Homily for Saturday, Week 2 of Advent

Homily for Saturday, Advent Week 2
Memorial of St. Lucy

Dec. 13, 2025
Sir 48: 1-4, 9-11
Matt 17: 9-13
Provincial House, New Rochelle, N.Y.

Elijah confronts Ahab & Jezebel
(Thomas Matthews Rook)

“How awesome you are, Elijah, in your wondrous deeds!” (Sir 48: 4).

The reading from Sirach looks for Elijah’s return, to turn away God’s wrath and turn human hearts toward God and one another.  Jesus confirms this prophecy for his disciples and adds that the prophecy has been fulfilled in the person of John the Baptist.

Then Jesus compares himself to John in terms of suffering.  He doesn’t say it, but Elijah, too, suffered, chased into hiding and then into exile by people in power who didn’t want to turn their hearts toward God or their fellow men and women.

St. John the Baptist in Prison
(ShababChristian.com)

John suffered imprisonment and death for preaching a message of conversion—the turning of hearts—in particular a message of marital purity.  Elijah’s preaching also had been a call to purity—purity of cult, fidelity to the nation’s marriage bond to the Lord.

The courage of John’s preaching was a wondrous deed.  So was his recognition of the Lamb of God when Jesus came to the Jordan.  Likewise, his handing over to Jesus his disciples was a wondrous deed, and his acknowledgment of his lesser role in God’s plan of salvation.

Most of St. Lucy’s story is legend.  We know she was a virgin martyr, probably from Syracuse in Sicily, and had given her heart to Jesus.  She imitated John the Baptist and Elijah in her courage, the courage required to follow Christ even to death during Diocletian’s persecution.  That won her wide fame in the Church, and like Agnes and Agatha, Cecilia and Anastasia, her name was inserted in the Roman Eucharistic Prayer.

That Lucy or the other young women had such courage is a wondrous deed.  St. Ambrose wrote of Agnes:  “Girls of her age cannot bear even their parents’ frowns and, pricked by a needle, weep as for a serious wound.  Yet she shows no fear of the bloodstained hands of her executioners.”[1]  Such courage, such loyalty to Christ is a rare and awesome deed, one that we still witness wherever believers are persecuted today in Islamic, secular, or tyrannical settings.

It’s awesome, too, that one of our brothers, Fr. Frank Kelly, followed Jesus so closely, not in any physical danger but in the day-in-and-day-out life of a Salesian and a priest.  He was as down-to-earth as anyone we know, jovial, fond of a good meal, yet was wondrously pastorally sensitive, deeply in love with Jesus and Mary, available to the service of God’s people in school, parish, and spiritual direction.

A week ago, I heard much the same about Bro. Al Cussen, CFC.

God still sends us wondrous men and women like Elijah, like John the Baptist, to turn our hearts toward himself and toward our brothers and sisters.  May he work some wonders also in our hearts, so that we may point people toward the Lamb of God.

[1] Treatise on Virgins, LOH 3:1311.