December 18, 2022 (4th Sunday of Advent)

by Fr. Xavier Lavagetto, O.P.

[This text is an automatically generated transcript.]

Have you ever have you ever had occasion to ask someone Are you happy? Invariably there is a pause. Almost a pause of uncertainty. Rarely does anyone answer with an immediate enthusiastic Yes. What would Jesus Joseph, for that matter, Mary have said consider their plight Can you imagine Josias reaction when he found out Mary was pregnant? He was not a happy man. Or Mary, can you imagine her fear? Will he believe me? Let alone the Spirit did this blasphemy. God is no philandering Zeus. And then there was the gut wrenching Sun darkening shame. Unlike arbitral, those with their easy escapes in ancient Israel they were married ever before they stood under the canopy or came together. Joseph my son felt betrayed. Today's Gospel insists that Joseph was a righteous man that is he was an observant Jew who kept the Torah he must have been more compassionate than righteous because the Law demanded she be tried and if guilty, stoned to death.

Joseph wanted to be kind to marry a different kind of righteousness. Imagine marriage shame. The town would have been abuzz when she stopped going to the mikvah for the monthly ritual purification.

Mary would be blamed. Don't we often blame the woman rumor and shame would have haunted them all the days of their lives. What's with you God to demand so much? But wait how would you contrive to have Jesus be Messiah and Lord? Son of David and Son of God, fully human and truly divine.

Many make a muddle of Jesus because they don't quite believe Jesus is truly fully human. They imagined a human body with a divine mind carved in. That's a mannequin, a mannequin Jesus without being human in learning, feeling thinking questioning, discovering, deciding, struggling, dancing, loving or faith is divine word takes our broken humanity whole and entire, that we may share in His divinity. Such is the poetry of divine love. But we so fill our imagination with Luke's account of Mary and manger angels and shepherds that we barely noticed Joseph's dream and his naming Jesus how many even notice that in Matthew that their home was Bethlehem. We gloss over the differences and quickly missed the main messages of both Luke and Matthew let me assure you, their differences only highlight their agreements on the essentials. His virgin birth born in Bethlehem raised in Nazareth, both Messiah and Lord human and divine their activities were their Gospels in miniature. Don't make Joseph a big character in this movie. He is important essential because he answers the question how can Jesus both be son of God and son of David through Joses adoption and naming Jesus he is made Son of David and God keeps His promises David who have an air and the people a Messiah and yet both be son of God and son of David actually God keeps His promises from the very beginning. Consider the trajectory of God's plan. He made this creation to be his temple. He made us to be what he forbade an image of himself, male and female he made them. Your mission is to be God's image bearing people, stewards of this good creation. Instead, we tragically ratified the first sin and every subsequent one. We keep doing it to ourselves. God's remedy for an avalanche of evil is a call Abraham and a people to be healing of the wound is sin in the light to all peoples Israel. And his children were to live it. David his kingdom were to do it and the prophets preached it. Instead, our world gives us nightmares. God gives us dreams. When we stop becoming dreamers, something in us dies. Advent invites you. Dream God inspired dreams. His dream. And St. Paul said to become all in all. It's not just individual salvation. That's God's goal, but forming a new creation a renewed community and a real communion of love. His name is mercy not retribution. Restoration, not earthly escape. Love, not anger. There is this caveat though. For love to be real. It has to be accepted and returned. Love is a relationship Love is a relationship or does nothing. God does not have to be persuaded to love us. He rather rushes to persuade us that he does. We did. What did Joseph and Mary do? They said yes to God's dream will you? So I asked where Mary and Joseph happy. They certainly had a lot to be miserable about. As I said our world gives us nightmares. God gave us gave Joseph a true dream. And when we stopped becoming dreamers some something in us dies. I'd been invites you dream God inspired dreams.

I've told before the story of my grandmother Nonna Caterina Poggi. Who had every reason to be a most bitter woman betrothed to a man 10 years older than she to leave her love and her country to marry a man she did. Not love to lose everything. There were winemakers in the prohibition to face the Great Depression to deal with American racism to struggle through two wars. And for her to be betrayed twice by her husband in a small town where there were no secrets. I could go on. Yet she was the happiest woman I've known even as a youth I wondered, how did she do that? She chose she chose happiness is not something you have. But the friendships you cultivate the mission you accept the purpose you embrace. Happiness is born out of self giving love. The following words are ascribed to Pedro Arrupe, a Jesuit Superior General missionary in Japan during World War Two. In one of the first treat the bomb wounded at Nagasaki. Nothing is more practical than finding God. Then falling in love in a quite absolute and final way. Which you are in love with with ceases your imagination will affect everything. It will decide what will get you out of bed in the morning what you do with your evenings. How your spend your weekends and what you read whom you know and what breaks your heart. And what amazes you with joy and gratitude, Fall in love stay in love and it will decide everything whose dream or nightmare. Will you choose to embrace. Choose God's Joseph and Mary did, and received God's joy.