💖 HOMILY - DECEMBER 15 💖

First Reading - Isaiah 54:1-10

Gospel - Luke 7:24-30

In the first reading, we come across a joyful song that celebrates the return of Israel to God’s favour. It strikes all the notes of the close relationship between God and Israel. There is Isaiah’s special name for God, majestic yet intimate, ‘the Holy One of Israel’, used throughout the Book and evocative of the initial vocation-vision in the Temple in Isaiah 6. The Lord is represented as the go’el of Israel, the closest family member, bound by family love to redeem a family member from disaster. The faithful love, the love of a mother for her child, is promised to remain as sturdy as the hills themselves.

Since Jesus’ ministry, as reported to John the Baptist, did not match with his expectations of a fiery Messiah, John wanted to clear his doubts. When he sent his disciples for this purpose, Jesus encouraged John the Baptist to cast away the popular political expectations about the Messiah and simply to accept his healing and preaching ministry as the fulfilling of the Messianic prophecy of Isaiah. When John’s disciples had left, Jesus, paid the highest compliments to John the Baptist as his herald and the last of the prophets, and to the courage with which John had proclaimed his prophetic convictions. John completed the cycle of prophets begun by Elijah (Mt 11:13-14). He had the moral courage to criticize the immoral life of Herod the king with prophetic conviction. He convinced the Jews of his time that they needed to repent and renew their lives to receive the long-expected Messiah into their midst. Then he introduced Jesus as “the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world“ (Jn 1:29), or the true Messiah who would redeem mankind from the bondage of sin. But Jesus declares that his followers are greater than John the Baptist, because by Baptism we are made children of God, heirs of Heaven and temples of the Holy Spirit.

Dear friends, we have the same mission as John the Baptist, namely, to bear witness to Christ the Messiah by our exemplary Christian lives in a world controlled by agnostic and atheistic media, by liberal and leftist politicians, and by liberal judges. 2) Hence, we, too, require grace and the courage of our Christian convictions to live a Sacramental life, and exercising a spirit of prayer.