The Reason for our hope: Homily for Sunday, December 10, 2023

If you belong to a gym, you see the traditional pattern of who is present. If it's shortly after the first of the year, the gym is crowded. Everybody is there because this is going to be the year that they finally get into shape. Of course, we can probably predict what's going to happen. It's very full in the first week of January, not quite as full by the third week of January. And by the time we get to February, things are pretty much back to normal. And that's really the story of our life in so many ways, isn't it? We sometimes have good intentions, but not always perseverance in those intentions. And the liturgical season of the year recognizes this because every year we kind of get the opportunity to hit the reset button. Advent is the beginning of the church year, and so in many ways we started last week by saying Happy New Year, because it is the new year that we recognize in grace the ways in which Jesus is present in our lives. And today's readings really help us to focus on what enables us to persevere, because things are not always easy. It is, in fact, quite difficult sometimes. The road, as we hear in Isaiah, can be rocky, filled with potholes and making it difficult to travel from one place to another in terms of growth. We can find in our lives that as much as we want to become better in this particular area or that, we just can't seem to put it together. Today's readings remind us of the very good news that really it's not up to us. It's not really about working harder and harder and harder. It's about really opening our heart more and more to the help that Jesus gives us to do what we should do. Opening our hearts more and more to becoming the person that Jesus has made us to be. That's the good news. As we look around, we hardly can—let me rephrase this. As we look around, it can be easy to believe that we're not in a world of good news, because there are so many things that are not good all around us. I can't keep track of all of the places in the world where there's violence, where there's war. There's just too many of them. We simply haven't figured out how to live together in peace. I know that this time of year for some can be a very difficult time of year. While certainly it is true that this time of year can be exciting and wonderful and tremendous, it can be a time of year where, in fact, we recognize the gifts that we have and the blessings that we have. For others, it can be a time of anxiety, depression, and loneliness. It can hardly feel like the good news is what we are preparing for. But Isaiah and the Gospel help us to remember that in the midst of it all, God has this amazing plan for us. It is the plan of salvation. If we read the history of the Bible, the parts that are, in fact, history, we see that it is not simply the recounting of events. It is the recounting of the ways in which God has been active in history to help us to experience the salvation He desires to give us. In Isaiah's first reading, the promises are amazing. It's why, in so many ways, Isaiah is the prophet of Advent, because he reminds us of the great hope to which we are called. He starts with something that I mentioned to the kids not too long ago, with comfort. Because, quite frankly, in the midst of this horrible and terrible world, we need to be reminded that we're not alone. That while things can seem to be bad, God is more powerful. And so Isaiah reminds the people who have gone astray that they have the opportunity to come back because of what God is going to do in their lives. The Gospel reinforces this idea that the Bible is really about the history of our salvation. . .