According to Your Word - Third Sunday of Advent

(Image of the Advent wreath is from ImageVine/courtesy of www.imagevine.com. All rights reserved.)

Cycle B
(Is 61:1-2 10-11; I Th 5:16-24; Jn 1:6-8, 19-28)

Exuberance is one of the words that befits the church’s momentum at this point in our celebration of the season of Advent. The coming of the long-awaited Messiah is so near that the church is bursting with anticipation. In some way, this is the rehearsal dinner to the great wedding feast of heaven and earth. Rejoicing is the only mood. John the Baptist lends clarity in the confusion of identities, the bewilderment that sometimes, even today, perplexes those of us who still seek the Anointed One of God.

John tells us that not only is he unworthy to wash the feet of the one in our midst, but that he should not so much as approach his sandal. Here is the summons to awe, awe that we are so gifted by the presence of God, not only in our midst but also as one of us. This Good News cannot but move us to embody the best of ourselves: perhaps rather to diffuse the best of ourselves, made in the image, and after the likeness.

May the God of peace sanctify us... the One who calls us is faithful! How can we keep from rejoicing?


– Fr. Robert D’Aversa, T.O.R.