Fourth Sunday of Advent Többet
Fourth Sunday of Advent
First Reading
Isaiah 7,10-14
Yahweh spoke to Ahaz again and said: Ask Yahweh your God for a sign, either in the depths of Sheol or in the heights above. But Ahaz said, 'I will not ask. I will not put Yahweh to the test.' He then said: Listen now, House of David: are you not satisfied with trying human patience that you should try my God's patience too? The Lord will give you a sign in any case: It is this: the young woman is with child and will give birth to a son whom she will call Immanuel.
Psalmody
Psalm 23
Antiphon
Lord you are the king of glory.
The Lord is the earth and its fullness,
the world and all its peoples.
It is he who set it on the seas;
on the waters he made it firm.
Who shall climb the mountain of the Lord?
Who shall stand in his holy place?
The man with clean hands and pure heart,
who desires not worthless things
who has not sworn so as to deceive his neighbour,
He shall receive blessings from the Lord
and reward from the God who saves him.
Such are the men who seek him,
seek the face of the God of Jacob.
O gates, lift high your heads;
grow higher, ancient doors.
Let him enter, the king of glory!
Who is the king of glory?
The Lord, the mighty, the valiant,
the Lord, the valiant in war.
O gates, lift high your heads;
grow higher ancient doors.
Let him enter, the king of glory!
Who is he the king of glory?
He, the Lord of armies, he is the king of glory.
Second Reading
Romans 1,1-7
From Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle, set apart for the service of the gospel that God promised long ago through his prophets in the holy scriptures. This is the gospel concerning his Son who, in terms of human nature was born a descendant of David and who, in terms of the Spirit and of holiness, was designated Son of God in power by resurrection from the dead: Jesus Christ, our Lord, through whom we have received grace and our apostolic mission of winning the obedience of faith among all the nations for the honour of his name. You are among these, and by his call you belong to Jesus Christ. To you all, God's beloved in Rome, called to be his holy people. Grace and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
Reading of the Gospel
Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia
Yesterday I was buried with Christ,
today I rise with you who are risen.
With you I was crucified;
remember me, Lord, in your kingdom.
Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia
Matthew 1,18-24
This is how Jesus Christ came to be born. His mother Mary was betrothed to Joseph; but before they came to live together she was found to be with child through the Holy Spirit. Her husband Joseph, being an upright man and wanting to spare her disgrace, decided to divorce her informally. He had made up his mind to do this when suddenly the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, 'Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because she has conceived what is in her by the Holy Spirit. She will give birth to a son and you must name him Jesus, because he is the one who is to save his people from their sins.' Now all this took place to fulfil what the Lord had spoken through the prophet: Look! the virgin is with child and will give birth to a son whom they will call Immanuel, a name which means 'God-is-with-us'. When Joseph woke up he did what the angel of the Lord had told him to do: he took his wife to his home;
Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia
Yesterday I was buried with Christ,
today I rise with you who are risen.
With you I was crucified;
remember me, Lord, in your kingdom.
Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia
Homily
Today's liturgy accompanies us to the threshold of Christmas, as if to protect us from distractions and worries that are not related to the encounter with Jesus. The Church wants this Christmas to be full of meaning and joy for each one of us. Consequently, it has us encounter Joseph, a man like many others, a man who was living a modest life as a worker and thinking about his future. He took a girl from his village, Mary, as his wife and was tranquilly waiting for his dream to finally come true. But one day this dream was shaken. Mary mysteriously became pregnant. What had happened? One could talk (and accuse Mary) of adultery, with all of the civil and penal consequences that would have brought her. She would have been seen as an adulteress, and she would have been rejected and marginalized not only by her family, but by all the inhabitants of Nazareth.
Joseph, a just man, nonetheless decides to send her away in secret in order to protect her from this painful situation. His dream had already been broken. There was nothing left for him to do except reflect on his bitter experience. And we can imagine his drama and the thoughts that must have been running through his mind. But God did not leave him alone with his thoughts. Just as he questioned himself bitterly, perhaps with no hope for his future, Joseph started dreaming again. "An angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream," the evangelist writes. It was not his little dream anymore, bound to his simple life as a carpenter, which he himself had planned. It was a much greater dream: "Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins."
It is the Gospel of Christmas. We could say that it is the "dream" of Christmas: a baby will save the entire world from its sins. A baby will free the world from every form of slavery. Joseph, a simple carpenter from a little village on the periphery of the empire, finds himself living within a new and wider horizon, the horizon of Christmas. He is no longer living his little dream, but the boundless dream of the Gospel. Joseph got up and did as the angel had commanded him: he took Mary with him. Joseph is not among the main actors in the Gospel. And yet he took part in the grandeur and the joy of that night: he took Mary and the child with him. Each one of us is asked to take the Gospel with us and abandon the banal selfishness of our own little dreams and aspirations. At Christmas we need to dream big. We Joseph we draw near to the holy night to welcome the Lord and walk with him along the roads of men and women.
Prayer is the heart of the life of the Community of Sant'Egidio and is its absolute priority. At the end of the day, every the Community of Sant'Egidio, large or small, gathers around the Lord to listen to his Word. The Word of God and the prayer are, in fact, the very basis of the whole life of the Community. The disciples cannot do other than remain at the feet of Jesus, as did Mary of Bethany, to receive his love and learn his ways (Phil. 2:5).
So every evening, when the Community returns to the feet of the Lord, it repeats the words of the anonymous disciple: " Lord, teach us how to pray". Jesus, Master of prayer, continues to answer: "When you pray, say: Abba, Father". It is not a simple exhortation, it is much more. With these words Jesus lets the disciples participate in his own relationship with the Father. Therefore in prayer, the fact of being children of the Father who is in heaven, comes before the words we may say. So praying is above all a way of being! That is to say we are children who turn with faith to the Father, certain that they will be heard.
Jesus teaches us to call God "Our Father". And not simply "Father" or "My Father". Disciples, even when they pray on their own, are never isolated nor they are orphans; they are always members of the Lord's family.
In praying together, beside the mystery of being children of God, there is also the mystery of brotherhood, as the Father of the Church said: "You cannot have God as father without having the church as mother". When praying together, the Holy Spirit assembles the disciples in the upper room together with Mary, the Lord's mother, so that they may direct their gaze towards the Lord's face and learn from Him the secret of his Heart.
The Communities of Sant'Egidio all over the world gather in the various places of prayer and lay before the Lord the hopes and the sufferings of the tired, exhausted crowds of which the Gospel speaks ( Mat. 9: 3-7 ), In these ancient crowds we can see the huge masses of the modern cities, the millions of refugees who continue to flee their countries, the poor, relegated to the very fringe of life and all those who are waiting for someone to take care of them. Praying together includes the cry, the invocation, the aspiration, the desire for peace, the healing and salvation of the men and women of this world. Prayer is never in vain; it rises ceaselessly to the Lord so that anguish is turned into hope, tears into joy, despair into happiness, and solitude into communion. May the Kingdom of God come soon among people!
