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Third Sunday of Advent

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Remember the victims from Newtown, CT. Pray for their families. This is a list provided by CNN.com (which chose to include the last names of children only when their parents have spoken in public):

Dawn Lafferty Hochsprung, 47; Mary Sherlach, 56; Lauren Rosseau, 30; Victoria Soto, 27; Emilie Parker, 6; Rachel Davino, 29; Anne Marie Murphy, 25; Charlotte, 6; Daniel, 7; Olivia, 6; Josephine, 7; Ana, 6; Dylan, 6; Madeleine, 6; Catherine, 6; Chase, 7; Jesse, 6; James, 6; Grace, 7; Anne Marie Murphy, 52; Jack, 6; Noah, 6; Caroline, 6; Jessica, 6; Avielle, 6; Benjamin, 6; Allison, 6.

Readings

Zephaniah 3:14-18a

  14         Shout for joy, O daughter of Zion!

Shout in triumph, O Israel!

Rejoice and exult with all your heart,

O daughter of Jerusalem!

  15         The Lord has taken away His judgments against you,

He has cleared away your enemies.

The King of Israel, the Lord, is in your midst;

You will fear disaster no more.

  16         In that day it will be said to Jerusalem:

“Do not be afraid, O Zion;

Do not let your hands fall limp.

  17         “The Lord your God is in your midst,

A victorious warrior.

He will exult over you with joy,

He will be quiet in His love,

He will rejoice over you with shouts of joy.

  18         “I will gather those who grieve about the appointed feasts—

 

Isaiah 12:2-6

    2         “Behold, God is my salvation,

I will trust and not be afraid;

For the Lord God is my strength and song,

And He has become my salvation.”

    3         Therefore you will joyously draw water

From the springs of salvation.

    4         And in that day you will say,

“Give thanks to the Lord, call on His name.

Make known His deeds among the peoples;

Make them remember that His name is exalted.”

    5         Praise the Lord in song, for He has done excellent things;

Let this be known throughout the earth.

    6         Cry aloud and shout for joy, O inhabitant of Zion,

For great in your midst is the Holy One of Israel.

Philippians 4:4-7

    4   Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice!

    5   Let your gentle spirit be known to all men. The Lord is near.

    6   Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.

    7   And the peace of God, which surpasses all comprehension, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

Luke 3:10-18

  10   And the crowds were questioning him, saying, “Then what shall we do?”

  11   And he would answer and say to them, “The man who has two tunics is to share with him who has none; and he who has food is to do likewise.”

  12   And some tax collectors also came to be baptized, and they said to him, “Teacher, what shall we do?”

  13   And he said to them, “Collect no more than what you have been ordered to.”

  14   Some soldiers were questioning him, saying, “And what about us, what shall we do?” And he said to them, “Do not take money from anyone by force, or accuse anyone falsely, and be content with your wages.”

  15   Now while the people were in a state of expectation and all were wondering in their hearts about John, as to whether he was the Christ,

  16   John answered and said to them all, “As for me, I baptize you with water; but One is coming who is mightier than I, and I am not fit to untie the thong of His sandals; He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.

  17   “His winnowing fork is in His hand to thoroughly clear His threshing floor, and to gather the wheat into His barn; but He will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.”

  18   So with many other exhortations he preached the gospel to the people.

 (All reading derived from the NASB)

Further Reading

John Bergsma: Rejoice! The Third Sunday of Advent

Tim Gombis: An Advent Homily

James McGahey: Third Sunday of Advent: On Jordan’s Bank the Baptist’s Cry

T.C. Moore: Darkness, Advent, and Newtown, CT

Gary Wallin: The Birth of Jesus Pt 1: Declaring the End from the Beginning

Paul _____: What Does It Mean to Celebrate Immanuel? ; Waiting with Advent

If you have recommended reading for the Second Sunday of Advent please leave a comment.

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Second Sunday of Advent

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Readings

Malachi 3:1-4

Behold, I am going to send My messenger, and he will clear the way before Me. And the Lord, whom you seek, will suddenly come to His temple; and the messenger of the covenant, in whom you delight, behold, He is coming,” says the Lord of hosts.

“But who can endure the day of His coming? And who can stand when He appears? For He is like a refiner’s fire and like fullers’ soap.

“He will sit as a smelter and purifier of silver, and He will purify the sons of Levi and refine them like gold and silver, so that they may present to the Lord offerings in righteousness.

“Then the offering of Judah and Jerusalem will be pleasing to the Lord as in the days of old and as in former years.

Psalm 126:1-6

When the Lord brought back the captive ones of Zion,

We were like those who dream.

Then our mouth was filled with laughter

And our tongue with joyful shouting;

Then they said among the nations,

“The Lord has done great things for them.”

The Lord has done great things for us;

We are glad.

Restore our captivity, O Lord,

As the streams in the South.

Those who sow in tears shall reap with joyful shouting.

He who goes to and fro weeping, carrying his bag of seed,

Shall indeed come again with a shout of joy, bringing his sheaves with him.

Philippians 1:4-11

always offering prayer with joy in my every prayer for you all,

in view of your participation in the gospel from the first day until now.

For I am confident of this very thing, that He who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus.

For it is only right for me to feel this way about you all, because I have you in my heart, since both in my imprisonment and in the defense and confirmation of the gospel, you all are partakers of grace with me.

For God is my witness, how I long for you all with the affection of Christ Jesus.

And this I pray, that your love may abound still more and more in real knowledge and all discernment,

so that you may approve the things that are excellent, in order to be sincere and blameless until the day of Christ;

having been filled with the fruit of righteousness which comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God.

Luke 3:1-6

Now in the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod was tetrarch of Galilee, and his brother Philip was tetrarch of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias was tetrarch of Abilene,

in the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John, the son of Zacharias, in the wilderness.

And he came into all the district around the Jordan, preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins;

as it is written in the book of the words of Isaiah the prophet,

“The voice of one crying in the wilderness,

‘Make ready the way of the Lord,

Make His paths straight.

‘Every ravine will be filled,

And every mountain and hill will be brought low;

The crooked will become straight,

And the rough roads smooth;

And all flesh will see the salvation of God.’ ”

(All reading derived from the NASB)

Further Reading

John Bergsma: Make Straight the Paths: The Second Sunday of Advent

Tim Gombis: Advent Communion Meditation

Daniel Harrell: Holy Discontent

Scot McKnight: Second Sunday of Advent

Joel Willits: A Prayer for the Second Week of Advent

If you have recommended reading for the Second Sunday of Advent please leave a comment.


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Some Advent Posts

Happy Winter Solstice! Blogger John Anngeister of Next Theology has a set of advent/Christmas posts that I have enjoyed reading. I want to highlight three here.

(1) Anngeister presents the first set of Empyrean Dialogues. This is a short fictional work that takes places just prior to the Son’s incarnation.

(2) Anngeister highlights the period of Jesus’ birth to his baptism, labelling it “the test of ten-thousand days.” He makes a good point that “Jesus invites us to celebrate with him and in him the obscure but vital humanity he enjoyed with mother and family and friends before he felt called to go out to meet the son of Zechariah.”

(3) Anngeister notes where he agrees and disagrees with the great Karl Barth’s view on Christmas.


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Sunday Quote: Cessario on Christ’s Humanity

Romaus Cessario, OP, wrote a treatise on faith and the theological life, which is a life based on faith, hope, and love. These virtues are established in human beings by Christ through grace.1 The foundation of this life is Christ, who exemplified these virtues so perfectly that He demonstrates what true humanity is and ought to be. Christ’s humanity cannot be neglected.

Concerning Christ’s humanity and salvation, Cessario writes:

The humanity of Christ—conjoined to the divine Person of the Word and united with other human beings in virtue of a shared human nature—remains the instrumental cause of God’s saving work: Christ’s humanity is the instrument through which and by means of which God “moves” human beings toward their destiny in union with him.2

It is more common to hear of Christ hailed as God than it is to hear of Christ hailed as human. Without Christ’s humanity, all one has is a transcendent Jesus to whom none can relate. It is because Christ is fully human that Christ relates to us and we to Him. I sometimes wonder if groups that overemphasize Christ’s divinity to the neglect of his humanity hinder a believer’s discipleship. Can one pick up one’s cross and follow the otherworldly Jesus? Hardly. Yet one can pick up the cross and follow a divine Jesus who was completely human as any of us.

The celebration of Advent is not about only about the divine Son, but about the divine Son made human. May the following video remind us that He was exactly like us, yet without sin (Heb. 4:15).

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1. Romanus Cessario, Christian Faith and the Theological Life (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1996), 16.[Back]
2. Ibid., 21.[Back]


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You Can Thank the French for Advent!

I thought everyone would like to know the following:

“Advent is not the oldest season in the church. Easter, the Pasch or Passover, is far older, by at least two hundred years. In fact, the earliest mention of a period of preparation for Christmas didn’t exist until 490 in Gaul, what is now modern France.”

Joan Chittister, The Liturgical Year: The Spiraling Adventure of the Spiritual Life. 63-63

There you have it. The French invented Advent. You’re welcome.


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Advent: A Period of Preparation

Joan Chittister writes,

“Advent is a period of preparation for Christmas but, unlike Lent, it is not a period of penance, It is a period that focuses us on joy. We prepare ourselves to understand the full adult meaning of the feast. We come to realize more each year how great are our blessings, how beautiful is a life lived in concert with the Jesus who came to show us the way. We learn the anticipation, the joy of looking for the second coming of Christ, the joy of living in the surety of even more life in the future.”

The Liturgical Year: The Spiraling Adventure of the Spiritual Life. 66.

Amen and amen.


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The Third Sunday of Advent is Here

As we come to the third Sunday of Advent, we are reminded of the joy that comes from the nearing Advent of our Savior.

“Rejoice greatly, O daughter Zion! Shout aloud, O daughter Jerusalem! Lo, your king comes to you;triumphant and victorious is he, humble and riding on a donkey,on a colt, the foal of a donkey. He will cut off the chariot from Ephraim and the war-horse from Jerusalem; and the battle bow shall be cut off, and he shall command peace to the nations; his dominion shall be from sea to sea, and from the River to the ends of the earth.” (Zechariah 9:9-10)

We are also to look with joy towards Christ’s promise of an eventual second Advent.

“At that time men will see the Son of Man coming in clouds with great power and glory. 27 And he will send his angels and gather his elect from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of the heavens.” (Mark 13: 26-27)

Advent is meaningful not only because it looks to a hope fulfilled long ago, but also because it challenges us to look and prepare for the hope of the world to come.

Come Lord Jesus!