A Homily for the Fourth Sunday of Advent

+ For the past three weeks the Sunday Gospels have been echoing the cry of that somewhat enigmatic figure bridging the Old Testament and the New, St John the Baptist: “Prepare the way of the Lord.” Today he cries out that mountains and hills are to be levelled, valleys bridge and rough paths made smooth. Then, he assures us, we shall see the saving power of God.
 
This language is clearly prophetic: hills and mountains remain in the landscape where St John the Baptist himself preached. Rough roads also. How, then, are we to see the saving power of God? What does the insistence of the Church through the repetition of the voice of St John the Baptist in her Sacred Liturgy require of us?
 
The Ember days of this past week provide the answer, or more correctly a model for us if we wish to see the saving power of God. The model is our Blessed Lady, the humble virgin of Nazareth. The Gospel of Ember Wednesday is that of the Annunciation. Friday’s Gospel was that of the Visitation.
 
In the person of the Blessed Virgin Mary, by the singular grace of her Immaculate Conception, there are no rough paths to be smoothed, no valleys to be filled in by the levelling of mountains. Hence, when the Angel Gabriel comes to announce “a news of great joy,” – news, the content of which is beyond her imagining and even gives rise to questioning on her part (“How can this be…?) – Our Lady consents to Almighty God’s incredible plan for her with those famous and fruitful words: “fiat mihi secundum verbum tuum” (be it done unto me according to thy word).”
 
The “fiat” of the Blessed Virgin Mary was singularly fruitful: it permitted God to become man for our salvation. Without her ready – and intelligent – cooperation with the unimaginable, which God asked of her, the Lord could not have come to us in the manner foreseen.
 
We are not born with the privilege of immaculate conception. There is much that is rough within us to be made smooth. There are mountains of pride and valleys carved out by rivers of sin to be dealt with. And, of course, it is here that the cry of St John the Baptist addresses us directly. We must deal with these deformations with the means given us by Almighty God, particularly through the sacrament of confession. For most of us, this is enough to be getting on with, as it were.
 
And yet there is something more required. The measures prescribed by St John the Baptist are preliminary ones: they simply prepare the way for the coming of the Lord.
 
Thus, we must be made ready for that coming. And, like the Blessed Virgin Mary we must be ready, and willing, to do that which Almighty God in fact asks of us. Certainly, like her, we may not fully understand what is being asked. With her we may even question how what God asks of us can come to be. But in the end, we must also have her faith and humility in readily consenting to God’s plan. Otherwise the particular graces that can only be brought into being through my cooperation with God’s plan for me will never come into being.
 
This principle is equally applicable in small matters as well as large; in the larger questions of life and in the daily service I render to God and to those whom He sends me according to the circumstances of my particular vocation.
 
Monasteries often see the concerned, questioning face of a young man asking, “How can this be?” in respect of a possible vocation to the monastic life. And this is normal enough. Our Lady herself questioned the angel. But all too often there is a cancerous phenomenon lurking about in what is called “vocational discernment” in our times which would send the angel back to Almighty God with a list of questions for Him to answer – even demands for God to meet as prerequisites – before one might consider responding. The humility and docility of the Blessed Virgin before the manifest will of God are forgotten. My will, and not His will, becomes the operative factor.
 
Where this cancer takes root it threatens the very workings of God’s grace in the soul. Young people thus diseased cannot hear what the angel of God says for all of their own questions and demands and can thereby find themselves in a downward spiral of ongoing if not perpetual discernment which leaves God’s plan for them – and all the good that He wished to work through them – very far behind, indeed lost once and for all. Angels of God arrive to call us to what we cannot imagine can come to pass through our own cooperation with God’s will perhaps only once in a lifetime.
 
Do I wish to see and experience the saving power of Almighty God in the coming feast? Do I wish to make real and substantial progress in my life this Christmas?
 
Then let me heed St John the Baptist and make haste to do what is necessary to prepare myself for the coming of the Lord. Let me imitate the humility and docility of the Blessed Virgin Mary in readily responding, in faith and trust in God’s Providence, to what He asks of me. Indeed, in unconditional faith, for only He knows what good my cooperation with what He asks of me will bring about.
 
The Offertory of this Mass sings of the Annunciation once again. Let our prayers rise up to God with its incense, begging the graces of humility, docility and an for increase of faith. May the Virgin Mary intercede for us, so that when the Lord comes to us, we too may readily respond: “Be it done unto me according to thy word.” +

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