HOMILY FOR THE 4TH SUNDAY OF ADVENT, YEAR A
Rev.
Fr. Ezekoka Peter Onyekachi
Every serious event
comes with an announcement. In the African Traditional and cultural setting,
whenever there is a message from the king, the messenger gets the attention of
the people through the sounding of the gong prior to the message itself. Today we
are sounding a peculiar gong concerning the birth of the Messiah. This is the
last Sunday of Advent; and already we are at the threshold of Christmas. In this
Advent season, we have been lead through the path of a joyous expectation of
the coming of a king who comes as a liberator and a saviour. Today, however, we
join our voices with that of the Prophet Isaiah and the Angel Gabriel to
announce to the world with no fear of equivocation that a virgin shall conceive and bear a son and shall call his name Immanuel. The
Child will be conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit. His mission is to save
the world from her sins. We are about to witness the apex of all the
theophanies in history, the zenith of all miracles and the highest of all break-aways from slavery and
intimidation. We are about to experience the possibility of the greatest
impossibility. It is this singular message that I have come to announce to you
today.
The Emmanuel-Prophesy (A virgin shall conceive and bear a son...)
The First Reading
(Isaiah 7:10-14) champions this announcement. The Prophets exhorts the king to
trust in the Lord, and God will show him any sign he pleases. Why should king Ahaz trust in the Lord? Syria
and Israel had already invaded Judah but failed to capture Jerusalem, which is
the capital of the Judean kingdom. Ahaz, the king of Judah decided to align with
a faithless nation Assyria to protect his kingdom against further invasions.
Ahaz had forsaken God, living bad life and even had sacrificed (to the point of
his own son) to pagan idols. Isaiah saw doom in this political alliance with
Assyrians and opposes the king dictating that the Davidic dynasty can only be
preserved by God and not by some stupid political alliance. Only God’s power is
able to save him and his kingdom. Ahaz was told by the Lord to ask for any sign
that can engender trust in Him, but Ahaz refuses. But the Lord himself gave a
sign; the sign of Immanuel.
Sign here does not mean
something miraculous. Ahaz was to ask of confirmation of the Prophet’s promise.
The sign of Immanuel is the sign
given no longer to persuade Ahaz, but will in the future confirm the truth of
what the prophet has spoken. The sign of
Immanuel is the sign that is given to transcend the earthly dynasty of
David and that encompasses both the earth and the heavens because God Himself will
choose to be born from that dynasty. The
sign of Immanuel is the sign which renders the Davidic line divine. Indeed,
the sign of Immanuel is the sign of
God-with-us; God subjecting (but not subjugating) himself to the human way of birth, but not the
human way of conception and allowing himself to have an earthly mother and a
genealogy. It is in the choice of the genealogy of David that the confirmation
of the sign is made and rooted. It is in giving this sign that the prophesy
showcases. And this is the Emmanuel-Prophesy: therefore, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall name him
Emmanuel. Emmanuel means God is with us.
Many of us act like
this faithless king who was actually rendered faithless out of his war experience.
He lost the trust that God could save the house of Judah, that it can only take
political alliance to save it. Our experiences may render us faithless. We tend
to lose every bit of trust that we had. Even when the Lord desires to free us
from such frustrated, faithlessness and distrust, we block our hearts. I just
want you to know that God cannot disappoint you. He works at his own time. The earthly
Davidic dynasty Ahaz was fighting to protect was the same Davidic dynasty that
God has promised to widen its horizon; no longer being participated by humans
alone, but prolonged and sustained by God Himself. He knows the best. The King knows
the best for us. Do not be frustrated by your experiences of defeat and disappointments.
He is coming with a greater package. Yes, trust Him.
The Divine Announcement
and Virginal Conception (Joseph, do not fear to take Mary your wife into your
home...)
The Emmanuel-Prophesy
is again seen in the Gospel of today, to show that the promise is being
fulfilled in the Virgin Mary, who is betrothed to Joseph belonging to the Davidic
dynasty. The infancy narrative is built by Matthew around the person Joseph
(unlike the Lucan presentation around the person of Mary. Matthew presents a fascinating
character of Joseph who respected both God and men. Joseph never wanted to
disgrace Mary who had been found with child after her betrothal. According to
Jewish custom actually, if after betrothal, a young girl is found with child,
divorce was allowed and has to be done publicly to make the reason for the
divorce clear. But Joseph saw that publicity may lead to a ridiculing of Mary’s
personality. He decided to preserve Mary’s dignity and honour. This was indeed
an inspired decision. But God never
allowed that decision. He sent his Angel to intervene. The angel appeared to
Joseph and intervened. Why?
1. In comparison with
Ahaz the King who belonged to the Davidic dynasty and distrusted the Lord as
regards a sign of His promise, there has to be another person (Joseph) who also
belongs to the Davidic dynasty to trust the Lord fully, to be a direct witness
of this promise when this sign is palpably fulfilled in Mary’s conception. Ahaz
distrust has to be corrected by Joseph’s absolute trust. Ahaz infidelity must
be corrected by David’s fidelity.
2. Joseph was part of
the magnificent plan of God for the salvation of mankind. Mary could have as
well been divorced and remained the mother of God, but God never wanted it that
way. Joseph was to be the Husband of Mary and the foster father of God’s son,
Jesus.
Nevertheless, Joseph’s
inspired decision to divorce Mary secretly revealed a very important aspect which
was not vivid in the Isaiah’s Emmanuel-Prophesy –the Virginal conception; the
conception by the power of the Holy Spirit. This is impossible for the human
mind. Joseph had finally witnessed and heard the greatest mystery that was not
made explicit to Isaiah. The pregnancy is the action of the Holy Spirit. The impossible
is going to be possible. Mary and Joseph are now confronted with the great
mystery of conception without consummation.
The Spirit of Creation
and re-creation
The son will be conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit. The Old Testament
formula of the Holy Spirit is the Spirit
of God.
1. The Spirit of God is
also active in creation in Gen 1:2. The spirit of God was moving upon the face
of the waters. The waters of creation were filled by the Spirit of God. When the
Lord sends forth His Spirit, they (creatures) are created (cf. Psalm 104:30). It
is the Spirit of God that makes us as it made Job and gave him life (cf. Job 33:4).
Now, the Spirit of Gen. 1 brought order to the initial chaos. This same Spirit
has caused the virginal conception to restore the order of righteousness which
humanity had destroyed. Righteousness, peace, joy, goodness were all rendered
chaotic. So, the Spirit of God in Marian conception had the mission to destroy
all chaos and to restore sanity and salvation. That was the spirit of Christ’s
mission: it is he who will save people from their sins.
Hence, as a child of
God, the spirit of the Lord has been given to you to move you into the action
of assisting the king Jesus to bring sanity to our world of insanity, to bring
peace to our world of rancour and war; to bring order t our disordered world;
to bring community spirit to our selfish society; to initiate a message of love
and concern to the world that cares only of self preservation. The power which
breathed life into that which had no life has come to breathe in life into our
weaknesses and frustration. The spirit energizes us in our frustration and
works never to allow us to doubt God as Ahaz did. It is the spirit of
converting impossibilities to possibilities. Those plans and goals you have
thought to be impossible can be rendered possible this season. You will
live to share your testimony and not your acrimony.
2. The Spirit of God is
the cause of human life in Ezekiel 37:1-4, Job 27:3, and Isaiah 42:5. It is the
spirit of re-creation. I will cause breath to enter you and you shall live
(Ezekiel 37: 5). The Spirit awakens and enlivens us when we are rendered
moribund. In the life of sin, only the spirit of God can wake us into new life.
The Spirit of the Marian conception is thus the spirit of re-creation; one that
can bring back to life; one can enliven the soul that is dead in sin. It is
a spirit of revival of the dry bones; of reformation of the deformed bones; of
restoration of the useless and forsaken bones; of renewal of the old bones; of reinvigoration
of the weak bones; of reincorporation into the family of the saints; of re-enabling
and re-enchanting for a vigorous and radical encounter with the world of sin;
of re-encoding us as the sons of God. This Spirit makes life new again.
Never was the Spirit of
God so operative than in the virginal conception. It was in it that the move to
recreate the human soul was begun; the soul that had been damaged by the
disobedience of Adam. This is the Spirit of Jesus with which He carried out his
mission. This is the spirit of the King we shall encounter next Sunday at
Christmas. Our king is the re-creating power that is among us. He is the
God-with-us. The Second Reading (Roman
1:1-7) makes it clearer. It is through Him that our faith is sustained. In Him,
we have received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith. This
is the obedience of faith that Joseph and Mary has shown us through their fiats to the divine will. In whatever
you do this Christmas, we must allow this obedience of faith to guide us. Without
faith, we cannot please God (cf. Heb. 11:6). I wish you this fidelity as I
expect to hear from you on the day of Christmas. Do enjoy in the Lord the Happy
New week. God bless You.
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