we do this? We do this because we want to, because we believe that our lives have meaning, because we want to associate our selves and all our activity with the saving work of Christ, because we seek to be nourished to become more like him, more suffused with his own spirit, by eating his very body broken for the world and drinking his blood poured out to liberate us and our world from the suffocating power of sin.


Homily 2 – 2008 

You’ve got a few Johns to cope with today: There’s me, John, reflecting on another John, the Baptist, as he is presented in today’s Gospel passage by a third John, the Evangelist.

For John the Evangelist, the significance of John the Baptist is that he bore witness to Jesus.  He was the one whose role was to introduce Jesus onto the public arena and to identify him as one greater than he.  Further into the story, John the Baptist would give witness to the fact that Jesus, like the Lamb of God, was destined to take away the sin of the world.

We, too, in our different ways, are called to witness to Jesus, not necessarily by getting up on a soap box or a street corner or setting up a TV company and making televangelists of ourselves.  I like the comment attributed to St Francis of Assisi: “Proclaim the Gospel at all times.  But use words only when you have to.”  How, then? How can we witness to the presence and the power of Jesus, and to the way that he takes away the sin, the destructiveness, of the world?

Indeed, what do we see as the world’s sin? the world’s destructiveness? Sometimes it is hard to describe - since we are so used to it.  It’s everywhere.  We don’t notice it.  It’s a bit like the polluted air you sometimes see settled over the city of Melbourne as you come down the Pentland Hills on the highway near Bacchus Marsh.  It shows up in the myriad ways that people fail to respect the dignity of other people.  It is hauntingly clear in the countless war zones that scar our world.  It is written on the faces of raped women and hungry, disease-ridden children.  It is less clear, less confronting, less stark, perhaps, in our own little corner of the global village, but is nevertheless there in thousands of ways whenever we distinguish “them” from “us”.

Jesus’ answer to the mutual destructiveness of people was to love them – to see their dignity and to respect their dignity – whoever they were.  With eyes wide-open, he accepted the vulnerability of love, perhaps even the futility of love, and, rather than withdraw from his insistence on the way of love, he allowed himself, as the Lamb of God, to become victim of the world’s fears and aggression.

We witness to the impact of Jesus by taking on, after him, his way of redeeming our world.  It is fascinating to see the power of his way working so effectively in so many people - in so many of you - in the ways that you relate to others in love, expressed through your respect, care, protection, even advocacy, within your families, the local community, the wider world – shown, quite simply sometimes, by your listening to people, accepting them as they are, reaching out to relate to them, using your own giftedness to teach, to serve, to protect, to speak out on their behalf, and so on ….

These are the some of the ways in which, like John the Baptist, we, too, witness to the light that is Jesus.


Homily 3 - 2011

I want to share a few thoughts today about the sacrament of reconciliation and one of the ways it is celebrated – with one priest, one penitent.  Yet I know in the short time I have to talk about it now, I can barely touch the surface.  I feel that people have so many unhelpful attitudes to it – so many unhelpful memories associated with it, that I am sometimes tempted to wonder if anything helpful can be rediscovered and nurtured.  I believe it can be … but it will require a fair bit of letting go, a fair bit of re-thinking, and a fair bit of changed attitudes, at least for most.

Essentially, like all sacraments, reconciliation is a sacrament primarily for adults.  That nearly all of us first experienced it as children has had the unfortunate effect, for many, of muddying the waters.  Like all sacraments, it is a celebration - a moment of celebration in the midst of all the distracting day-to-day activities that fill our lives.

Believe it or not, the focus of this sacrament is not ourselves and our sins, - not even forgiveness - but God.  We celebrate the consistent, wonderful, certain, never-failing, unconditional love and mercy and forgiveness of God.

The point of telling - of talking about - our sins is not to humiliate us.  Jesus never humiliated anyone, particularly sinners.  Given where we’re at on our journey into the heart of God, we may feel humiliated by our sins, ashamed of them, particularly, any sexual sins, but one of the reasons for celebrating the mercy of God is to wean us away from humiliation, and to let it evaporate in the warmth of God’s love.   Humiliation comes simply from our preoccupation with ourselves.  Despite how it feels, it is an expression of pride: “I have let myself down.”  “I am not perfect.”  Big deal!  If that’s important, we’ve got it wrong.  Mind you, being aware that humiliation and shame are products of our pride, doesn’t make them go away.  But, at least, we can see them in perspective.

Well, what is the point of confessing my sins? A major point of it is to make real, for myself, the wonderful mercy of God: “This me God forgives! Isn’t God great!”  By naming and owning my sin to myself, I bring God’s mercy out of the clouds, out of theory, into reality.  Till then, it’s all theoretical, detached.  And, also, by owning my sin, I enable the love of God to reach down deeply into it and to get on with the business of healing it.

But, isn’t it enough to own it to myself?  Why mention it to another? to the priest? Perhaps, it is enough to own the inescapable and undeniable fact of my sin to myself – but that’s easier said than done.  We’re all  masters of evasion.  We kid ourselves so easily.  Saying it out loud, hearing ourselves saying it, knowing that another is hearing me, helps me to move from half-owning to fully owning.  And, until I fully own my sin to myself, sin still has me “by the throat”.  I am not free.

I might also add that the person and the attitudes of the priest here can be important.   A priest who is not only non-judgmental, but positively understanding and accepting and non-shockable (a priest, in other words, in touch with his own sinfulness) can be very helpful in my coming to own myself, and to open to the warm, gentle mercy of the God who loves me always – and, in the process, to move on from absorption with myself to truly celebrate the mercy of God.

I’ve just scratched the surface.  Keep up the reflection yourselves – and be honest.  Listen to your questions, to your “yes buts”, and do something with them.  Talk them over.  There may be other ways of viewing things.

In the meantime, let’s celebrate the Eucharist with the Christ, who, as he took the bread and cup of wine into his hands, gave thanks and praise to God - to the God who, at that moment, was empowering him to love to the end - the God who sent him to reveal, in that love, his own face and heart.


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.


Homily 5 - 2017 

Before she died, my sister was insistent that her funeral be joyful. How can you be joyful at the funeral of one you love? You can, but you need to have learnt to live at two levels of experience at the same time. There is the surface level of the normal feelings that come inevitably in response to how we perceive whatever is going on around us. At the funeral of one we love, the natural, normal feeling is sadness – whether we want it or not. It can be a quite profound and totally appropriate grief. At the same time, and just as real, but at another level, there can be another feeling that comes from having learnt to be aware of the presence in us and in the world around us of the God who loves. This feeling is a consistent feeling that never leaves us. It may be low intensity, a bit like the background noise of the sea, or the low rumble of middle-distance highway traffic. But we can tune in to it without effort. It is what enabled St Paul to write, “Be happy at all times”.

It is what also explained Paul’s further comment, “Pray constantly.” He wasn’t talking about saying prayers all the time. That is quite unrealistic. He was referring to the habit we can acquire of being somehow attuned to the constant presence of God – not unlike the more spontaneous experience of someone who has fallen in love with another. But in this case, it has to be learnt and practised.

Paul was referring to that same habit when he wrote, “for all things give thanks to God”. In mentioning that, he also gave us a clue how to acquire the habit. It involves our deliberately developing another way of seeing life that, in turn, enables a whole new way to respond to life. We have to learn to attune our inner antennae to pick up the closeness, the presence, of God. Recall again the opening message of Jesus when he began his public ministry, “The Kingdom of God is close at hand. Repent, and believe the Good News.” God at work is “close at hand”. That is “Good News”, but it is not immediately obvious to everyone. We do not necessarily see it; we “believe” it. We need intentionally to cultivate a different way of seeing, somehow – what most Gospel translations refer to with the totally inadequate word, “Repent”.

That different way of seeing means that we have to give up our usual expectations of what we are going to find. The coming feast of Christmas provides a wonderful insight into the nature of God. In line with the revelation given to the shepherds, “You will find an infant wrapped in pieces of cloth and lying in a feed trough” – not unusual for most babies of poor families, but hardly expected for God incarnate – it reveals a powerless God. Somehow we have to become easy with that, or we’ll never attune to the presence of God in life. The fascinating thing is that any totally powerless infant can be in fact incredibly powerful – calling for, and somehow enabling an altogether different, often inconvenient but willingly accepted, even joyful, way of living for its parents. The powerlessness of this infant’s power was immensely more powerful than that of Herod or Caesar, and of every Herod and Caesar that succeeded them over the centuries.

John was at peace with powerlessness – content to be simply who he was, happy to be no more than a “voice”, a voice “crying in the wilderness” at that. He could do no more than “witness”. We, too, need to come to terms with the powerlessness of God, to become familiar with it, to learn to trust it, to see how effective it indeed is, and quietly to trust it. Like Mary, the powerless infant’s powerless mother, we need to discipline ourselves to ponder and treasure experience in our hearts – and see what we learn!


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.