3rd Sunday Advent C - Homily 2

Homily 2 - 2018

If I thought before in regard to our poor Church that the wheels were in danger of falling off, I am not quite sure how I would put it now. It is almost as though everything is falling apart.

The Christian community at Philippi in Paul’s day were doing it tough. With his heart on his sleeve, Paul had written to them, saying, as we heard this morning in the Second Reading, “I want you to be happy, always happy, in the Lord; I repeat, what I want is your happiness”. A more literal translation reads, “Rejoice in the Lord always”. To me joy is a deeper, richer experience than happiness – something, perhaps, over which we have a little more control and which to some extent we can even deliberately choose. Still, however we hear it, Paul’s wish can sound little more than empty wishful thinking – but bears pondering all the same.

He speaks about our joy being “in the Lord”. I think he is suggesting that such joy arises from an experience of relationship and deep personal closeness with the Lord – something the effects of which even other people can notice. The present translation calls it “tolerance”, but it may be more a sense of inner strength and peace arising from that relationship with the Lord – whose presence, Paul insists, is not something distant and unreal, but personal and what he calls “nearby”. Ultimately, I suppose, that joy is what I dearly seek in my life. I suspect everyone does, even though too many people try getting by through psychological denial or avoidance. But getting by is hardly good enough. It never satisfies, and does not bring real peace. There can be value in stopping; noticing, if possible; and asking ourselves, What do I really want? and what can I do to secure it?

St Paul’s suggestion was this: “If there is anything you need, pray for it, asking God for it with prayer and thanksgiving”. To thank God before getting what we ask for can seem strange, even dishonest. In fact, the thanks spring from our trust in the sort of God we heard about in today’s First Reading from Zephaniah, the God "in our midst”, the God "who exults with joy over us”, who even, rather embarrassingly, “dances with shouts of joy for us”. Yet, such love of such a God may not seem to fit with past experiences of praying and not receiving what we asked for.

The catch may be that we are not sure what we really need when we first pray – we only think we know. In that case, the obvious thing to do is to pray for what we think we need; and, if our prayer is not answered, to keep praying. Time spent focusing on our desires allows them to sort themselves out somewhat. It can be surprising what goes on inside us if we persevere in our requests, provided we keep at it for long enough. We can come to know ourselves much better, and as that happens, the focus of our prayer so often changes. We get to know better what we really need, and we begin to want that. We even get to know God and God’s desires much better. Paul suggests that the outcome of our prayer can be a new feeling of leaving it to God [who knows and loves us, after all, even better than we do ourselves], or, as he wrote, “that peace of God, which is so much greater than we can understand, will guard your hearts and your thoughts”. I wonder if that, ultimately, is what we all unconsciously yearn for.

St Teresa of Avila is supposed once to have told a friend that eventually the only requests she was interested in making to God were quite well summed up in what we know as “The Lord’s Prayer”.

If you are seeking that elusive joy in the midst of present pain and bewilderment, give Paul’s advice a go!