Reflection on the Readings for the 3rd Sunday of Advent

One cannot miss the sheer explosion of joy in today’s liturgy especially in the first and second Mass Readings.

‘Shout for joy daughter of Sion,

Rejoice exult with all your heart.

The Lord your God is in your midst -

he will exult for joy over you. He will

renew you by his love’. Zeph.3

This is the real Good News, coming at a timely moment when dark clouds are hovering over our country.

‘Even though the rain hides the stars,

Even though the mist swirls the hills,

Even when clouds veil the sky

God is by my side’.

(The Cloud’s Veil – Liam Lawton)

Yes, indeed, not just our poets but the Word of God tells us ‘fear not little flock, you are worth more than hundreds of sparrows, it has pleased my Father to give you the Kingdom’ Lk.12

And the wonder is that through the grace of Baptism, we have him not ‘just in our midst’ but actually dwelling within us. Jesus pleads with us ‘make your home in me as I make mine in you’. Jn.15 This abiding in Jesus is a cry from the depths of his heart because he knows that this abiding is the source of everything. It is a call to enter into the innermost life of the Trinity – into the ‘ocean of peace’ as St. Catherine called him, where nothing can disturb us, nothing frighten us, no one can rob us of our joy.

“We can please him best of all by wisely and truly believing this truth of our relationship with him and rejoicing with him and in him. For as truly as we shall be in the bliss of God without end praising and thanking him, so truly have we been in God’s pre-vision, loved and known in his endless purpose from without beginning. In this love without beginning he created us, and in the same love he protects us, and never allows us to be hurt, by which our bliss might be decreased. And therefore, when the judgement is given, and we are all brought up above, we shall then clearly see in God the mysteries which are now hidden from us. And then shall none of us be moved to say in any matter, ‘Lord, if it had been so, it would have been well’. But we shall all say with one voice: ‘Lord, blessed may you be, because it is so, it is well; and now we see truly that everything is done as it was ordained by you before anything was made”. (Bl.Julian of Norwich 85).

No wonder Paul could write to the Philippians: ‘Friends, I want you to be happy, always happy in the Lord. I repeat what I want is your happiness’. Phil.4

Come Lord, and do not delay.