Third Sunday of Advent
Bishop of Lake Charles
Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception
December 12, 2010
Third Sunday of Advent
“What did you go out to the desert to see?” Matthew 11:7
“What did you go out to the desert to see?” (Matthew 11:7). Jesus asks that question to the crowd in today’s Gospel. He is speaking of John the Baptist. John had been placed in prison and had sent his disciples to Jesus to ask, “Are you the one who is to come, or should we look for another?” (Matthew 11:3). There is a great deal of emphasis here on sight, looking and seeing.
It is something like hearing about a great celebrity all your life and finally having an opportunity to see him or her in “real life,” as we say. I recall the first time I met a President of the United of the States or a Pope. I was younger then. I knew they existed and had read about them in the news and seen them on television, but those experiences did not come close to meeting them in “real life.” Waiting in line, having them approach me, wondering what I would say, and finally greeting them, however briefly, left me with a spirit of awe, because then I knew the person about whom I had heard so much really existed to me at that moment. I had seen that person.
Here is Jesus, the Messiah. Jesus says to the questioning disciples of John, “Go and tell John what you hear and see” (Matthew 11:4). Why can we not escape the senses in these readings? It is because of the Incarnation.
Advent is preparing to remind us of a fundamental teaching of our Catholic faith—the Incarnation. “And the Word became flesh” (John 1:14), the Gospel of Christmas Day will read. The pre-existent Word of God, the Word that was with the Father from before the “beginning,” the Word that was present to God, the Word that came forth from God at the creation of the world, took flesh in time, in place, in the womb of a humble virgin of Nazareth. Why? So that we could see Him, hear Him, touch Him, and ultimately know Him fully.
God entered His own history. He was not just the author of life. He is life. He does not merely create light. He is light. He not only reveals the truth. He is the truth. He is everything for us—the origin and the end of everything. And this God is born into the world, choosing not an earthly queen to be His mother but a humble virgin, not a palace within which to be born but a manger in Bethlehem.
I recall visiting casually with a few bishops not too long ago. One of them was preparing to leave for a Confirmation ceremony. One bishop asked him, “And what will be the topic of your homily?” The bishop answered, “I am going to tell them that Jesus was God.” We laughed because that seemed so obvious to us, but he was serious. He was serious because while we might presume that belief, many today do not. That Jesus is the Incarnation of God is not a small matter. It is essential, and in this materialistic and relativistic world, where so many think that essentials are defined by the prevailing opinion or mood of a majority vote, we need to be reminded of it. “Go and tell John what you hear and see” (Matthew 11:4). This is not just the command of Jesus to the disciples of John. It is what Jesus tells us to do to the world.
You profess your belief in Jesus. Well, who is He to you? What do you see Him doing in your life, in your family, in the Church, in the world? Go and proclaim what it is you see and hear. You say you believe in the Incarnation. What does that mean? What does it mean to have God become Man and enter human history, your history, your life? This is why the good bishop said he was going to remind the young men and women to be confirmed that Jesus was God—because many do not really believe the truth of that statement. We live, in fact, in a very God-less period of human history. Many find it hard to believe that God is present in their lives, much less that God became Man in Jesus Christ.
Jesus is not just some holy man, who teaches piety and love for God and neighbor, as noble as that might be. The truth that Jesus is God reminds the world that God exists and is present. The truth of the Incarnation challenges the world out of its complacency. What we believe does matter, because what we believe informs how we live, and if Jesus is God, then that Incarnation teaches us about truth and love, no small matters for a world like the one in which we live. We are the believers, and we journey to Christmas with renewed faith in the One whom we “hear and see.”