Homily for 4th Sunday of Advent

Homily for the
4th Sunday of Advent

Dec. 24, 2023
Luke 1: 26-38
St. Francis Xavier, Bronx
Our Lady of the Assumption, Bronx

“Nothing will be impossible for God” (Luke 1: 37).

The Annunciation (Leonardo da Vinci)

Archangel Gabriel’s visit to Mary of Nazareth presents 2 impossibilities.  The 1st is that Elizabeth, a woman well beyond childbearing years, has conceived a son; St. Luke tells that story earlier in the 1st chapter of his Gospel.  The 2d is that a virgin conceives a child without any male intervention, but only by the holy power of God.

Gabriel reassures Mary:  nothing is impossible for God.  All good things are possible for the creator and ruler of the entire universe.

We might wonder what else that’s impossible God can do or has done.  For example, how is it possible that God can love the human race—and ourselves in particular?  We cause so much misery to one another—on the grand scale of war, racism, and genocide, on the small scale of gossip, lies, and resentment; and lots of awful behavior between those extremes.  But “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him … might have eternal life” (John 3:16).  When we say God loves the world, we don’t mean he loves the oceans, mountains, wheat fields, apple orchards, majestic whales, and cuddly puppies—but he loves people.  He loves all of us, men, women, and children; white, black, brown, yellow, and red; young and old; saint and sinner.  It seems impossible to believe that—unlike us—God excludes no one from his love.  He loves everyone sitting here, and he loves people who don’t show up.  He loves people who don’t even acknowledge his existence or recognize any of his restraints on their behavior.  For you and me, that’s impossible.  For God, nothing is impossible.

Even more, God forgives us.  He forgives in spite of our weaknesses, our failures, even our malice.  He forgives the sins we commit repeatedly because of habit or frailty.  St. Paul writes to Timothy, “This saying is trustworthy and deserves full acceptance:  Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners” (I, 1:15).  We just heard the “impossible” gospel story of how Jesus came into the world thru the cooperation of a humble girl named Mary.  He descended from Heaven because God loves us and wants to free us from our sins.

There are people who don’t believe God can forgive them or would want to.  If that were true, God wouldn’t be true to himself.  He needn’t have sent his Son into the world.  Jesus needn’t have been born, gathered disciples, worked miracles, suffered and died in solidarity with us, rose from the tomb, founded his Church, and gave us 7 sacraments for our sanctification.  He did all that for the forgiveness of sins and the gift of eternal life—not that we deserve it, but that he loves us so deeply.  There’s no sin beyond the reach of grace.  There’s no heart so evil that Christ can’t change it.  Remember his promise to the repentant thief crucified next to him:  “Today you will be with me in Paradise” (Luke 23:39-43).  God says thru his prophet Isaiah, “Tho your sins be like scarlet, they may become white as snow; tho they be crimson red, they may become white as wool” (1:18).

All we sinners have to do is let Jesus embrace us and let him walk with us in our struggles to live as he taught, in our struggles to say to God, like Mary, “I’m the Lord’s servant; do with me whatever you will” (cf. Luke 1:38).  You and I find forgiveness difficult, nearly impossible.  In our celebration of the Eucharist, we thank God that he isn’t like us, that he can and does forgive.

And that’s why we love to celebrate Christmas.  Christ’s birth gives us hope that we can come close to God, that God really wants to be with us, and God empowers us to make our small part of this world a little bit more heavenly, a little bit more like God’s own home.