Login \| Contact



Homilies Advent Advent Week 1 Year A Week 1 Year B Week 1 Year C Week 2 Year A Week 2 Year B Week 2 Year C Week 3 Year A Week 3 Year B Week 3 Year C Week 4 Year A Week 4 Year B Week 4 Year C Christmas Baptism of the Lord Year A Baptism of the Lord Year B Baptism of the Lord Year C Epiphany Year A Epiphany Year B Epiphany Year C Holy Family Year A Holy Family Year B Holy Family Year C Mary Mother of God Year A Mary Mother of God Year B Mary Mother of God Year C Mass at Midnight Year A Mass at Midnight Year B Mass at Midnight Year C Back to the Boat Heaven to Earth, Sea to River Lent Lent Week 1 Year A Week 1 Year B Week 1 Year C Week 2 Year A Week 2 Year B Week 2 Year C Week 3 Year A Week 3 Year B Week 3 Year C Week 4 Year A Week 4 Year B Week 4 Year C Week 5 Year A Week 5 Year B Week 5 Year C Ash Wednesday "Do You Want to Be Healed?" Holy Week Passion Sunday Year A Passion Sunday Year B Passion Sunday Year C Holy Thursday Good Friday Easter Vigil "Where Peter Is" Easter Sunday Easter Sunday Year A Easter Sunday Year B Easter Sunday Year C Easter Season Week 2 Year A Week 2 Year B Week 2 Year C Week 3 Year A Week 3 Year B Week 3 Year C Week 4 Year A Week 4 Year B Week 4 Year C Week 5 Year A Week 5 Year B Week 5 Year C Week 6 Year A Week 6 Year B Week 6 Year C Week 7 Year A Week 7 Year B Week 7 Year C Ascension Ascension Year A Ascension Year B Ascension Year C Pentecost Pentecost Year A Pentecost Year B Pentecost Year C ORDINARY TIME Ordinary Time Wks 2-7 Ord. Time Week 2 Year A Week 2 Year B Week 2 Year C Week 3 Year A Week 3 Year B Week 3 Year C Week 4 Year A Week 4 Year B Week 4 Year C Week 5 Year A Week 5 Year B Week 5 Year C Week 6 Year A Week 6 Year B Week 6 Year C Week 7 Year A Week 7 Year B Week 7 Year C Ordinary Time Wks 8-13 Week 8 Year A Week 8 Year B Week 8 Year C Week 9 Year A Week 9 Year B Week 9 Year C Week 10 Year A Week 10 Year B Week 10 Year C Week 11 Year A Week 11 Year B Week 11 Year C Week 12 Year A Week 12 Year B Week 12 Year C Week 13 Year A Week 13 Year B Week 13 Year C Ordinary Time Wks 14-19 Week 14 Year A Week 14 Year B Week 14 Year C Week 15 Year A Week 15 Year B Week 15 Year C Week 16 Year A Week 16 Year B Week 16 Year C Week 17 Year A Week 17 Year B Week 17 Year C Week 18 Year A Week 18 Year B Week 18 Year C Week 19 Year A Week 19 Year B Week 19 Year C Ordinary Time Wks 20-25 Week 20 Year A Week 20 Year B Week 20 Year C Week 21 Year A Week 21 Year B Week 21 Year C Week 22 Year A Week 22 Year B Week 22 Year C Week 23 Year A Week 23 Year B Week 23 Year C Week 24 Year A Week 24 Year B Week 24 Year C Week 25 Year A Week 25 Year B Week 25 Year C Ordinary Time Wks 26-31 Week 26 Year A Week 26 Year B Week 26 Year C Week 27 Year A Week 27 Year B Week 27 Year C Week 28 Year A Week 28 Year B Week 28 Year C Week 29 Year A Week 29 Year B Week 29 Year C Week 30 Year A Week 30 Year B Week 30 Year C Week 31 Year A Week 31 Year B Week 31 Year C Ordinary Time Wks 32-34 Week 32 Year A Week 32 Year B Week 32 Year C Week 33 Year A Week 33 Year B Week 33 Year C Week 34 Year A Week 34 Year B Week 34 Year C First Move Letting Go of the Tree Major Feast Days All Souls 1 All Souls 2 Body and Blood of Christ Year A Body and Blood of Christ Year B Body and Blood of Christ Year C Christ the King Year A Christ the King Year B Christ the King Year C Peter and Paul Apostles Trinity Sunday Year A Trinity Sunday Year B Trinity Sunday Year C In Memoriam Memorial of Victory "Up to Jerusalem" Sacred Humanity Homiletic Bibliography Bibliography Pt I (A-G) Bibliography Pt II (H-N) Bibliography Pt III (O-Z) Commentary Catholic Life Faith & the Cult of Pleasantness Fatherhood and Family Holy Marriage, Holy Family Jesus Calls Me Friend Outdoor Plumbing Works of Mercy Defending the Catholic Church Confession Living Letter Bathing Often Eucharist Divine Authority Human Pride Mother of God Persecution Philosophy Priesthood and Papacy Respect for Life Gospel of Luke - Study Luke Chapters 1 - 2 Luke Chapters 3 - 4 Luke Chapters 5 - 6 Luke Chapters 7 - 8 Luke Chapters 9 - 10 Luke Chapters 11 - 12 Luke Chapters 13 - 14 Luke Chapters 15 - 16 Luke Chapters 17 - 18 Luke Chapters 19 - 20 Luke Chapters 21 - 22 Luke Chapters 23 - 24 Questions & Answers Catholic Belief Fortitude: Gift or Virtue? Great Commandment Hierarchy of Truth Same-sex Partnerships Catholic Practice Holding Hands at Mass Wearing Shorts at Mass Hierarchy Church Hierarchy Hierarchy of Truth Scandal and Trust Why a Pope and Bishops? Liturgy Holding Hands at Mass Hymn Resource for Mass Lay Ministry - Liturgy Substituting Song for Sign of Peace Wearing Shorts at Mass Relationship Devotion and Trust Marriage and Celibacy Tell Him the Truth Thorn in Your Side Respect Life Does Ignorance Justify Abortion? Human Personhood On the Subject of Cloning Sacraments Baptism - Child of Civil Union Does the Eucharist Reveal Jesus? Male Priesthood of Christ Sign and Symbol INRI - Crucifix World Affairs Immigration Worries Mercy, Justice and World Affairs Unite on United Nations? Walking with the Word - Lessons Walking with the Word - Lessons A-M Blessed Are You Deep Water "Father, Forgive Them" Garden, Stable & City of God - Part 1 Garden, Stable & City of God - Part 2 God Knows God Loves You Because God's Heart of Love Humanity of Man "Lamentation" "Let Us Go Down" - Part 1 "Let Us Go Down" - Part 2 "Let Us Go Down" - Part 3 "My Power in You" Walking with the Word - Lessons N-Z New Growth on an Old Vine New Wrinkle on an Old Story "One Degree of Glory to Another" Proof of Peace Reason & Acting Reasonably Solomon's Ring Standard of Dress for Mass Sword of Sorrow "Take Off Your Shoes" Take Up Your Cross - Part 1 Take Up Your Cross - Part 2 "Thou Little Tiny Child" True Food - Part 1 True Food - Part 2 Watch, Hat and Scissors Word of Justice, Word of Mercy Reflections Big or Small Christmas Present Clean White Corporal Christian Prayer Delivered from Fear Do You Love Me More? Elegant Recovery Entrust the Sick to God Faith and Choosing Faithful Follower Friendship with Christ Good Physician He Gave Me Wings Heaven's Ecology I Don't Need the Church Last Defense Living Biography of the Church Love Is Hungry Making Bread Thoughts on Merton Our Lady of Divine Grace Remnant Saying Yes to God Self-reflection Sentences Armor of God Counting Your Blessings Passage on Peter's Boat Virginity Sock Puppet Sun, Mast and Horizon We Lament Window of Receptivity Would He Die for One? Devotions Divine Mercy Chaplet Embracing Mercy Indulgence Novena Litany of the Sacred Heart Lord's Prayer Our Lady of Divine Grace Rosary Fatima Rosary Vigil Rosary Saint Therese Centenary Chaplet Seven Last Words of Christ Various Authors Augustine of Hippo Benjamin Franklin Clement of Alexandria Ignatius of Antioch John Henry Cardinal Newman J.R.R. Tolkien Michel Quoist Pope Benedict XVI Pope Pius XII Various Prayers Blessing for a Pregnancy Circle of Faith Choice Vines For Fathers For My Son For Spiritual Fatherhood Gathered Like Wheat Grateful Praise Healing Medicine Hidden Wisdom Hour Has Arrived My Little Girl No One Else but God O Lord Your Love O Shepherd Prayer for the Military Sake of Blessing Sweet Grapes Teachable Heart Thousand Years To All but You O Lord To Father Son and Spirit Wheat and Grape

THIS IS he of whom it is written, "Behold, I send my messenger before thy face, who shall prepare thy way before thee." Truly, I say to you, among those born of women there has risen no one greater than John the Baptist; yet he who is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he. [Mt 11:10-11]

Artist: Victor Luciano Rebuffo

(1903-1983)

Buenos Aires, Argentina

FIERY MESSAGE [1]

"LIVID, GLARING WHITE"

1. In her short story "A Circle in the Fire", Flannery O'Connor describes a stifling hot summer afternoon in Georgia: "Sometimes the last line of trees was a solid gray blue wall a little darker than the sky, but this afternoon, it was almost black and behind it the sky was a livid glaring white."^[2]

2. O'Connor's jarring image of earth and sky claws at our human sensibilities. She forces us to acknowledge that nature resists domestication. Placid, seemingly tame environments are easily shattered. Urban development is but a thin tissue concealing nature's feral harshness. O'Connor's brutal depiction of nature echoes a terse, epigrammatic image found in rabbinic literature.

BLACK FIRE, WHITE FIRE

3. The Word of God is black fire written on white fire. Certainly the imagery of fire as black or white is unusual. Notwithstanding the Western appetite for immediate gratification, the aphorism maintains obscurity and elusiveness. Yet Semitic people familiar with the harsh deserts of Palestine would be quite at home with such figurative language.

4. The words desert and word, for example, are derived from the same root in Hebrew. John the Baptist, living on wild locusts and honey in the Judean wilderness, preaches a gospel of repentance and water purification. Stirring the historic crucible of Middle Eastern politics and religion, he denounces the complacent religiosity of the privileged Pharisees and Sadducees who approach him for baptism. "You brood of vipers," he exclaims, "who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?" [Mt 3:7]

RIGOROUS MESSAGE

5. Punctuating his message with explosive imagery, the baptizer warns that all whose lives are barren of righteousness will be judged severely. They will be cut down like worthless trees and thrown into the unquenchable fire. The prophet's rigorous message is itself black fire written across the white fire of salvation history unfolding in the turbulent world of 1st century Palestine.

6. Many persons today shun rigorous messages even if this means denying the truth. Rather than hear what is expected of us, we want to be soothed by words of consolation. We mistakenly believe that life, fulfillment, and contentment are legitimate byproducts of consumerism, that these can and should be pursued aggressively.

WRITING ON ISRAEL'S CONSCIENCE

7. Each of us has his own way of doing this. Some are obsessed with things that glitter. Some are drawn to thrill-seeking. Others try to get a suntan in the glow of someone else's personality. Inevitably we complain that peace, fulfillment, and contentment are illusions. Yet amazingly we plunge ever more deeply into the world's distractions until, as Jeremiah's prophecy observes, "We exhaust ourselves for nothing and weary ourselves only for fire". [Jer 51:58]

8. This generation glorifies sensationalism, outrageous behavior, fantastic claims and self-gratification. We live in an age that exalts the human raptor, an age that perceives itself as supremely confident.^[3] Yet this same confidence, like happiness, is itself a by-product of material prosperity. It’s like water, you see, poured into one’s hands. How can one capture it? Where does it go? We cannot assume that self-awareness and faith are synonymous.

9. John the Baptizer, vested in a chasuble of camel's hair and preaching in a temple of livid glaring white, writes with an iron stylus on Israel's conscience. "Bear fruit that befits repentance", he demands. [Mt 3:8] Many, having heard about the baptizer, search for supernatural experiences in the desert but discover disappointment instead. They expect a great whirlwind of miracles, signs and wonders but see "only reeds shaken by the wind". [Mat 11:7]

NOT SEEING, NOT HEARING

10. Others venture out to be entertained, to catch a glimpse of society's celebrated black sheep, or to recapture the exotic image of a prophet sumptuously dressed in camel's hair, dwelling in a royal palace of rocks and sand. Not a few venture into the desert to encounter a prophet but they reject his message: "He who is coming after me is mightier than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry." [Mat 3:11] However varied their motivations, the many skeptics enjoy one thing in common. They look with their eyes but do not see. They listen with their ears but do not hear. They yearn for a prodigy, a spectacle, anything other than a man with a stick and a message about personal reform.

11. Coincident to the baptizer, Jesus himself pronounces judgment upon the people's complacency and self-satisfaction. To those who perceive him as a stumbling block to Israel's well-being, he is dangerous. But the fire that Jesus desires to cast upon the earth is altogether different from feverish politics and institutional religion. Jesus of Nazareth has been sent by God to be the instrument by which the Father writes his law upon the hearts of his people. What does Our Lord wish to see kindled in his people? From the prophet Isaiah, we discover that Christ desires to ransom us from exile to sin and places of darkness, to gather us on the holy way [cf. Isa 35:8] leading to himself, to heal the afflictions of our mind, body, and spirit and to restore our hope for a joyful future.

DWELLING IN THE DAY

12. Man and nature are to rejoice in gladness for both are to be perfected: "Then shall the lame man leap like a hart (and) the burning sand shall become a pool, and the thirsty ground springs of water." [Isa 35:6,7] The baptizer's fiery message burns with a new intensity in the midst of this generation. This very day witnesses the power of God working in people's lives. God's chosen people are experiencing a new outpouring of miracles, graces and blessings. Prayers are being answered at this very moment.

13. Persons who have turned away from true worship because of idleness or bitterness are returning. Souls wandering in darkness have seen a great light. [cf. Isa 9:2] Those who once inhabited the night make their dwelling in the day. Many persons who have never known the Father's love, the Son's grace, or the fellowship of the Holy Spirit are turning to God for the first time in their lives. Look about you! See the tears of happiness, the shining eyes, faces etched with gratitude and praise! Hear the testimony of the blessed who proclaim in the midst of the Church what God has done for them!

ONE DOOR, ONE VESSEL

14. The Lord Almighty, who anointed John the Baptist, has given each of you a personal mission in his divine plan, a mighty work which no other person can accomplish. At the Father's heavenly banquet table, there are empty places which you alone can fill: "Lift up your eyes and see: see how in heaven there are empty places. It is your task to fill them."^[4] God sees his children wandering in spiritual darkness. He knows that you are the one door through which they can walk into the light. God sees those who thirst for true worship and knowledge of him. He knows that you are the one vessel from which they may drink his life-giving water.

15. Accept your calling from God! Become his instrument of salvation! And we all are called by God. None of you who dwell in the one body of Christ can claim that the salvation and care of souls is not your responsibility. Each of us has a share in the great mission of evangelization--some greater perhaps as, for example, our Holy Father, bishops, priests and religious and some lesser, possibly a child who has just made his first communion or an elderly person confined to home or bed--for we have been received into the fullness of the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church.^[5]

EVEN THE LEAST

16. Not as an assembly of rootless strangers do we gather in this Church. We are brothers and sisters to one another in the eternal, holy family of our heavenly Father. And more than this, we are the bride of Christ, whose radiant garments are the "righteous deeds of the saints" [Rev 19:7-9], and whose dowry is the salvation and care of souls. Seek out the bruised reed and care for him tenderly as a bride cares for her husband! Search out the dimly burning wick and nurture her with love as a husband would his bride! [cf. Isa 42:3]

17. According to Our Lord, even the least member of heaven's kingdom ranks higher than John the Baptist. Greatness in God's Kingdom is proven by one's humble spirit and selfless surrender to the Father's will. For it is the Lord alone who casts fire upon the earth and desires that it kindle the human heart, igniting the society of man and consuming the boundaries of empires:

FOR YOU have not come to what may be touched, a blazing fire, and darkness, and gloom, and a tempest, and the sound of a trumpet, and a voice whose words made the hearers entreat that no further messages be spoken to them.

BUT YOU have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering, and to the assembly of the first-born who are enrolled in heaven, and to a judge who is God of all, and to the spirits of just men made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks more graciously than the blood of Abel. [Heb 12:18-19, 20-24]

PROFOUNDLY CHRISTIAN

18. Though scattered among the nations, Christians must seek every opportunity to hear God's Word and witness his mighty works. Initially we must call upon the Lord to deliver us from the wickedness of Satan, Prince of Death. Then, having been rescued from darkness, we join in building the Father's Kingdom the "city of the living God" [Heb 12:22]--by growing in the mind of Christ. [1Cor 2:16] Finally, we are to be serene, attentive and collaborative with Christ our Light "mediator of a new covenant" who came after John baptizing with the fire of the Holy Spirit.The message of suffering and deliverance, repentance and forgiveness, death and resurrection from the dead, is profoundly Christian.

19. The Good News of Jesus Christ unquestionably opposes the Word of the World. To be fully Christian, each of us must put on the mantle of the courageous baptizer who was himself a sign of contradiction. Though he sojourned in the Judean desert, the baptizer was very much a citizen of God's Kingdom. John entered the desert to be united more fully with God's chosen people and their destiny. The prophet's fiery message resounds from the desert. Its echoes are heard in the streets of our cities: God's tender merciful love is the sole power capable of changing the human heart from stone and regenerating it as a heart of flesh. [cf. Eze 11:19, 36:26] Reform your lives! Change your ways! Draw near to the transforming power of God's love! Invite him to make of your heart a tablet of white fire on which he may inscribe the black fire of his life-giving, eternal Word!

^[1] Cycle A /Third Sunday of Advent /Isa 35:1-6, 10 /Jas 5:7-10 /Mt 11:2-11.

^[2] Flannery O'Connor, "A Circle in the Fire", A GOOD MAN IS HARD TO FIND AND OTHER STORIES (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1983) 130.

^[3] Cf "Self-confidence is a precious natural gift, a sign of health. But it is not the same thing as faith. Faith is much deeper, and it must be deep enough to subsist when we are weak, when we are sick, when our self-confidence is gone, when our self-respect is gone." [Thomas, Merton, NEW SEEDS OF CONTEMPLATION (New York: New Directions, 1961) 187 ]

^[4] St. Therese of Lisieux, COMPLETE SPIRITUAL DOCTRINE OF ST. THERESE OF LISIEUX, Rev. Francois Jamart OCD (New York: Alba House, 1961) 104.

^[5] Cf SACRAMENTARY, "Profession of Faith", Nicene Creed (1985).