Saturday of the First Week of Advent
December 9, 2023

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/120923.cfm

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Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, our readings invite us to consider the state of our world and to imagine its transformation. And more significantly, our Gospel invites us to imagine ourselves as participants in that transformation.

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This image is taken from Cassell’s Illustrated Universal History
illustrated by Edmund Ollier (1827)
This amazing book is preserved and can be accessed here:

https://archive.org/details/cassellsillustr02olligoog/page/192/mode/1up

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Isaiah prophesied in a time of desperation for Israel. Crushed by the Assyrian Empire, the Jewish people languished in foreign captivity. As all prophets do, Isaiah interprets Israel’s experience in terms of its spiritual meaning – how do one’s present circumstances reveal the evolution of one’s eternal relationship with God.

The entire Book of Isaiah swings back and forth between two poles: the sin of a faithless people counterbalanced by the merciful generosity of a faithful God. Isaiah’s job is to call the people to awareness, repentance, and hope.

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Today’s passage is a call to hope. In it, Isaiah describes the glorious peace that will occur when humankind truly repents from sin and turns to God for healing. The prophet assumes God’s voice in an invitation to healing and the restoration of fidelity:

Thus says the Lord GOD,
the Holy One of Israel:
O people of Zion, who dwell in Jerusalem,
no more will you weep;
He will be gracious to you when you cry out,
as soon as he hears he will answer you.
The Lord will give you the bread you need
and the water for which you thirst.
No longer will your Teacher hide himself,
but with your own eyes you shall see your Teacher,
While from behind, a voice shall sound in your ears:
“This is the way; walk in it,”
when you would turn to the right or to the left.

Isaiah 30:19-21

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Scripture speaks to us as well as to the audience for whom it was originally written. And surely Isaiah’s world, distanced on a timeline, is amazingly comparable to our own.

Imagine if you can, living in a world that calls good evil and evil good. Imagine a place where the powerful store up money and treasures while the poor and vulnerable go hungry. Imagine a cultural system that applauds immorality and whose icons lead undiscerning masses to open graves of unrestrained greed, lust, and hatred. Obviously, none of us has to work too hard to imagine such a place.
These are not new problems. The book of Isaiah presents a world strangely familiar to our own. Two powerful images emerge. On one hand, is the picture of sin’s ravaging ways; the aftermath is devastating. But filtering through this awful picture is the more powerful vision of deliverance and salvation. Isaiah invites the reader to see this bright vision through eyes of faith.

Robarts, Charme (2003) “By Faith We Can See It Afar: Believing Isaiah’s Word,” Leaven: Vol. 11: Iss. 2, Article 4

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In our Gospel, Jesus – like Isaiah and like us – is in the midst of such a wounded world:

Jesus went around to all the towns and villages,
teaching in their synagogues,
proclaiming the Gospel of the Kingdom,
and curing every disease and illness. 
At the sight of the crowds, his heart was moved with pity for them
because they were troubled and abandoned,
like sheep without a shepherd.

Matthew 9:35-36

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Jesus tells his disciples – and us – that by selfless generosity, rooted in grace, we become God’s healing agents for our times and communities.

Then he summoned his Twelve disciples
and gave them authority over unclean spirits to drive them out
and to cure every disease and every illness.

Jesus sent out these Twelve after instructing them thus,
“Go to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.
As you go, make this proclamation: ‘The Kingdom of heaven is at hand.’
Cure the sick, raise the dead,
cleanse lepers, drive out demons.
Without cost you have received; without cost you are to give.”

Matthew 9:6-8

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Prose: from “Kindness” – The First Gift by John O’Donohue

Despite all the darkness, human hope is based on the instinct that at the deepest level of reality some intimate kindness holds sway. This is the heart of blessing. To believe in blessing is to believe that our being here, our very presence in the world, is itself the first gift, the primal blessing...

... To be born is to be chosen. To be created and come to birth is to be blessed. Some primal kindness chose us and brought us through the forest of dreaming until we could emerge into the clearance of individuality, with a path of life opening before us through the world.

Music: Kindness – Steven Curtis Chapman