Baruch 5:1-9 + Psalm 126:1-6 + Philippians 1:4-6, 8-11 + Luke 3:1-6
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Delivered at Holy Spirit Catholic Church in Mustang, Oklahoma
On the first Sunday of Advent,
the prophet Jeremiah spoke of the coming of the long awaited Messiah,
the hoped for Savior, naming him the “Lord our Justice.”
Throughout our lives of faith
as we daily prepare for the advent of the Lord, we wait actively for the
coming of the “Lord our Justice” by
making right what has gone wrong in our
relationships with one another, with God, and as well by living in
right relationship with our common home, the Earth, as God’s gift to us. By doing so, we hasten the
coming of the Lord Jesus, the Just One.
But if we are honest with
ourselves, we recognize that not only personally as individuals but
collectively as a people we have made a mess of justice
over the generations and
centuries. So much so that we can fear
the coming of God into our lives because we know we have not totally righted
the wrongs done. However, on this 2nd
Sunday of Advent, the prophet Baruch reminds us
that Justice’s companion is
Mercy, and this truth fans the flame of hope in our soul. In God, Justice and Mercy go
together, and so the coming of God for which we actively await does not bring
us fear of condemnation but the hope of consolation.
When we look back upon our
lives, we see how God has leveled the mountainous wrongs we have done, or
filled in the valleys of our failures to step up and do the right thing, making a road for us to to come home to the merciful
embrace of God.
Like the people of Israel in
Baruch’s time, who live in exile and long to return home, we are a people who have
experienced being cut off from our home in the heart of God. We have all felt malaise, a
certain “blahness” in our life,
where because of our sinful
choices we have distanced ourselves from God
and our truest self as made
in the image and likeness of God. But the mercy of God, a special
attribute of God’s love, finds a way to bring us home, re-energizing us to move
forward toward our eternal home.
Even when we fail to keep
God’s Law, when we stumble and fall into a deep valley of despair because of
our sin, God’s mercy fills in this valley and God the Good Shepherd
comes running to carry us home. Or when we face the
insurmountable mountain of “perfecting” our life, God’s mercy levels this
mountain so that God comes running to meet us with unabated Joy, like the
Prodigal Father welcoming his lost child home.
Sometimes we experience this
undeserved mercy of God in the Sacrament of Reconciliation, and other times we
experience it in the generous love of others,
especially when tragedy suddenly
cripples us. Two softball teams play a
championship game. The game is tied going into the bottom of the
very last inning, when with 2 outs, the home team’s best hitter smashes a home
run.
She sprints around first base
with great joy, only to realize she has missed touching first base, and as she
suddenly plants her foot to turn back to touch first in order to proceed on her
victory dash on around the bases, her leg gives out completely as she
rips apart the ligaments supporting her knee. What had been a victory dash full of joy now becomes cries of complete
agony. Her teammates rush out from
the dugout to carry her around the bases, but the umpire stops them stating
that the rules of the game do not allow this and that if they try to do so the
home run will be turned into the 3rd out of the inning.
As the heroine lies writhing
on the ground in pain, the first baseman from the other team asks the ump if
she can assist the home run hitter, who has suddenly become crippled. The ump states that there is nothing in the
law of the game that prevents her from doing so. So the first baseman from the other team, and
then the pitcher, and then the 2nd baseman and 3rd
baseman join together to carry their opponent to 2nd base and
then to 3rd base and finally home.
This is what the mercy of God
looks like, where others are willing to “lose” themselves in order to bring us
home to experience the victory of God’s redeeming love in Christ.
Most often we encounter the
great gift of God’s mercy in the simple yet profound gift of another
opportunity, another day to move forward again, another season to begin anew, to start afresh. This fresh start, this
beginning with a clean slate, is what a Jubilee Year is all about. This coming Tuesday, December
8th, the Church throughout the world begins the Extraordinary
Jubilee of Mercy.
In the history of the people
of Israel, every 50 years was celebrated as a Jubilee, a special year of the Lord’s
favor as expressed by the actions of His Chosen People. Every 50 years, debts were completely
forgiven and all God’s people started over with their financial slates
wiped clean and the crushing burden of debt removed from their shoulders. Every 50 years, land that had
been lost to another was given back to its original owner. The Jubilee for Israel was
always a concrete reminder of how God’s mercy made everything new again and
brought them back home.
This super-abundance of God’s
love that helps one to “come home” and to start one’s life anew
is expressed in the most powerful way in the person of Jesus
Christ, the Savior of the World. In the 15 page document “Misercordia Vultus,”
issued by Pope Francis this
past April announcing this Extraordinary Jubilee of Mercy, the Pope opens his
remarks by stating something simple yet profound about our faith: “Jesus Christ is the face of the
Father’s mercy.” When we look at Jesus, when
we gaze upon him, we see Mercy enfleshed. When we listen to his words
and rejoice in his saving deeds, we see Mercy in action, the “always more” of God the
Father’s love for all of God’s creation!
Pope Francis point out in
this document on the Jubilee Year of Mercy, that Jesus’ mission is a
mission of mercy, saving the lost ones and
healing the hurting ones, bringing all to a knowledge
of God’s redeeming love. Jesus does not look upon us
with pity as if he is standing over us, separated from us, or act from the attitude of
pity (“You poor thing”), but rather
acts out of compassion by suffering with us.
This mission of mercy propels
the 2nd Person of the Divine Trinity to empty himself of all divine rights and privileges to become
little like us, to embrace the fullness of our humanity,
to walk among us as one like us in all things but sin. He calls his disciples who
have experienced the saving power of His merciful love to embrace His mission of mercy
by seeking out the lost and bringing them home to His Father. To create the world anew by the power of His merciful
love.
Pope Francis not only spells
out our mission in this special year of divine favor,
but he also gives us a very
practical way to live out this mission by practicing
the corporal and spiritual
works of mercy. The Pope’s “burning
desire” is that we reflect upon and act upon the corporal and spiritual
works of mercy.
Pope Francis believes this
will awaken our consciences, which have often grown dull in the face of poverty,
and allow us to enter more deeply into the heart of the Gospel where the poor have a special
experience of God’s mercy.
Jesus himself speaks about
almost all of the corporal works of
mercy
when he paints a picture of
the Final Judgment in the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 25: Feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, clothe the
naked, welcome the stranger, visit the sick and the imprisoned. The final corporal work of
mercy—bury the dead—is not included in Matthew 25 but has long been
practiced as one of the corporal works of mercy. The spiritual works of mercy have been practiced by disciples
throughout the centuries: Counsel the doubtful,
instruct the ignorant, admonish sinners, comfort the afflicted, forgive
offences, bear patiently those who do us ill, and pray for the living and the
dead.
Pope Francis reminds us that
when we reach out to help others through the corporal or
spiritual works of mercy, we are actually serving and
loving the broken body of Christ living in them. The Christ who longs to come
to us this Advent, to set us free from our anxieties and fears, comes to us in
these “little ones,” whom we are
called to serve in merciful love. By doing so, we prepare the
way for the Lord of mercy to not only come through us
to them but to come to us through these little ones.
We mistakenly think that
whenever we help the poor or visit the imprisoned
or care for the forgotten
ones of this world that we are saving them, but actually, as Pope Francis
teaches us over and over again, we are being saved by them.
We think we are saving them
from despair, but they are saving us from the
heart-numbing daily despair
of modern life which has turned people in on themselves.
Fr. Joseph A.
Jacobi
