WEEKDAY HOMILY ADVENT 02 05 – Year I
Feasting in the Light of God’s Word:
Optional Memorial of St. Juan Deigo Cuauhtlatoatzin
(Is 48:17-19; Ps 1; Mt 11:16-19)
*******************************************************
Fr. René Fumoleau OMI recounted the story of an elder who commented to him that having faith in God was like driving a car at night. One journeyed without being able to see the destination, because the headlights illuminate just enough of the road to make the journey possible.
Isaiah and the psalmist today combine to provide us with an important message – to let God’s Word light our way through life, and lead us to the eternal banquet.
The psalm response promises that those who follow the Lord will have the light of life. The psalm goes on to identify the source of that light of life as the Word of God. Those who meditate day and night on the law of the Lord will be like trees planted beside a stream, solidly grounded, yielding fruit at all seasons and under all conditions.
Isaiah then reminds us the Lord is our Redeemer who wants to lead us on the way we need to go, to make it through life successfully. Like the psalmist, he encourages us to pay attention to the Word of God, only now in the form of the commandments of God. He laments that Israel failed to do this, caught up as they were with the false gods of possessions, prestige, power and pleasure, and so they did not prosper. In fact, just the opposite – their false pride, stubborn self-will and addiction to those false gods led to tragic disaster, culminating in the destruction of the temple and exile in a foreign land.
Basing ourselves on both Isaiah and the psalmist, the lesson for us today is to share in this guiding light of God by letting Jesus, the Word made flesh, be our redeemer, keeping his commandments, and fostering an intimate relationship with him through contemplative prayer.
To allow Jesus to be our redeemer is to allow him to forgive us. Once a Wells Fargo truck door malfunctioned and some of the money it was carrying spilled onto the New Jersey freeway. People risked their lives stopping in heavy traffic to try to collect as many of the bills as they could. How ironic – Jesus waits to freely give us an infinite treasure of forgiveness leading to a peace and joy no amount of money can buy, yet we resist that offer! All we have to do is be humble and honest, make an inner journey into our own truth of how we have acted out of our painful emotions to hurt others, confess our sins, pray for healing of those same emotions, try to make amends, and the eternal life and light of God will be ours at no cost.
The other light God’s word sheds on our path are the commandments, which can be summarized this way: Love God with our whole being, love all other people as we love ourselves, love one another as Jesus has loved us, and especially, love our enemies by forgiving them from the heart. To live out these commandments is to live in the light of Christ and also be a source of that light for others.
For the psalmist especially, a third way we can access this light of Christ is through contemplative prayer (described as “meditating on the law of the Lord, day and night”). To enter into contemplative prayer is to venture into a very mature kind of prayer that seeks to gain nothing – that desires only to remain in God’s presence and soak up God’s transformative light and love.
Juan Deigo with tilma
Today we honor St Juan Deigo Cuauhtlatoatzin, to whom the Blessed Virgin Mary appeared on this date in 1531 at Tepeyac, near Mexico City. She told him that a church should be built at the site of her appearance. On another visit, Our Lady sent Juan Deigo to gather flowers and present them to the bishop. When he did so, the flowers fell away, revealing an image of the Blessed Virgin that miraculously appeared on his rough garment or tilma. That relic, that should have disintegrated centuries ago, is on display in the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico.
After this momentous event in his life, Juan became a catechist and could not stop spreading the message of what he had experienced. He taught, proclaimed the good news of the kingdom of God and the healing that his uncle had experienced through Our lady, and certainly became a source of hope for thousands of other Indigenous who came to be baptized because of him. He is an example for us of someone who lived today’s readings. He was canonized in 2002.
The Eucharist is both life and light for us, based on the Passover meal that was decisively important in salvation history. God commands that his people share a meal to remember their liberation from slavery. This supper provides the context for the deepest theologizing of the Israelite community. Both the bitterness of their slavery and the sweetest of their liberation are acted out in this sacred meal.
Jesus’ life and ministry can be interpreted in light of this symbol. From the very beginning, Jesus was laid in a manger, for he would be food for a hungry world. Much of Jesus’ public outreach centered on sacred meals, where everyone was invited: rich and poor, saints and sinners, the sick and the outcast. They thought John the Baptist was a weird ascetic, but they called Jesus a glutton and a wine-bibber. He embodies God’s desire to eat an intimate meal with his people.
And of course, the life and teaching of Jesus comes to a climax at the meal that we call the Last Supper. The Eucharist is what we do in the in-between times, between the death of the Lord and his coming in glory. It is the meal that even now anticipates the perfect meal of fellowship with God.
The Eucharist is our way of “loving God back.” It also allows us to experience Jesus as our redeemer by forgiving and healing us, and empowering us to love others as Jesus has loved us. May our celebration also help us to follow the light of God’s Word by living the commandments and fostering a more intimate relationship with Jesus through contemplative prayer and participating in the Eucharist.
