One Among You

December 14, 2008

Third Sunday of Advent

By Rev. Joe McCloskey, S.J.

The spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me, because the LORD has anointed me; He has sent me to bring glad tidings to the lowly, to heal the brokenhearted, To proclaim liberty to the captives and release to the prisoners, to announce a year of favor from the LORD and a day of vindication by our God, to comfort all who mourn. Isaiah 61:1-2

He said: “I am ‘the voice of one crying out in the desert, “Make straight the way of the Lord,”’ as Isaiah the prophet said.” John 1:23

Piety

Rejoice always.
Pray without ceasing.
In all circumstances give thanks, for this is the will of God for you in Christ Jesus.
Do not quench the Spirit.
Do not despise prophetic utterances.
Test everything; retain what is good.
Refrain from every kind of evil.
May the God of peace himself make you perfectly holy and may you entirely, spirit, soul, and body, be preserved blameless for the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.
The one who calls you is faithful, and he will also accomplish it. (1 Thessalonians 5:16-24)

Study

The robe of salvation is Christ. Spirituality is putting on the mind and the heart of Christ. Isaiah 61 is a description of The Messiah who is to come. When Christ opens the scroll of Isaiah on his return to Nazareth and claims this passage as true of himself, the people react to what he has said. They were going to throw him off the cliff until he used his strength of soul to pass through them. Christ perceived himself as the fulfillment of the prophecy of Isaiah.

The ways we find ourselves like Christ constitute our spirituality. Our souls need to rejoice in the greatness of Christ. His greatness makes of our littleness his greatness. We live the Spirit of the Lord each time we reach out to the poor, every time we heal the brokenhearted or proclaim the glad tidings to the poor. The mind set of Christ can be found in the genius of Paul. He challenges us to pray without ceasing.

Our lives become prayer when we model them on Christ. The Contemplative in action is one who breathes out Christ. The saint is an update of Christ. The call God puts on us is to be a transparency of Christ. The challenge is in the living of our lives as Christ would if he were lucky enough to be us. Our freedom and our love of Christ gradually reveal to us how to be a Christ today. Our destiny unfolds through our prayer and brings us the chance to discover ourselves in Christ. Our spiritual reading brings a deeper awareness of how to be like Christ. Our choice to live the love of Christ makes us one with each other and constitutes our part of the mystical body of Christ.

Action

A Christian is called by God to be a real Christ in all they say and do. St. Francis is reputed to have said “Preach always and occasionally use a word.” We preach by the actions of our lives. The ways we reach out to the poor of our lives gives Christ hands and feet in what we are doing. How far we go by our lives to share the goodness of Christ does not happen by accident. Accountability is lived out when we share each week with our friends what we plan to do for Christ and what we did in his name.

Our Apostolic actions need to be more than what happens by accident in our lives. We need to plan in order to do more than what convenience and accident makes possible. We need to be voices like the John of the Gospel crying out in the desert of our world that Christ is in our land.