Father Thomas Welbers' Homily	Jump back to Homily Index
Third Sunday of Advent, December 15, 2002 John 1:6-8, 19-20	Listen to Audio

Today’s first reading from Isaiah contains the words that Jesus chose as his mission statement.  This is recorded in chapter 4 of Luke’s Gospel, when he launched his public ministry at the synagogue in his hometown, Nazareth.

Luke quotes Jesus as defining his own ministry as being anointed with the Spirit in order to “bring glad tidings to the poor, to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and release to prisoners.” His mission is also our mission, because we are members of his body.  Therefore, it’s important for us to go back to Isaiah and see where these words came from and what they meant among the people who first heard them.

This reading comes from the third part of the book of Isaiah, spoken to the Jewish people who had just returned from exile in Babylon to a devastated and impoverished homeland, in which the Temple – the heart of their identity as God’s people – lay in utter ruin.  Not only were the people depressed and de-spirited, they had no strong leader to restore confidence and unify them.

The whole third part of Isaiah was meant to inspire new hope that God himself would be their leader, that he would do what they could not do for themselves – make them a nation of integrity and peace.  The prophet uses many images for this, including the one we heard depicting a bride, loved and cherished by her husband.  In fact, the prophet goes beyond this, and conveys a vision that this people would be God’s instrument to bring justice and peace to all the nations of the world.

For us, perhaps, the doorway to the message of Isaiah is that love is not conditioned on whether or not the beloved is good, but rather love draws out and even creates goodness in the beloved.  God does not just reward us for being good.  It is God who makes us what he wants us to be.  What is asked of us is that we trust him and accept his transforming love.  St Paul, in the second reading, affirms this when he says: “The one who calls you is faithful, and he will also accomplish it.”  And so, says Paul, “do not quench the Spirit”; do not stand in the way of God working in you by holding attitudes and doing things that are contrary to God’s commandment of love.

Our situation today, as both Americans and Catholics, bears many resemblances to that of the exiles returning to Jerusalem 500 years before Christ to whom the prophet was speaking.  For the past year and some months we have been struggling with a national loss of spirit that seems capable only of retreating into pride and aggressive protectionism.  Our economy is getting more and more edgy and precarious.  More and more men, women, and – so tragically – children are being locked more tightly in a cycle of poverty and crime which society has neither the will nor the resources to address effectively, and which programs – “faith-based” or otherwise – can only touch superficially but can’t address the underlying causes, the alienation and fragmentation of our society.

Our national motto, “In God We Trust” is being attacked from two sides – one, I believe, far worse than the other.  Those who do not believe in God are fighting it, but those who do profess to believe in God don’t trust in him.  Open the newspaper, turn on the TV, watch the sitcoms and the shows that pass for “reality,” look at the ads, listen to the music – it’s pretty evident that our trust lies in almost anything but God.

And the Church, laboring under a deep and festering self-inflicted wound!  Yes, the wound is self-inflicted – even if the media and others are relentlessly probing that wound.  Whether it’s the tragedy of abuse itself or the systematic cover-up – both are symptoms of a dysfunctional family.  We Catholics take pride in our church as family, the family of God’s people, children of one heavenly Father, in and through Christ our brother.  My experience as your priest convinces me that we all believe this, and that we are deeply committed to living as brothers and sisters in one family.  And that is why these revelations of abuse and cover-up wound so deeply.  It has happened within our family.  Whether in Boston or Los Angeles, Ireland or Poland, Africa, Asia or Australia – it’s our family.  And it hurts each of us as only a family tragedy can hurt.

Adding to the sadness is that we know that our Catholic family has a mission, the same mission described in the Gospel for John the Baptist: to testify – give witness – to the Light, so that all might come to believe through this witness.  How many today can look at our Church – and see the light of Christ?

What can we do?  Our Church leaders may be able to ensure that this kind of abuse will never happen again – that is certainly essential, and the focus of action right now.  Our nation may be able to preemptively strike against real or suspected weapons of mass destruction, or despotic madmen or cells of terrorists.  But unless underlying relationships are healed, the preventive measures will exact the cost of greater mistrust and alienation.  Within families and societies, the “logical” way of handling dysfunction – cover-up, blame, and the compulsion to “make everything right” – only produces greater dysfunction and pain.  That’s the lesson of the Twelve-Step Programs in addressing alcoholism and addictions of all sorts: healing begins only with the twofold realization that “we can’t” and “God can.”  The “logical” and reasonable ways – what’s often meant by “human wisdom” in the Bible – only make things worse, only add to the dysfunction.

If there is one lesson that shines through the entire Old and New Testament, it’s the one that begins AA’s Twelve Steps as well: our powerlessness and God’s power.  The realization of our powerlessness hurts – it hurts bad, and it hurts deep.  But it is necessary if we are to be healed, because only God can do the healing.  We, even in our best efforts, just make things worse!

I think both we as a Church and we as a nation have felt the pain of our powerlessness.  But have we truly admitted it?  The motto “In God We Trust” trips so easily off our tongue.  But, when we confront the hard choices and our real-life priorities as individuals and as communities – do our decisions, big and small, show that we really trust in God?

© 2002 Thomas Welbers