FOURTH SUNDAY OF ADVENT

It’s easy to understand the dilemma Joseph faces in today’s Gospel. He’s betrothed to Mary, but before they come to live together he discovers she’s expecting. So what’s he to do? Joseph, Matthew tells us, was a man of honour, a technical term in those days for someone who observed every detail of the law. And so Joseph’s first instinct would have been to turn to the OT. And there, in chapter twenty two of the Book of Deuteronomy, he would have found the guidance he was looking for. The relevant section begins by pointing out the obvious; that there are two ways in which Mary could have become pregnant. Either she has consented to have sex with another man, in which case she is guilty of adultery; or she has been forced to have sex against her will, and so is innocent. And to establish which of the two is the case, Joseph, according to the Law, was entitled to call for a trial. Joseph, however, chooses not to go down that road but to divorce Mary informally, in other words, without a trial. In this way, he will spare her publicity, another technical term which meant she would not be ‘exposed to public disgrace’ or ‘made a public spectacle of.’ In the end, of course, Joseph does not go down this road either. This upright man who, up to now, has lived his whole life according to the law, rejects the old religious solution and takes Mary home to be his wife. So why did he do this?

Well, the answer to that question takes us to what we have been reflecting on since Advent began. Essentially, the choice facing Joseph was between trusting what came from outside of himself, the law, or what came from inside himself; what, for weeks, we have been calling a deep interior knowledge which comes, not from external evidence but from the Spirit of God moving in us. And this is clearly happening in the story. The text talks about dreams and angels, but there’s no need for us to take those words literally. What else are they but attempts to describe something much more ordinary and much more profound, namely the deep, gentle but persistent movement of God in each one of us. The religious law which had governed the people’s life for centuries was pointing him in one direction, but Joseph chooses instead to trust the truth we see emerging from deep inside himself. And in this simple but profound moment, a moment intimately linked to the equivalent moment in Mary’s life, which is the Annunciation, husband and wife become one in their openness to God. And in this way God enters our world and becomes part of human history. Joseph trusts the movement of the Spirit. Mary trusts it too. Each of them in their own way says, ‘Let it be done unto me according to your will,’ and as these two acts of human freedom come together, the New Testament begins. And it is a moment which tells us everything we need to know about what it is to be a Christian today.

As the 21st century begins, you see, we, too, are being called by God to give birth to Jesus in the world of our own day. But just as neither religion nor the law were enough to bring Jesus to birth 2000 years ago, so they are not enough today. They were inadequate then and they are inadequate now. For Jesus to be born in the world of the 21st Century, millions of us who call ourselves Christians have to make the journey Joseph made in this week’s Gospel. It is simply not enough to keep rules and perform religious actions. It’s not enough to come to Mass each week and go away untouched by what we have done. Something profoundly new has to happen in us. It is not enough to have heard about God or believe in his existence. What we are called to is a personal relationship with the God who lives and moves in us too, and only if we allow this relationship to develop and grow; only if we learn to listen to the God whose Spirit speaks deep within us – as Joseph and Mary did - will it be possible for Jesus to born in us again today.

But there’s a problem. And it’s this. Deep within the Catholicism many of us have grown up with, there is a deep resistance to the very idea of such a relationship. Brought up to think that being a Catholic is about going to Mass and the sacraments and observing a series of rules, many, because they have no experience of personal faith and cannot imagine what it would be like, actually fear it and think it is taking the whole business of God far too seriously. And so thousands in our parishes live shallow, religious lives, ignorant of the intimacy God offers. But things will not always be like that. God is doing a new thing today and I would like to give you an example of it.

A friend of mine who teaches RE to a fourth year class in St Matthew’s Academy showed them recently the second episode of the programme called the Big Silence which some of you have seen. It follows five people, none of whom were Church-goers, as they make an eight day silent retreat in St Beuno’s, a Jesuit spirituality centre in North Wales where I did the Spiritual Exercises of St Ignatius myself as a thirty day silent retreat over twenty years ago and where I have directed many retreats since. Dealing with the silence was a huge struggle for all five of them, but by the end of the retreat they had come through that struggle and arrived at a deep spiritual place they had never been to before. Each in his or her own way had met God in the silence and it had changed their lives. And when the programme had finished, my friend asked the class how many of them would like to have that kind of relationship with God. And to his utter amazement, every single person in the class put up their hand.

And yet this should not really surprise us. Many young people today have rejected traditional religion. But that will not be the end of the story. Created to share the life of God the desire for God will surface in them again in new ways and our job is to be the kind of Church which will have something deeper than mere religion to offer them when it does. My friend’s story is a glimpse of the future. The question is; do we want to be part of it or are we too scared of what it might involve?

BIDDING PRAYERS

Joseph, in today’s Gospel, is a model of how to listen to the movement of God deep within himself. Three times in St Matthew’s account of the birth of Jesus he decides on one course of action and ends up doing the opposite when asked to do so by God. It is not only Mary who is open to God’s will in her life. Joseph, too, has his Annunciation experience and, like Mary, is willing to go where God leads. And so we pray for the grace we need to be more like them both in the way we respond to God in our lives…...Lord hear us

So long as we take literally things like angels appearing to people in dreams, it is easy to tell ourselves that such things only happen to other people. And so we pray for the courage we need to develop more accurate and more mature ways of reading the Scriptures which enable us to see that the whole of both the Old and New Testaments is actually about ourselves. What God has done in the past he continues to do today and we pray for the wisdom and insight we need to recognize this......Lord hear us

Led to believe that being a Catholic was about going to Mass, receiving the Sacraments and keeping the laws of the Church, the idea that we are called to a deep, personal and intimate relationship with God is difficult for many to come to terms with. To some traditional Catholics it sounds ‘protestant’ or ‘evangelical,’ not at all the kind of thing Catholics do. But while there are historical reasons why this has happened, it is a deeply mistaken notion and we pray for the grace to leave it behin........Lord hear us

The Church itself has a long history of resisting the movement of God. Time and again over the centuries it has wandered away from the Gospel and embraced the values of the secular world. And so, in every age, the Spirit has called her to renewal, a call which has always been resisted and continues to be resisted in our own day. And so we pray for the grace we need to read the signs of the times and accept the many challenges of the Gospel at this moment in history without fear or anxiety................Lord hear us

Many today worry about the faith of the young. Born into a deeply secular society very different from the one many of us who are older were born into, the Church as we knew it means nothing to them. But God continues to work in their lives. The very shallowness and emptiness of our consumer-driven society can itself, in time, become the place where a desire for something deeper begins to stir, and we pray that when that happens our parishes will be places ready and able to respond to their needs.......Lord hear us

Being pregnant put Mary in a very vulnerable position. A male-dominated world with double standards in this area has always been very severe on women who find themselves pregnant and alone. And so we pray for single mothers today, especially those who are used as scapegoats for the sexual sins of men. And we pray in a particular way for women who, in the not too distance past, were judged and condemned within our Catholic parishes and who still carry the pain of that experience.........Lord hear us