Mary, Our Lady of the New Advent, Mother of God, by your faithful yes to God’s Will you brought forth true Hope into the world-Jesus your Son; help us to open the door to our homes, to our hearts and welcome you in, and so welcome Him in. Amen.

Matthew 1, 18-20 Fourth Sunday in Advent. December 22nd, 2013

Over the last couple of weeks of Advent, we have been preparing for the coming of the Christ Child at Christmas. We have been told to stay a wake, not to fall asleep. In this we have discovered that Advent is the liturgical time, which reminds us that all of our life is an Advent, a time of joyful preparation for the coming of Jesus at the end of the world or the end of our life, which ever comes first. But we have also been reminded that Jesus has already come, and even more that He comes to us now at this Holy Mass and at every Holy Mass in His same body and blood that he was born with at Bethlehem. This great truth is not only the cause of our Joy, it is the very source of our hope…the source of all hope…We have hope because our God is truly with us!

Speaking of hope, a few years ago I came across a very interesting true story about hope. A priest was once given the assignment of serving at a woman’s prison where many of the inmates were in for life. He was told that these particular women were very tough, and so it would be hard to get much of a response from them. In fact, at his first meeting with them only two women showed up. So he knew he had to do something in order to get more of the inmates to come and hear the truth about God and the truth about themselves.

So he devised a plan to invoke the curiosity of the inmates. So he said to the two women, I am going to ask you the following question, if you can’t give me the correct answer I’ll stop talking, leave and come back next week to see if you have the answer. He asked them, “What is the worst sin? One of them immediately answered, “Murder.” No, the priest said and he left.
The next week there were about twenty women present. They all gave various answers to the question, such as “rape” and even “killing a baby.” Again, the priest said, “No.” and left.

The following week the room was completely packed. Still none of them had the answer. This time however, the priest revealed to them the correct answer. The worst sin he said was the sin of despair, loss of hope. He went on to tell them that they had hope even in their desperate situation, (prison for life) because they were daughters of Most High God and because they had God as their Heavenly Father. “Without belief, without faith in this,” the priest said, “they would be lost in despair.” He then told them of the unconditional love of the Father and how we don’t have to earn His love; we just have to open our hearts to it and trust in it, place our hope in His goodness, and then with a contrite heart, ask and receive His forgiveness and mercy vowing to live, with His Help, as His beloved sons and daughters.

Pope Francis gave this same message of hope last week in his weekly Angelus address. Our Holy Father said:

He (God) is always with us in order to help us to go forward. He is a God who loves us so very much, he loves us and that is why he is with us, to help us, to strengthen us, help us go forward. Courage! Always forward! Thanks to his help, we can always begin again. How? Begin again from scratch. Someone might say to me: "No, Father, I did so many reprehensible things ... I am a great sinner.... I cannot begin from scratch!". You are wrong! You can begin from scratch! Why? Because he is waiting for you, he is close to you, he loves you, he is merciful, he forgives you, he gives you the strength to begin again from scratch! Everybody! And so we are able to open our eyes again, to overcome sadness and mourning to strike up a new song. And this true joy remains even amid trial, even amid suffering, for it is not a superficial joy; because it permeates the depths of the person who entrusts himself to the Lord and confides in him.

To entrust ourself to the Lord means to trust in Him, and to trust in Him means to hope in Him—and to hope in Him means to already begin to possess Him in Whom we hope. In God alone is our hope!
We have so many troubles in this life, our world is in great trouble, and we see others in so much trouble. To have hope, we as individual and as communities have to return to faith in God, not only believing that He exists, but struggling with the help of His grace to live our lives in complete fidelity to Him, to His Holy Church, to His truth and obedience to His commands and the teachings of His Church out of love for Him. Hope is impossible without this true faith.

Our Catholic faith is not just about information we know; Christianity doesn’t just tell us facts, doctrines and truths. Our faith and these doctrines and truths tell us with certainty that each one of us is personally loved by God our Father. Each one of us is so loved by Our Father that he sent His only begotten son, Jesus to earth for us. Jesus became a man for us, was born for us, lived and died for us, and finally, He rose from the dead for us. God did all of this for us so that He would move our hearts to trust and hope in Him, love Him so that we might enter into an eternity of perfect happiness with Him forever. Our faith gives us hope by showing our true goal, giving us a reason to live no matter the situation; and so those with hope have the abundance of life.

When we really truly believe that God only allows what is best to happen to those who love Him we have hope and this Hope does something to us, it changes us, redeems us; it saves us. In the words of the former black slave now saint-St. Josephine Bakhita who was brutally beaten by multiple “masters” and eventually found true freedom in the true Master Jesus Christ, “Once I am aware that I am definitively loved by God, it doesn’t matter any more what happens to me, what situation I am in or what kind of “master” I may have; God is with me and with in me; I have hope and so I can endure joyfully come what may for love of Him.” Because St. Bakhita had hope, she began already to possess and be possessed by the object of her hope—Jesus!

Hope like faith however, is not just something we have it is something we live. Our hope in God cannot be static; it must be operative; it must be performative. What keeps us from hope is not the situations of our lives but rather how we respond to them. It’s not our defects or other people and their defects but it’s the way we respond to them that can keep us from hope. We can either rebel against God because of our circumstances and so become angry and despair, or resign to our fate with a woe is me attitude; Or instead we can accept our situation with the attitude that Our Father God knows best—I am loved-I am saved-God loves me definitively and so I hope in Him even when it seems hopeless. I will still trust in Him in every situation because I know through faith that He will only allow what is best for me so that I may reach my goal of eternal happiness with Him beginning already here on earth.

We need to ask our Lord for the capacity to accept big things, little things, to accept others they way they are, to accept ourselves the way we are. Yes, with God’s help and through prayer and action, we need to change the things we can, we need to keep struggling to become better, but we need to accept our weakness in order that we can rely on God more than on ourselves, to become better by accepting all circumstances by crying out, Jesus I believe in You, I trust in You; I trust in Your love for me, I abandon myself to you O My God help me to trust in You and love You more!

The season of advent and Christmas can sometimes be the worst. It is so busy and our hearts and minds are so preoccupied. It is also the season of rampant depression resulting from so many reasons, sadness, the loss of a loved one, life in a mess, unemployment, the state of affairs in our world and in our Church, Christmas away from those we love. All of this really shows us that we can’t place our hope and trust in ourselves to bring us happiness. If we rely on ourselves we lose hope and then we get angry at God-why does He allow this to happen to me or to my loved ones.

We also can’t place our trust and hope in the world. Man continually tries to create a system to trust apart from God and we end up with the gulag of Communism, the Auschwitz of Nazism and now the dictatorship of relativism. We can’t put our trust in politics or political systems or ideologies; we can’t put our trust in Government or even science to save us—only God saves, in this is our hope.

In this season we have our family and friends and their love. This is good it helps to show us and lead us to the love of God. Yet, even those who are closest to us can and will let us down. Just like we can’t trust the world, so too, we can’t trust our love ones totally, because they are imperfect and weak just like us. So too, there is no perfect priest, no perfect bishop; there is nobody who is perfect save One, The One, Jesus Christ; He is our only Hope.

In these last couple of days before we celebrate Christmas we must turn ever more to the source of our hope and so the source of our joy, Jesus in the Holy Eucharist…the Eucharist is our hope. In the Eucharist God is truly with us as one of us!!! And adoration of the Holy Eucharist puts us in touch with our Hope, Jesus. Those who adore both at Holy Mass and outside of Holy Mass, have hope those who don’t adore their hope is dying or is already dead. (end?).

And so what is the secret to obtaining hope! It is the Holy Mass, and our active, full, conscious and fruitful participation in it, is the source of our hope. In our actual participation in it, the Mass which is primarily about our interior adoration of the Father through Jesus in the Holy Eucharist, becomes the source of our hope because the Mass makes truly present Jesus and His Perfect act of adoration to the Father, His sacrifice of love that saved us, is saving us and will save us, if we place our hope in its Power to save us.

At the Mass, in the Holy Eucharist, Jesus’ birth two thousand years ago becomes again present before us, and so Jesus is born anew on the altar before us, lives before us, dies before us, and resurrects and ascends before us, actually, truly and really. Jesus becomes fully present before us again in the Holy Eucharist as true God and true Man.

At the Mass as well, His second coming becomes present; at the Mass we are at once at the beginning of the world and at the end of the world. At the Mass our Goal, which is heaven becomes present on earth as well. And at the Mass, our hope can be increased when we adore and receive in true faith Jesus the source of our hope, if we open the doors to our hearts, minds and soul so that He can enter and mount His throne, ruling over our lives and transforming us into His image and likeness. Then we can become instruments of hope; better yet, living tabernacles of Christ and hope for the world, for we can take Jesus out into our daily lives and share with others the joy and the hope that is within us because we possess and are possessed by the God who is Love.

In our Gospel today, St. Joseph gives us the secret of Christmas and the aid for obtaining hope at Holy Mass. He lets Mary into his home! And by doing so He lets the Divine Child within her into his home as well. So too with us, if we want to let Jesus into our homes, into our hearts more fully this Christmas and at this and every Christ-Mass, then we must let Mary, more fully, into our homes and into our hearts. And she for her part brings with her, her divine Son Jesus who is our Hope.
Let us pray:

Mary, Our Lady of the New Advent, Mother of God, by your faithful yes to God’s Will you brought forth true Hope into the world-Jesus your Son; help us to open the door to our homes, to our hearts and welcome you in, and so welcome Him in at this Mass and at every Mass. Amen.