3rd Sunday of Advent (Gaudete)
St. Michael, Overlea
December 14, 2025
An Enduring Advent
Advent is often described as that time of year when we await the birthday of Christ. Listening to Isaiah’s prophecy and the preaching of John the Baptist, we may think that Advent is meant to roll back the centuries to the times prior to the birth of Christ. It’s as if, in Advent, we are “making believe” that Christ has not yet come.
Of course, Christ has come. His birth happened long ago, in the reign of Caesar Augustus. Not only that, he has died and rose for us and for our salvation. So it does us no good to imagine that the Christ has not yet come into the world; the faith we profess is neither “make-believe” nor merely a sentimental story. It is about our lives here and now and our future destiny. How, then, are we to understand Isaiah’s prophecy about the coming of the Messiah? Or John the Baptist who proclaimed the imminent coming of the Lord?
In a sermon he gave in 1964, the future Pope Benedict XVI, urged us to think of our lives as “an enduring Advent”. You and I are always in work in progress; we are always praying, striving and hoping to be more Christ-like. When we think of our lives like that, then the line between what is “before Christ” and “after Christ” changes. It is not only a line running through history, but also a line that runs through our hearts. Whatever in us that has yet to be transformed by the grace of Christ is “before Christ” . . . all forms of self-centeredness, egotism, sins of every sort. In his Advent homily, the future pope urges us “[to] ask the Lord to grant that we may live less and less ‘before Christ,’ and certainly not ‘after Christ’, but truly with Christ and in Christ, with him who is indeed the Christ, yesterday, today, and forever.” I think this gives us the key to the meaning of today’s readings…
The Works of the Lord
… beginning with the imprisoned John the Baptist. From prison, John the Baptist sends his followers to ask Jesus, “Are you the One who is to come or should we look for another?” Jesus did not reply, “Yes, indeed, I am the long-awaited Messiah!” Instead, Jesus instructed John’s emissaries to report back to him, “Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind regain their sight, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have the good news proclaimed to them.” When John heard that answer, he must have been deeply consoled, because he recognized in Jesus the fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecy – the prophecy we heard in our first reading: “Be strong, fear not! Here is your God . . . he comes to save you. Then will the eyes of the blind be opened, the ears of the deaf be cleared, then will the lame leap like a stage, then the tongue of the mute will sing.”
In Jesus, everything foretold by the prophets of old converged. In the person of Jesus, the Kingdom of God is at hand. This was seen and understood by the imprisoned John the Baptist. Now, dear friends, this same truth & reality must be seen & understood by us! Advent is not nostalgia for times past but a time for rekindling our present hope in the One who came to save us, who is with us now, and who will come again in glory as judge of the living and the dead. Advent is about inviting the Lord to come into our lives now, to “invade” us with the power of his grace and to transform everything in us that has yet to be redeemed, yet to be healed, yet to be addressed with honesty and integrity.
A 5th C Christmas sermon by St. Caesarius of Arles says this better than can I: “Let us receive the tiny little Lord in our hearts [he said]; may he grow and make progress there, nourished by faith . . . .Within us the Lord has a blind man to whom he can give light; a lame man whose step he can restore and bring to the path of truth without stumbling . . . .What he did in those who were dead he does in the living. He raises a man to life in the room of his heart . . . .” [Cf. Magnificat, Dec.] So let me reiterate: we are a work in progress, each of us and all of us. Therefore, we should continually live in the hope and expectation that the Redeemer will come into the recesses of our hearts there to accomplish his mighty works that make us glad.
Patient Rejoicing
How we should rejoice and be glad to welcome the Lord with open arms, an open mind, and an open heart. For, as St. Caesarius of Arles says, “The Way came to those who were wandering; the Judge came to the guilty; the Physician came to those who were sick; Life came to the dead.” [Ibid.] This is the joy of Gaudete Sunday: that nothing in our lives, not our worst instinct, not our gravest sin, not our most secret thought —nothing is outside the purview of the Redeemer’s healing love, and the Lord never grows tired of working with us and in us.
That is why St. James urges us ‘to be patient until the coming of the Lord.’ We may wish our healing and restoration in Christ were “a one and done”, But since we are a work in progress and our life an enduring advent, we must daily welcome the Lord’s presence in our hearts, and in his grace, patiently and persistently to cultivate our interior lives, by giving the Lord access to whatever in us has yet to be transformed. Patient cultivation is neither procrastination nor presumption. It means daily prayer, Sunday Mass, a daily examination of conscience, regular confession of our sins, devotion to Mary, & generosity to the poor. This is how we live neither “before Christ” nor “after Christ” but in, though, and with the Christ whose Advent brought rejoicing 2,000 years ago and whose Advent brings joy to us here in Overlea, in the Year of Our Lord 2025!
As we open our hearts each day to the Lord, we will not be free from troubles or struggle, but we will experience newfound peace and joy, such that we can say with St. Paul, “Rejoice in the Lord always, again I say, rejoice!”