Today’s readings : Isaiah 61, 1-2.10-11; 1 Thessalonians 5, 16-24; John 1, 6-8.19-28
In a highly consumerist culture, people’s needs are determined by the supplier and those who manage the mainstream economy. New needs are constantly created, many of which can even be superficial, at times ignoring the real needs that comfort the heart. This is the vicious circle that obeys only the law of the market economy. The law of the Spirit, in such a climate, remains a voice lost in the wilderness.
The gospel scenario on this third Sunday of Advent presents John the Baptist being interrogated on his doings. The void that dominated in his time led the people to hastily exchange him for the expected Messiah and he struggled to point to them that he was not the one. In his reply, there is something that may be revealing even to us today. He declares that “there stands among you – unknown to you – the one who is coming after me”.
It has been often said in these past months that the 2020 pandemic can bring out the best and the worst in us. Let’s hope it will bring out our best. Like at the time of the Baptist, today we risk sliding away from that deep dimension in us that religion is meant to address. Religion can easily become a consumer product in our lives, reducing our faith to mere spiritualism that treats just the surface needs.
We belong entirely to the world as it is with its complexities, but as believers we are called to beware being carried away by those same complexities. In our age, this is a crucial moment, a kairos, for all those claiming to be believers. The urgency is to come to terms with what is really at stake for the future of humanity, not of Christianity. Like the Baptist, we today are also being interrogated and have to be accountable.
Theologian William T. Cavanaugh, referring to Pope Francis’s letter Fratelli tutti, recently wrote that what makes this letter so radical is not that it breaks any new ground, but that it is full of obvious truisms. A truism states something that is so obviously true that it is not worth saying. Many big truths go unnoticed or even ignored, but when said, they can hit hard.
The Advent message can be such a truism that is simply taken for granted as part of culture. Christmas can be taken more seriously in this sense because to a people confused John’s advice was to make “straight way for the Lord”.
What could that mean and suggest for us today? John the Baptist also pointed out that “there stands among you” someone unknown to you. That could suggest a mysterious presence of God in our midst which if acknowledged would help bring out the best in us. This would be the prophecy of Christmas.
The backdrop of this Sunday is the reading from Isaiah, which is meant to refresh in our minds what the Good News we proclaim is about. In the second reading, St Paul warns against treating “the gift of prophecy with contempt”. Treating the gift of prophecy with contempt, or suppressing the Spirit, as Paul writes, means resisting God’s dream for humanity and for the world; it means leaving God out of the equation in the way we live, and insisting on doing it our way.
Many people still remain unheard in spite of the giant progress our societies have seen. They are voices that simply fade out with no impact at all on our conscience. In his above-mentioned letter, Pope Francis proposes a meditation on the Good Samaritan parable and says that “we have the space we need for co-responsibility in creating and putting into place new processes and changes”.
This would be the best in us. The worst is when, as the pope warns, our vision of life, politics and the economy end up being simply a power struggle arena rooted in the absence of what he calls “fraternal love”.