Sunday Gospel Reflection (Dec 15, 2024)

JOY! In Virtue

There is so much joy in the first reading, Psalm and second reading that one would think we were already in the Christmas season. Of course we are only on the third Sunday of Advent, Gaudete Sunday, where we celebrate how close we are to experiencing the true advent of the Messiah. 

But then, there seems to be an abrupt halt as St. John the Baptist begins giving a list of moral instructions to his followers. The Gospel reading ends with great expectations that are yet to be fulfilled. Where is the joy here?

Part of the underappreciated change to humanity that Christ brought is the law of love poured out for us in the Holy Spirit. One of the fruits of the Holy Spirit is joy and when our actions are informed by Love Himself, even the difficult ones will become joyful. The moral prescriptions St. John the Baptist gives largely center around generosity. How fitting as it is the generosity of the Advent and Christmas season that inspires so much joy. It is also the great generosity of God that gives us the gift of His Son, Jesus Christ. 

While I understand there is much more to the people’s sense of expectation about St. John the Baptist being the Messiah himself, I cannot help but laugh at the immediate transition. Apparently, simply telling people not to lie or cheat others is enough for them to wonder whether you are the Messiah.

Weakness?

Like Advent itself, John is always pointing us toward Jesus. While it is less comfortable to think of Christmas as the day of judgement that John describes in this Gospel reading, one cannot separate the works of Christ from his person. Just as Christianity (though admittedly more cognizant in the Eastern Churches) has recognized the entirety of Jesus’s life as redemptive, so too must we see the entirety of his life as “the day of the Lord,” including God’s judgement. For an ancient person to be willingness to think of their God as a weak little baby would have been very convicting. Even today, to be willing to accept a “weak” Christianity definitely separates the wheat from the chaff. 

We make ourselves a similar kind of “weak” when we are generous, losing the money or valuables we might have enjoyed or used so that someone else can. There is joy in this weakness because it is the weakness of love, which is the weakness of God (spoiler alert: it is actually not weakness at all).