Year C
Discover the deeper meaning and connections found in this week's readings, through these great commentaries written by our priests.
Explore this week's readings and hear what God is saying to us through His Word.
Find out more about how we can mark this special day in our liturgy.
See our music recommendations for the liturgy.
Combis and Baptists and Hope
I went to bed at 7pm, shortly after sunset. This meant I could get up at 2am to walk by light of the full moon. It’s cold, very cold, on this particular Andean mountain, over 3000m above sea level. By 5am, we stopped walking and waited by the roadside for a combi (minibus taxi) to come along.
It gets colder and colder, and I didn’t know the terrain, and I couldn’t see the road, so I have no idea where the combi is coming from. I scour the darkness for signs of life and light. Eventually, as I’m looking in one direction, someone points the opposite way and shouts “there it is”. With some help I managed to see a pair of dim lights bobbing away near the horizon. That’s our combi! The one I’ve been hoping for! It takes another 45 minutes for it to reach me but I am filled with joy just seeing it, knowing it’s on its way, knowing it’s getting closer...and I start to get myself ready for its arrival…
In our Gospel today, we discover three groups: the people, the tax collectors & the soldiers. They’ve made a special trip, out into the desert of all places, where there’s nothing much to see except this strange man dressed in camel hair. He ate wild locusts and honey for breakfast, lunch and dinner.
John the Baptist, I’d like to suggest, is a bit like the headlights of that combi. Just as the light arrived a good while before the combi itself, so John the Baptist arrives on the scene a little while before Jesus turns up; just as the light from the combi prompted us to do things to get ourselves ready, so John the Baptist calls us to action; just as the light from the combi helped us to know where to turn and look, so John the Baptist helps us to focus our attention on Jesus (in fact, if you ever see John the Baptist depicted in art, he nearly always is shown as pointing – towards the Messiah, Jesus himself).
The people ask, “What must we do?” John urges them to be charitable - ‘If anyone has two tunics he must share with the man who has none, and the one with something to eat must do the same.’
The tax collectors and soldiers take their turn to ask and be told.
They were all looking for happiness, for the blessed life, in the wrong places – in selfishness; in greed; and in power. And John tells them to turn their minds and hearts away from sin and towards God.
The Lord’s mercy is their hope and it is our hope too. The Lord’s healing love, that infinite ocean, is our only true hope.
Where are you looking for happiness this Christmas..?
Are you hoping to find it wrapped up neatly under a tree? Or in the fridge or at the bottom of your glass..? Are you hoping to find happiness in what you can get or what you can give? Are you hoping to find happiness regardless of its impact on those around you or with at least half an eye to your neighbour in need..? Or have you even stopped looking for happiness? “I’ll never get there” or “there is no there anyway”.
I want to encourage you today to take a trip out into that wilderness – to leave behind, even if only for a few moments and only in your imagination, the hustle and bustle and the hectic nature of the Winter Wonderland – and to find yourself face to face with John the Baptist. He’s a bit weird and yet somehow you know that he will speak truth into you, mincing no words, leaving nothing unclear.
You ask him, “Master, what then must I do?” Listen now to his response…
Third Sunday of Advent
CCC 30, 163, 301, 736, 1829, 1832, 2015, 2362: joy
CCC 523-524, 535: John prepares the way for the Messiah
CCC 430-435: Jesus the Saviour
In keeping with the general theme of the day which is rejoicing why not allude to the forthcoming ‘O’ antiphons which begin on Tuesday. Perhaps they could be put up around the Church on big posters with the Latin title and then the whole text and the people encouraged to use them in their prayers for the days leading up to Christmas. They would need to be printed in the weekly Newsletter. You might sing Our Lady’s Song, the Magnificat at the end of Mass in the version ‘Tell out my soul the greatness of the Lord’ or if you have a choir in the Gelineau version with the refrain no.23 in Laudate with a reminder that these antiphons are sung every evening with the Magnificat at Evening Prayer.
Note: These hymns have been chosen from the Laudate hymnbook:
Come, thou long expected Jesus (L100)
Lift up your heads, you mighty gates (L105)
Awake, awake: fling off the night! (L851)
Tell out my soul the greatness of the Lord (L880)
and
How Lovely are the mountains (our God reigns) (CFE268, L768, LHON346)
The King of Glory comes (CFE698, L107, LHON655)
You shall go out with joy (CFE8310, L878, LHON758)
On Jordan's bank (CFE575, L94, LHON541, TCH9)
Key
CFE - Celebration Hymnal for Everyone
L – Laudate
LHON – Liturgical Hymns Old and New (Mayhew, 1999)
TCH – The Catholic Hymnbook (Gracewing)
Do you have questions about the liturgy and how we are called to participate in it? Explore how the Church councils, saints, and popes have answered this key question and many more.
Every movement of the Mass is rich in meaning but we can become over-familiar with it. Rediscover the Mass and explore how it relates to the Exodus story, where many of its rituals come from, and how it makes Jesus present to us today.
