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Advent Sunday 4, A cycle, 19 December, 2004.
Homily by Fr Simon deGale in point form.

1. This Advent the penance I have found myself giving adults is to say three Hail Marys for the grace to know “I am a sinner”. Why? We come to the Sacrament of Reconciliation with reluctance because we are ashamed of sin; with reluctance because our little egos want to be God, cannot bear to be imperfect, wrong, frail and weak. Cannot bear to admit this to another, God and most of all myself - I am afraid of who I am, of what I may discover.

The day we actually admit, accept we are truly sinful will be a day of Joy and Rejoicing and Peace for us because we will for the first time stop wasting large amounts of energy pretending to be what we are not, pretending to the world, God and self we are actually better than we are. But most of all, our egos will have finally stepped aside, opened our hearts to God’s Holy Spirit. The Spirit who will reveal to us the breadth and length and depth of the infinity of God.

On this day we will truly rejoice when we finally make room for the Holy Spirit.

2. Joseph, in today’s Gospel, hears the angel say of Mary, “the child conceived in her womb is of the Holy Spirit”. Our understanding of the Holy Spirit is that God’s Spirit is the third person of Blessed Trinity, the one who allows us to have Faith, Hope and Love, and the Spirit is the one who makes Christ present in the sacraments.

This is not Joseph’s understanding of the Spirit. He only knew from the Old Testament that the Spirit of God was “truth” having spoken in the prophets; that the Spirit had “creative power” having, in Genesis, “hovered over the chaos” and brought forth order out of it in the act of Creation; Joseph knew that the Spirit possessed a “re-creative power” through the vision of valley of bones becoming en-fleshed through the breath of God.

Joseph was also told by the angel that infant child was to be named Jesus, meaning Saviour. Joseph now knowing the child was conceived by the Spirit of God would understand that Jesus would speak the “truth” of God; that Jesus would “create” a new age: the messianic age; that Jesus would “re-create” all those dead in their sins.

But the greatest revelation of the angel to Joseph is the Virginal Conception. A revelation Joseph would not have had time to understand. After many years the Church knows the meaning of this Revelation. First, the child would possess a divine paternity: God and not a human is the child’s Father. Therefore, the child is of God and possess a divine nature. Secondly, the child would possess a human maternity in Mary. Therefore, the child possess a human nature. Consequently, in Jesus, their exists the human and divine natures. God saves us through our very humanity -by the power of the divine nature- when we were unable to do so ourselves.

Further, the Virginal Conception by the Holy Spirit tells us that our salvation is not of human initiative but of divine initiative. The conception of Jesus is not of human origin, urge or will. It is from God. We are saved by the free choice of God without meriting it or earning it - it is pure gift which we can only accept.

3. God is unhurried:
Isaiah’s prophecy of Immanuel, God with us, in the first reading is several hundred years before the conception; It takes place in silence without theatrics and lies dormant in the scriptures. Gabriel’s annunciation to Mary of the Child’s conception is silent too, without theatrics and fanfare. The same happens with Joseph in today’s reading: silence and a lack of drama. At the birth of the Saviour 2000 years ago, which we celebrate in a few days, world history did not take a sudden turn for the better, no historical mention is made of it outside of the Gospels: it was a non-event of the day (it took 2000 years for over a billion people to become believers).

God’s plan of salvation unfolds slowly, unhurriedly but surely. And just as over a billion believers exist today, so too, as we remain faithful to the Christ Child, we will become empty, accepting we truly are sinners and becoming filled by the Holy Spirit of God. This day will surely come but unhurriedly. We turn now with this hope and intention to the Lord in the Eucharist.

Fr Simon

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