Homily for the Fourth Sunday of Advent, Year A, 2022

Make Your Expectations As Extravagant As God’s Generosity

Rev. Marcel Divine Emeka Okwara, CSsR

Homily for the Fourth Sunday of Advent, Year A

St. Alphonsus Catholic Church, Brooklyn Center, MN

Sunday, December 18, 2022

In almost every other religion in the East and West and across the ages, God or the gods are considered powerful forces that must be begged, pleaded with and sacrificed to in order for human beings to get what they want. Worshippers of these gods believe that their gods are distant, difficult, and reluctant to grant favors. So, to make them give to people what they want, the gods have to be greatly persuaded by embracing extreme moral views, by practicing all forms of excessive mortification like fasting and mutilation of the body. In some situations, making animal and human sacrifices are adopted just to appease and motivate these divinities to give something they are not willing to give out on their own. But the Bible presents an entirely different picture. The Bible is not the story of our quest and longing for God. It is rather the story of God’s quest for us. What we see in other religions is the quest of human beings for God. What we find in other spiritualities is the human person’s search for God. But the Bible is not that story. It is not the tale of our extravagant invocation to God. It is the story of God begging us to ask more of him. I know this sounds strange; it is counterintuitive. But that is just what it is.  

In today’s first reading and the Gospel, we find this interplay in full display. In the first reading (Isaiah 7:10-14), we hear of Ahaz. Who was he? He was a young and inexperienced king who found himself in a very difficult situation. At that time, the powerful Syrian army was marching towards Israel, and Israel’s allies and enemies were forming various kinds of agreements, and the young Ahaz was in the middle of it all. He was confused and didn’t know what to do. Then Isaiah the prophet tells him to put his trust in the Lord, but Ahaz hesitates. The prophet encourages him, “Ask for a sign from the Lord, your God; let it be deep as the netherworld, or high as the sky.” What does this mean? The young king was told to dream big, to aim higher, to trust unreservedly, and to ask God for something extraordinary. Unfortunately, Ahaz dithers and says, “I will not ask! I will not tempt the Lord!” Check this out! God is not demanding more excellence from the king. God is not giving him a list of things to do before God can give him what he wants. God is simply telling him to dream big, aim higher, ask for something mighty and extravagant. Ask for something extremely huge. Ask for a crazy sign if you want to. Let it be as high as the sky and deep as the netherworld. In other words, God wants to do something great for Ahaz if only Ahaz will be open to it. God never hesitates to give us grace; we are the one who hesitate to receive it. What is fantabulous about this story is that even though Ahaz refused to ask for a sign, God still gives a sign anyway: “…the Lord himself will give you this sign: the virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall name him Emmanuel.” What’s Emmanuel? God is with you! 

After about seven hundred years, the prophetic declaration of Isaiah was fulfilled in a little town of Nazareth in Galilee, and precisely in the simple home of Joseph. Today’s Gospel  (Matthew 1:18-24) says that after Joseph the carpenter had engaged a young girl named Mary, he later received devastating news that the woman was pregnant. The implication is that she is not faithful to Joseph. As would be expected, Joseph was heartbroken. The young girl he loves has betrayed him. The life he had planned with her has been shattered. In his community, this very act of infidelity will humiliate Joseph; and if the law of Moses is applied to the letter in this case, Mary will be stoned to death. Sad and disappointed, Joseph resolved to divorce Mary quietly so as to save her life and reputation. What does Joseph and Ahaz have in common? First, they were both young men. I know we often assume that Joseph was an old man, but there is nothing in the Bible that suggests such. Two, both were under immense pressure. Three, they were also confused. It must have been so difficult for Joseph to fall asleep the night he realized that Mary was pregnant. Did he ask God for a sign? We don’t know. In the entire New Testament, no word of Joseph is ever recorded. But the Gospel says that night Joseph did receive a sign in his dream. And it is something he could never ever have imagined: “the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, ‘Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary your wife into your home. For it is through the Holy Spirit that this child has been conceived in her. She will bear a son and you are to name him Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.” Joseph’s despair and confusion has turned into a profound joy.

Sisters and brothers, as the season of Advent comes to a close, it is important to remember that what was promised to Ahaz, what was promised to Joseph is also promised to us. God wants to give us life. He wants us to dream big. He wants our expectation to be as extravagant as his generosity. Christmas is coming. God is becoming one of us. The greatest act of humility in human history is unfolding before us. God who created one hundred billion galaxies, and each galaxy has one hundred billion stars created us in his image and likeness. And once we got into trouble with original sin, he came to be with us. We are not talking about faith like the Greeks and Romans where God is above the clouds and occasionally they do come below the clouds to take advantage of the people. In the Bible, our God comes down below the clouds to love us, to save us and give us the greatest gift of eternal life. The implication of St. Augustine’s assertion, “If we praise God, God is not made any greater. If we don’t praise God, God is not made any smaller. But if we praise God, we become greater and if we don’t praise him, we become smaller,” is that God does not need us. God is self-sufficient. God is blessed within himself. However, God wants us. God wants you. Christmas is all about God desiring us, wanting us to be with him in a covenant relationship. When the virgin conceived and gave birth, the child is called Jesus, which means God is my salvation, and that is God’s greatest gift to us. At Christmas, we celebrate the stubborn fact that God has pursued us. God wants us. God wants to adopt us as sons and daughters. God has not left us as orphans to figure things out ourselves. Christmas is so much more. It is not about Santa Claus, gifts, food etc. It is about being adopted. Christmas is about being pursued by God; it is about being overcome by his love. As Christmas draws near, let us prepare to meet God with an open and willing heart— a heart of a son, a heart of a daughter. 

Homily for the Third Sunday of Advent, Year A

Something Substantial Is Happening In Jesus Of Nazareth

Rev. Marcel Divine Emeka Okwara, CSsR

Homily for the Third Sunday of Advent, Year A

St. Alphonsus Catholic Church, Brooklyn Center, MN

Sunday, December 11, 2022

Upon his emergence on the public scene, John the Baptist announces and points to Jesus as the long expected Messiah. He addresses Jesus as “the one mightier than I.” He seems pretty clear in his proclamation regarding Jesus. But in our Gospel today, John  appears confused about the identity of Jesus. What changed? John is in prison at this time. He has been arrested by Herod Antipas for opposing Herod’s marriage to his brother’s wife, Herodias. John’s public ministry has ended and he is within a few days or weeks to his execution. Evidently, John is receiving reports of Jesus’ own ministry from the prison. We can speculate that perhaps Jesus wasn’t exactly what John expected him to be. While John was a preacher of fire and brimstone, Jesus had a different style and approach. So, John sends his disciples to Jesus with a puzzling question: “Are you the one who is to come or should we look for another?” What is interesting is not so much the question, but the answer that Jesus gives: “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.” From that very moment to the present day, when the question comes up: “Is Jesus the Messiah? This is the answer always given. So, if you are asked if Jesus is the Messiah, this is still the right answer to give. 

Notice that the Lord’s answer to John the Baptist is concrete, and not a compendium of abstractions. It means that in Jesus of Nazareth something concretely huge is happening. There is a major difference between Jesus and people who are simply Gurus and spiritual teachers. Granted that Jesus is also a spiritual teacher, but he is like no other. There was and is none like him. Something substantial is happening in Jesus. And what is happening is exactly what prophet Isaiah said would happen when the Messiah comes, namely, healing and uniting together God’s creation. Sadly, for centuries, a lot of people including some theologians had tried to deny the miracles of Jesus. They said the stories of Jesus’ miracles in the Gospels are simply made up. They advocated for the elimination of all the Gospel passages that talked about the supernatural events in the life and ministry of Jesus. But any attempt to do that will leave us with just a few pages of the Gospel. Why? Because the witness of Jesus as a healer and a miracle-worker is littered throughout the Gospels. Jesus was a great preacher with a difference. Aside from his transformative preaching, he also worked miracles. In any town he visited, innumerable miracles accompanied his great sermons. It is so right to say that his teaching was taken more seriously precisely because of his healing. That’s why people came to listen to him. People saw him as a remarkable figure. 

But how come Jesus didn’t cure every afflicted person? With all the infinite power that Jesus possesses, how come he didn’t heal everyone of every disease? The right answer is that we don’t know. What we know clearly is that in Jesus’ ministry, something substantially concrete is happening; the kingdom of God has finally arrived and is making its way in human history and experience. Additionally, we also know that the Church, which is the mystical body of Christ, is continuing to be the means by which the Kingdom of God breaks into the world; the means by which the healing power of God comes into this world. Some of our great saints were healers. Up till this present day, the Church’s healing ministry still exists. And before a holy man or woman is canonized, miracles must follow. Prayers and petitions made through them must be accompanied by verifiable miracles of healing. Throughout my priestly ministry, I have heard and seen some priests and lay faithfuls who have the charism of healing. In the life of the Church, there are authentic healers who continue Jesus’ work of uniting creation together. Furthermore, in every Catholic hospital and clinics, people are effecting healing in the name of Jesus.  

Beloved in Christ, in the list of things that Jesus told John’s disciples he was doing, the last is “the poor have the good news proclaimed to them.” Who are the poor? All of us! What makes us poor? Sin! God is the Source of grace and life; so, all of us are poor inasmuch as we wander away from him via sin. What good news is being proclaimed to us? Forgiveness of sin! At the heart of Jesus’ work is the forgiveness of sin. To the paralyzed man, Jesus says, “As for you, your sins are forgiven.” To John’s disciples Jesus said, “the blind regains their sight.” Jesus healed people of physical blindness, but blindness is also a classical biblical image of sin. Estranged from God, we wander in the dark, and lose our way. So, the forgiveness of our sins is a kind of light. It shows us the path and we know where to walk. Next, Jesus says “the lame walk.” Did Jesus physically cure lame people? Yes! But we can also view sin as a kind of paralysis. We are meant to walk towards God, but we don’t always do so. We are meant to make progress, but we are paralyzed. By freeing us of sin, we are able to walk again. We also hear that lepers are cleansed. Did Jesus really cure lepers of leprosy? Yes indeed! But leprosy in the Bible is always used as a symbol of sin. It compromises us, weakens us, and eventually kills us. So, with our sin forgiven, we are cleansed spiritually just as a leper is cleansed physically. Jesus also says, “the deaf hear.” Did Jesus cure deaf people of their deafness? Absolutely yes! But in our sin, it is as if we are spiritually deaf. We are unaware of the suffering and cry of those around us; we refuse to hear the voice of God. Finally, Jesus says, “the dead are raised.” Did he raise the dead physically? Yes! He raised Lazarus, the daughter of Jairus and the only son of the widow of Nain. But the ultimate symbol of sin in the Bible is death. Sin is nothing but spiritual death. Sin eats away our vitality until we succumb. But here now is the great good news: in the life and ministry of Jesus, through his death and resurrection, Jesus deals definitively and decisively with sin which is the greatest suffering that we have. More to it, through the ministry of the Church, Jesus continues to forgive us and heal us today just as he did during his public ministry. In this Advent season, as Christmas approaches, present your infirmities and weakness to the Divine Physician, Jesus. Present your blindness, your deafness, your lameness, your spiritual death before him and ask for his healing. 

May God bless you!