Third Sunday of Advent Cycle A

Welcome to read homilies for the Sundays of the year. These are sample homilies which you can read with devotion. You may use them in your own homilies without asking my permission. You may also change or edit these to fit them to your audience. A unique quality of these homilies is that they are Christ-filled. From beginning to end they present to us some aspect of Jesus so that beholding his glory we “are being transformed from glory to glory into his very image” (2 Corinthians 3:18 NAB).

The Meaning of Our Life

We are now in the third Sunday of Advent and we are celebrating the third way that Jesus comes to us. To review a bit, in the first Sunday of Advent we celebrated Jesus' coming at the end of time when he will judge the living and the dead. In the second Sunday of Advent we celebrated Jesus' coming into our hearts. This third Sunday of Advent we celebrate his coming to the Jordan river, to the plains and mountains of Galilee, Samaria and Judea to inaugurate the Kingdom of God.

The first reading tells us about the joy and exultation of the land of Israel when it will see Jesus walking on it to begin his mission of saving the Jews and the rest of the world. Isaiah foretells that the desert and the parched land will exult; the steppe will rejoice and bloom with abundant flowers, and rejoice with joyful song. 

Then Isaiah enumerates what we are too familiar with from our reading of the four Gospels. Then will the eyes of the blind be opened, the ears of the deaf be cleared; then will the lame leap like a stag, then the tongue of the mute will sing.

That is what happened after Jesus left Nazareth and came to the Jordan river to proclaim the coming of God's kingdom.

The Responsorial Psalm turns the prophecy of Isaiah into the present tense. In other words the prophecy is fulfilled: Jesus gives food to the hungry, gives sight to the blind, raises up those who were bowed down.

The Alleluia before the Gospel reading repeats the words of Jesus as he formally declares the coming of the Kingdom which the people have for centuries longed for: The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring glad tidings to the poor.

And the Gospel tells us of what happened as Jesus went about proclaiming God's Kingdom: 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. Surely God's Kingdom has arrived, the longed for awaited descendant of David is now present among the people inviting them to enter this Kingdom. This is the message of Jesus to the messengers of John the Baptist who asked if he was indeed the longed for Messiah.

Then Jesus adds a sentence which is a congratulation to those who will believe in him. He says, And blessed is the one who takes no offense at me. In effect he told the crowd, If you believe I am the Messiah, the anointed one, the Davidic King who would restore all things, then you are happy. Congratulations!

Congratulations, then, to all of us here in this Mass who really believe and know that Jesus is the King whom the Jews were expecting for many centuries. Jesus also tells us, "Happy are your eyes because they see and happy are your ears because they hear. I assure you, many a prophet and many a saint longed to see what you see but did not see it, to hear what you hear but did not hear it" (cf. Matthew 13:16-17).

This sentence of Jesus congratulating us needs some explanation because there are words there whose meaning has changed due to translation. In our Gospel reading it reads, "And blessed is the one who takes no offense at me". In the previous edition of the New American Bible, that is, before its revision, it reads, "Blest is the man who finds no stumbling block in me." In the Authorized Version it reads, "And blessed is he, whosoever shall not be offended in me." In the Christian Community Bible it has this translation, "and how fortunate is the one who does not take offense at me."

The Greek word translated "blessed" or "fortunate" is "makarios" which basically means "blessed or happy". Today the word "happy" for us is not a synonym for "blessed". The synonyms of the word "blessed" are adored, beatified, consecrated, revered, sacred, holy, and other words but happy is not mentioned. But makarios means happy, blessed because happy and happy because blessed. This word was used by the Greeks in congratulating someone for something good that happened in his or her life.

The second word which needs to be explained is the word translated "takes no offense". In the Greek original it is skandalisthey from which we got the word "scandal". Literally it means "shall not be made to stumble". It is a picture word of a person who stumbles because of something put in his or her way, whether it is a stone or a ditch or some other obstacle.

Now the meaning is clearer. Jesus was saying that happy and blest is that person who is not made to stumble because of him, who finds Jesus not a stumbling block to his path in life. If we express this in a positive way, Happy is that person who finds Jesus as a help in his journey in life.

I can sense three classes of human beings who see Jesus as a hindrance or a stumbling block to their life.

The first are those who think that they are sufficient unto themselves. They see no need for God, so they have no need for a person who claims that he is God. These are the atheists.

The second are those who think that they need God but only to give them something. They think that God owes them something because they follow his laws. They have their own concept of who God is, what can he do and what he cannot do. These are the likes of the scribes, Pharisees, Sadducees, priests at the time of Jesus. They believed in God, but they had their own idea of God. Jesus was a stumbling block to them, to their ambitions in life, because he brought in another idea of God, something opposed to their idea of who God is. Today we have people who stick to their misguided beliefs about religion or about ideologies, the fanatics. For them too Jesus is an obstacle in their life.

The third are those who think they are beyond any help, like Judas Iscariot. They think that Jesus cannot help them anymore. For them Jesus is the final obstacle in their life.

This sentence where Jesus congratulates us tells us what kind of a person Jesus is. He is the one on whom our happiness depends. If he is an obstacle to the fulfillment of our plans in our life then we are most miserable, we will be most unhappy. If for us he is not an obstacle but a help in our life’s journey, then happy and blessed are we. Congratulations to us, says Jesus. For Jesus is the meaning of our life. Without him life becomes meaningless.  

The fourth Sunday of Advent will celebrate the coming of this man Jesus into our planet earth as a baby. Very many see this baby as an obstacle to their life. For us he is not an obstacle. He is the one whom the Jews at the time of Jesus were expecting. He is also the one we expect now to make our life meaningful.

Let us bow our heads now for our prayer. Lord, we are expecting you to come and teach us your ways. We are expecting you as the anointed one of God, foretold by Isaiah the Prophet. May those who find you an obstacle in their life change their mind and find in you the meaning of their life. Amen.

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Note for the readers:

The Mass readings are from the New American Bible Revised Edition (NABRE). This is where our Lectionary gets the readings.

NAB stands for New American Bible (before it was revised). This is the translation I use. Unless otherwise stated the text I use is from this translation.

AV stands for Authorized Version of the Bible. It is more commonly referred to as the King James Bible. It is the version most used in English literature, therefore it is the one known more by the English speaking world.