Fr. Roger J. Landry

Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan

Mass of December 23

December 23, 2022

Mal 3:1-4.23-24, Ps 25, Lk 1:57-66

 

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click here: 

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/12.23.22_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following points were attempted in this homily: 

* In today’s final O Antiphon, we turn to Jesus and pray, “O Emmanuel, rex et legisfer noster, expectatio gentium et salvator earum: veni ad salvandum nos, Domine Deus noster,” “O Emmanuel, king and lawgiver, expectation and Savior of the nations, come and save us, Lord our God.” God-with-us comes to rule us, to show us how to love God and others, as the fulfillment of our longings for salvation. And in today’s readings we sense not only his proximity but what he will do when at last he comes.  “Lift up your heads and see: your Redemption is near at hand,” we pray in the Responsorial Psalm. We lift our heads, our hearts, our hands and our voices, because God is coming to be with us to redeem us in his kingdom and through his two-fold law of love.

* We see two aspects of this redemption in the readings today. The first is purification. The Prophet Malachi tells us that the Messiah — “the Lord whom you seek” who would “suddenly … come to the temple” — would be “like a refiner’s fire, … refining and purifying silver. … He will purify the sons of Levi, refining them like gold or silver that they may offer due sacrifices to the Lord.” Jesus’ essential work in us is to purify the treasure we hold in clay vessels (2 Cor 4:7). That process of purification is implicitly alluded to in today’s Gospel scene. At a superficial level, the reason why we have the birth and naming of St. John the Baptist two days before Christmas is that, historically, it preceded the birth of Christ, and since December 17, we have been traversing all of the proximate historical events of that first Advent. But the birth and naming of the precursor both point to the birth and naming of the one John came to announce, Jesus. John’s mission was to purify, to help the people prepare the path for the Messiah to come, who would say at the Jordan, “Even now the ax lies at the root of the trees. Therefore every tree that does not bear good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire. I am baptizing you with water, for repentance, but the one who is coming after me is mightier than I. I am not worthy to carry his sandals. He will baptize you with the holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fan is in his hand. He will clear his threshing floor and gather his wheat into his barn, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire” (Mt 3:10-12).

* The second aspect of redemption is intergenerational love. Malachi announces the mission of John the Baptist, the new Elijah. About John, God says, “Lo, I am sending my messenger to prepare the way before me … to turn the hearts of the fathers to their children, and the hearts of the children to their fathers.” The mission of the precursor was to prepare the way and the day of the Lord, who would seek to reunite us as one family. Malachi talks about intergenerational reunion that begins not just with dry duties of familial piety and an extrinsic obedience to the fourth commandment, but something altogether full of love, that the hearts of parents and the hearts of kids would be turned lovingly toward each other. That’s one of the things that the Lord wants to have happen at every Christmas, that children, parents, grandparents, great grandparents, extended families all come together to be reunited in worshipping God-with-us. We know that the disunity that happens in families occurs because of sin, when people choose to act as gods or want to be treated as gods, determining the law.