4th Sunday of Advent: Season B

4 ^th Sunday of Advent: Season B

Peace be with you and welcome to our celebration of the Mass for the 4 ^th Sunday of Advent and look at this – all four candles on our Advent Wreath are now burning brightly!!! And we all know what that means. Christmas is almost here. And for those of you with young children at home, I’m sure the excitement is really building. And speaking of kids, I’d like to take a minute and tell a little Christmas story about children. For those of you who have attended my Bible Study classes in the past you may remember it because I’ve often used it as a lesson about reading the Bible and sometimes misinterpreting the meaning because we often read it too literally.

Ms. Jones is a 3 ^rd Grade teacher in a public school and several years ago just before Christmas break, she had her students drawing pictures with Christmas themes. As she walked around the classroom, she saw some were drawing Christmas trees, Santa Claus, and snow men, while others were drawing religious scenes with angels, mangers, Mary, Joseph, and a baby Jesus. Then she came up behind little Johnny and looked over his shoulder at his artwork. From one side of the paper to the other was an outline of what appeared to be a big jet airplane with four people inside. Now remember, I’m talking about third graders here, so the people were kind-a like stick figures. There were three in the middle of the plane and there seemed to be two adults and one small child, with the fourth figure up front apparently flying the plane. So, she asked; “Gosh Johnny, is that you and your parents going on a trip for Christmas?” “Oh no Ms. Jones.” He exclaimed, “That’s Jesus, Mary, and Joseph on their flight to Egypt.” “Wow,” she said encouragingly, “that’s very creative. And is that person up front flying the airplane?” “He sure is,,, that’s Pontius the Pilot.” So, there’s your Christmas Bible reading lesson for the day. Beware getting too literal.

Cute stories aside, I better talk about today’s readings for a few minutes. My friends, there are a number of reasons why this particular reading today from Luke’s Gospel, is one of my very favorites. One of those reasons specifically is why every single Christian, who embraces the Bible as the Word of God given to us for our salvation, should have this reading highlighted, underlined, or in some way marked in their own personal Bibles. Not only do we hear it read on the Fourth Sunday of Advent, we also hear it read on the Feast of the Annunciation. OK, that may be generating a few mumbled “so what’s” out there right now. Well, you see my friends, even though we’ll joyously celebrate the Birth of our Lord Jesus Christ this coming Friday, our ancient Christian Tradition teaches the actual Incarnation, the enfleshment of God, the second person of the Blessed Trinity, began at the Annunciation. As far back as the Second Century, Saint Irenaeus and many, many other early Church Fathers wrote that Mary as a second Eve repaired the disobedience of the first, when she humbly said; “May it be done to me according to your word.” Because at that very instant, through the power of the Holy Spirit, the Savior of the World was conceived in her womb! That’s why our Church gives us a wonderful Liturgical Calendar celebrating the Annunciation on March 25 ^th , exactly nine months before Christmas.

Now you know, I don’t normally read long quotes during my homilies, but I cannot possibly express this miraculous event with the same eloquence the great Saint Irenaeus did almost 1800 years ago when he wrote this; “Never was there a more entire or humiliating defeat than that which this day befell Satan. The frail creature, over whom he had so easily triumphed at the beginning of the world, now rises and crushes his proud head. Eve conquers in Mary. God would not choose man for the instrument of His vengeance; the humiliation of Satan would not have been great enough; and therefore, she – who was the first prey of hell, the first victim of the tempter, is selected to give battle to the enemy. The result of so glorious a triumph is that Mary is to be superior not only to the rebel angels, but to the whole human race, yea, to all the angels of heaven. Seated on her exalted throne, she, the Mother of God, is to be the Queen of all creation. Satan, in the depths of the abyss, will eternally bewail his having dared to direct his first attack against the woman, for God has now so gloriously avenged her; and in heaven, the very Cherubim and Seraphim reverently look up to Mary, and deem themselves honored when she smiles upon them, or employs them in the execution of any of her wishes, for she is the Mother of their God.” Wow. Now if that doesn’t make you want to run home and mark this Annunciation sequence in your Bibles, I’m not sure I can say anything else that would.

You might ask why one of our earliest Church Fathers, from the Second Century, would write with such obvious emotion about the physical Incarnation of Our Lord Jesus Christ and his very human mother Mary? You see, Irenaeus was one of the most vehement opponents of the very powerful Gnostic Heresy that was threatening the early Church for several hundred years. The Gnostics held that everything physical in the world was inherently evil and that Jesus Christ himself only “appeared” to be physically human during his short time on earth. Consequently, there was no way a physical human woman could possibly be called the “Theotokos”, the God bearer.

So, whether you come to one of the vigil Masses on Thursday, the Christmas Mass on Friday morning, or watch the Mass streamed through your computer from home, remember the real miracle we’re celebrating started nine months before Jesus’ actual birth. Now, let me make a little suggestion, as one of your final reflections, as Advent draws to a close, you might consider rereading this Gospel sequence we just heard today and reflect on the miracle taking place because of Mary’s freely given words of surrender to God’s will; “Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord. May it be done to me according to your word.”

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Paul T. Keil, 18-19 July 2026 16 th Sunday in Ordinary Time: Season A Peace be with you and welcome to our celebration of the Mass for the 16 th Sunday in Ordinary Time. OK, some of you may remember I’ve said before, in Matthew’s Gospel, Chapters 5, 6, and 7 comprise the whole Sermon on the Mount, but did you know Chapter 13, where we are today, is often called the Sermon of the Parables. In this single chapter Matthew strings together seven separate parables from Jesus. Today we just heard numbers two, three, and four. Last weekend we heard the first one with the Parable of the Sower and what happens to the seeds scattered in different places. Next weekend you’ll hear the final three parables from Chapter 13 so, be sure to come back. So, what is Jesus saying in these readings. Last week we heard the parable about seeds as an allegory for Jesus’s words falling on a path and being eaten by birds, falling on rocky ground and withering with no roots, falling into thorns and being choked by life’s anxieties, and falling on fertile soil to bear fruit. Today we have Jesus giving us another parable about planting seeds and again, just like last week, Jesus’ disciples ask him to explain the parable. And since He stops to explain both parables about planting, he just might be trying to emphasize something important here for his disciples, and for us. One thing is clear in these parables however, God’s Kingdom will always coexist in this physical world with forces opposing it, like the wheat and the weeds growing together. Now many religious people struggle with this condition. Some see it as predestination. A weed in the wheat field or a seed in the rocks must represent people predestined to go to hell. That’s what it literally says, right? Still others ask in frustration; this is God we’re talking about, why does God’s Kingdom have to struggle with opposing forces at all? Why doesn’t God just get rid of the evil? Well, our old friend, St Thomas Aquinas wrote quite a bit about good and evil coexisting in our fallen world. He said sometimes the two are so tightly interwoven that you couldn’t have certain types of good without certain types of evil. For example, he said simply, “there would be no virtue of the martyr without the cruelty of the tyrant.” Friends, God delights in our freedom, our intelligence, and our cooperation when we freely make the decision to accept God’s love. Without free will we cannot choose to love. Jesus’ explanation of the wheat and weed parable certainly helps when he says; “The harvest is the end of the age, and the harvesters are angels” and in the next verse he says; “The Son of Man will send his angels.” There is a very important take-away here every single Christian should remember. Eternal judgment belongs to God alone, not to anyone else – period. This is a consistent message Jesus gives us in all four Gospels but unfortunately, there are those who sometimes forget this simple divine fact about humanity’s relationship with the unlimited creator of the universe. We may perceive an individual as being bad or even intrinsically evil but judgment for their immortal souls belongs exclusively to God. I always like an old adage that goes like this, “if I ever get to heaven, I may be surprised by who I see there, and they may be even more surprised to see me.” I’ll admit, over the years for a long time, as I’ve meditated on this parable about weeds and wheat or last week’s parable about seeds, especially the ones falling into thorns choked by worldly anxiety, there was something always bothering me. You see, if we’re not careful both parables can make life, heaven, and hell sound kind of random or worse yet, they can make God’s love sound like it is exclusively reserved for preselected people. I know now however, there is nothing further from the truth. If you’ve lived life for a while and think back to times when you were say maybe,,, struggling in school, or first dating, or trying to make ends meet while raising a family, or competing for promotions at work, or trying to buy that first house, you realize there may have been times when your life wasn’t very spiritually fruitful. In fact, I now realize there were times in my own past when thoughts of God, salvation, or prayer were nowhere in my daily routine. I even wonder; was there a period in my life when I was one of those weeds or a seed in the thorns? Thankfully, with reflection on the whole of Scripture, guidance from the Church, and maybe some help from the Holy Spirit I realize now these parables are not “either / or” propositions. God doesn’t intentionally create some people as weeds and some people as wheat nor does God throw souls into the wind to randomly fall in the thorns, or on stony ground, or in fertile soil. If you’re not careful, you can come to those conclusions, however. You can read the Bible too narrowly and pick out verses here and there that help support your personal image of what you want God to be. Those tend to be the same people who like to do God’s judgment work for him. Here’s the thing; some of us here today may have actually spent some time as those ugly weeds but at some point, with God’s help, we decided to change and now we’re wheat growing in that good old fertile soil. My sisters and brothers, sin must never be viewed as a permanent state. Like we heard from the Book of Wisdom today, “you gave your children good ground for hope that you would permit repentance for their sins.” This is the greatest gift of our Christian faith; God loves us all so much, even great sinners, God is always ready to forgive. So, here’s a challenge and homework for us all today. Most of us know people out there from all age groups, but especially some of our youth, who may be temporarily living life like the weeds in our parable today or maybe tangled in those thorns of life’s tribulations. First and foremost, we must be confident, sin is not a permanent state of life, second, we don’t judge, third, pray for them no matter how nasty they may seem. And finally, if we’re really, really brave, we offer them a hand to pull them up and out of the weeds, rocks, or thorns into God’s fertile soil.