Homily for the Second Saturday of Advent

St. John Paul II Shepherds Guild

December 16, 2023
Saint Patrick Cathedral
Fort Worth, Texas

Sirach 48:1-4, 9-11
Psalm 80:2ac and 3b, 15-16, 18-19
Matthew 17:9a, 10-13

“Lord, make us turn to you; let us see your face and we shall be saved.” “O Shepherd of Israel, hearken, From your throne upon the cherubim, shine forth. Rouse your power.” We have just prayed these words from Psalm 80 seeking the Lord’s pastoral guidance and direction for us to pay attention, for us to turn our face towards Him, to see Him and to save us from all that distracts us from Him, the only path to our salvation.

Advent is about paying attention – turning towards God and in so doing recognizing that it is God who has first turned towards us and paid attention to us. His paying attention to us is His shepherding us towards our salvation. For us to pay attention requires us to be guided away from distraction, so the Lord invites us into silence during Advent amidst the frenetic pace of the world, filled with noise and distraction.

Advent is about silence and about vocation. During Advent we listen to the silence of Zachariah that accompanies his call to be the father of John the Baptist, we listen to the silence of Saint Joseph in his call to be the husband of the Blessed Virgin Mary, we listen to the prophetic and pre-verbal proclamation by the unborn John the Baptist who leaps in the womb of Elizabeth in the silent presence of the Word made flesh, engendered by the unconditional love of the Father and the Blessed Virgin Mary’s response to God’s call excitedly delivered by the Archangel Gabriel.

The silence of Advent shows the limited extent that human words offer in manifesting God’s unconditional love. Advent reminds us that as much as human language can communicate, it can also distract. Today’s Gospel reminds us that the people were distracted by fear and so they did not pay attention and failed to recognize John the Baptist nor his testimony. C.S. Lewis once said that “human history is the terrible story of human beings trying to find something other than God to make them happy.” In Advent, the words of all the prophets give way to the silence of God that speaks more profoundly than all the prophets who carried God’s message of conversion and desire for Israel to pay attention, to turn to Him and to see His face that they might be saved.

Advent is about God’s final and complete offer which He conveys no longer in words of promise but in His Word Incarnate spoken clearly in silence, the Word that is more than an action Who transforms all subsequent human actions to become the capacity to return to God through real love for Him as demonstrated through love for our neighbor of other human beings. Advent is the time to pay attention to God’s shepherding of us through the gift of His Son, the Good Shepherd. “O Shepherd of Israel, hearken, From your throne upon the cherubim, shine forth. Rouse your power.”

The vocation of a priest is to accept this call to share in the pastoral ministry of the Good Shepherd, of the Word Incarnate. The vocation of the priest is nurtured in the silence that frees a man from distraction and enables him to pay attention, to hear the voice of God clearly in the silence and to answer with the firm act of faith that the world is never enough to satisfy anyone. The vocation of the priest is nurtured in the silence that frees a man from distraction and enables him to pay attention, to hear the voice of God’s flock and with a Shepherd’s care respond to their cries with the solace that the world is also too much to satisfy anyone because Christ alone is what satisfies the human heart: “My soul is restless until it rests in you, Oh Lord.” It is the ministry and mystery of the priest through which Christ enables His Church to pray in the Liturgy with the Psalmist, “Lord, make us turn to you; let us see your face and we shall be saved.”