THIRD
SUNDAY OF ADVENT - CYCLE A - 2019
Ø
We are in mid
Advent, to the Sunday the Church invites us to rejoice because the Lord is
near.
Ø
Among the many
signs, some of them contradictory, offered to us during this time of
preparation for Christmas, let us look beyond the signs, the bright colors and
perceive the presence of the one who is to come.
Ø
Let us be ourselves signs of his coming, of his
presence.
Ø
Signs of
goodness, kindness, tenderness, joy, service…
FIRST READING - Is 35:1-6a, 10
v
We hear again the
prophet Isaiah who comes with a message of hope and joy.
v
The text has
three different parts, but all of them invite us to rejoice.
v
Verses 1 and 2
give a description of how nature will show this joy, it will flourish, its
beauty will be like the Carmel, and they will see the beauty of our God.
v
Verses 3 and 4
are an invitation to all those who feel themselves humiliated, oppressed,
cowards in front of suffering, those who are afraid, who doubt, to get back
their strength, because God himself comes to set them free.
v
Verses 5 and 6a
describe what will happen to all of them when the presence of God will be a
reality: the blind shall see, the ears that are closed will be opened, the
tongue that does not know how to speak, will sing.
v
Verse 10 is like
the finale of a great opera, when all the characters come together, the prophet Isaiah repeats his theme about
joy, which has become an exuberant joy, because those that have been
ransomed come back singing, dancing, then
suffering and evil will be no more.
v
The Gospel will
tell us that this presence of God among us is Jesus.
v
Each one of us
may enter in his or her own heart and remember the joy when our life changed.
Peace and joy came when we welcomed the Lord and allowed him to be part of our
personal history.
PSALM : Psalm 146
LORD, COME AND SAVE US
The Lord God keeps faith forever
secures justice for the oppressed,
gives food to the hungry.
The Lord sets captives free.
LORD, COME AND SAVE US
The Lord gives sight to the blind
the Lord raises up those who were bowed down
the Lord loves the just.
the Lord protects
strangers
LORD, COME AND SAVE US
The fatherless and the widow he sustains
but the way of the wicked he thwarts.
The Lord shall reign forever;
your God, O Zion, through all generations.
LORD, COME AND SAVE US
This psalm sings the tender love of God and the care
he takes of all of us his children of all times. The Lord loves the just, the just who is like Him, and
the Lord thwarts the way of the wicked. We know, looking at Jesus, that this
sentence of the psalm does not mean that
God takes vengeance or destroys, on the contrary, like a good father God looks for ways to have
his children come back to the father's home, even if these may cause
suffering. The Lord reigns loving all of us.
Ø We see again John the Baptist.
Ø John is not baptizing anymore
Ø It is the sunset of this prophet of fire, he cannot go
from one place to another, but his tongue continues to challenge Herod and all of
us as well.
Ø In prison, he hears about Jesus, and he is confused,
he does not understand, this is not what he understood God had communicated to
him. This is not what Isaiah had foretold about the coming of the Lord among
us.
Ø When God would come, he would destroy the designs and
the ways of the wicked.
Ø But, on the contrary, he hears that Jesus is
different, this young prophet sits at table with sinners, allows prostitutes to
get close to him, he allows also sick women to touch him to be cured, he hugs
the children... John does not understand Jesus' behavior.
Ø He does not understand, truly when God comes he will
destroy the designs of evildoers, but God does not do like as that we do it for
vengeance or because we want the evildoers to be punished, but God loves all of
us and waits for us like the father of the prodigal son. He has a banquet
prepared for each one of us who returns to his love.
Ø At the beginning when he baptized Jesus, John was
happy because the one who had to come was already present, but now he is not
sure about that.
Ø He sends some of his disciples to Jesus to ask him
"Are you the one who has to come or should we look for another?
Ø Jesus does not give a direct answer, but he tells them
to report to John what they have seen, so that he may understand that what
Isaiah had prophesized is taking place already.
Ø The blind see, the lame walk, the lepers are made
clean, the deaf hear, the dead come back to life, the good news is preached to
the poor.
Ø And happy those who take no offense at him, but are
able to discover en him the presence of the God who saves loving.
Ø When the messengers left Jesus speaks about John:
v He is not a reed that moves according to the direction
of the wind; John does not change his message or his life, even faced with
death.
v He does not dress in fine clothes, those who do so
live in palaces, but John lives in the desert.
v John is more than a prophet, he is the prophet
foretold in the Old Testament, the one who was going to prepare the way of the
Lord.
v he is the greatest of those born of woman, but the
least in the kingdom is greater than John.
Ø When we allow the Lord to be our king, to be the Lord
of our life, to lead our life, what the Lord told the disciples of John take
place in us.
v We begin to look at reality, the human beings, at
ourselves in a different way, we see our truth and thus we begin a journey of
conversion.
v We journey seeking justice and truth.
v We come to the Lord to be cleaned from our
leprosy.
v And even more, we have ears to listen to the cry of
our brothers and sisters who are suffering in any way.
v We accept our poverty and seek to live in poverty,
with what is necessary, so that we may listen to the Gospel message of salvation.
v We decide to share the many or few goods that we have
with our brothers and sisters who have still less than us.
v Blessed are we if Jesus can say of us that we are not
a reed that moves according to the wind, and also blessed are we if what Jesus
preaches does not cause us offense at him
SECOND READING Jas 5,7-10
Before we look at the reading itself, let us say a few words about this letter
Due to his name, the author could be any of the three
men with this name in the New Testament. James the brother of John, James the
son of Alpheus. It is not probable that they could be the authors. There is the
third one called the brother of the Lord. For a certain time the theory of his authorship of the
letter was accepted, however after much research this theory does not seem to
be possible. Why ? The Hellenistic language and the literary style used
in the letter, the Bible quotations taken from the Greek translation of the
Hebrew Bible. Being a Jew, even being a follower of Jesus, he would not have
used this Greek translation of the Bible. It is believed to be a letter written by someone who
use the name of James as a pseudonym The addressees are probably the communities or
churches from Asia and Europe. The literary style, although this work is called a
letter, is more like one of the wisdom books of the Old Testament. The content is a series of instructions on the
Christian life and behavior. Let us see what the passage for this Sunday tells us:
ü The author invites the community to be patient, and
gives the comparison of the farmer's patience, waiting for the appropriate time
to get the fruit of his labor.
ü He invites them also to strengthen their heart, to be
firm, why? Because the LORD IS NEAR.
ü Do not complain about one another, because the Judge
of all is at the door.
ü He ends with an invitation to look at the hardships
endured by the prophets from the past, who spoke in the name of the Lord.
ü All these advices will help us to make real what the
prophet Isaiah announced and Jesus accomplished.
CLARETIAN CORNER
Saint Anthony Mary Claret. Born in Sallent
(Barcelona), of the Diocese of Vic, on December 23rd, 1807, he was the fifth child of eleven, that were
born from the marriage of Juan Claret and Josefa Clará. They were a very religious family of weavers. He received the sacrament of Baptism two days
after his birth, on Christmas 1807. He was given the names of Anthony, Adjutor
and John.
Claret
has described in his Autobiography a
powerful experience of the Spirit which he had when he was only five years
old:
The first ideas I can remember date back to when
I was five years old. When I went to bed, instead of sleeping–I never have been
much of a sleeper- I used to think about eternity, I would think “forever,
forever, forever.” I would try to
imagine enormous distances and pile still more distances on them and realize that they would never come to an
end. Then I would shudder and ask myself if those who were so unhappy as to go
to an eternity of pain would ever see an end to their suffering. Would they have to go on suffering? Yes
forever and forever they will have to bear their pain!
This marked his life and when
in his mature years he writes about it, he continues to experience the same
shudder thinking of “always, always, always.” Through his faith journey, he will complete little by little this
experience which will be at the foundation of his ecclesial vocation.
Venerable María Antonia París - Mª Antonia was born under the sign of suffering
on June 28, 1813, six years after Claret.
She belonged to a well-to-do farm family that lived in Tarragona. Francisco Paris and Teresa Riera had already
a three year old daughter and one on the way.
Francisco, the father, died on May 19, 1813, a little bit more than a
month before the birth of María Antonia, leaving Teresa sunken in a deep
sorrow. She had to flee from the troops
of Napoleon. In their retreat, they were committing many atrocities, thus she
had to leave in a hurry from his home in Tarragona and take refuge in Vallmoll,
a little town 15 Km from Tarragona, in the home of her male servant. She starts
labor and the doctor says that the baby girl will be still born;
however, she gives birth to a thin and
pale girl who looked like she was
roasted on a grill.
The only accounts that we have
from her childhood and adolescence are found in notes of M. Getrudis
Barril. She tells us that she was a
person of few words, serious and of good Catalan common sense, seny.
Extremely obliging and hard working in the housekeeping, she tells us
that since early childhood she was in charge of these tasks. (Both fragments from the book Two Pens Guided by the Same Spirit, pp.
2 and 12)
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
NOLAN,
Albert, Jesus Before Christianity, 1976.
MUÑOZ, Hortensia and TUTZO, Regina. Two Pens Guided by the Same Spirit. 2010
PAGOLA,
José Antonio. El Camino abierto por
JESUS. 2012.
SCHÖKEL, Luis Alonso,
Comentarios en la Biblia de Nuestro Pueblo.
2010.
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