Patient Attention Needed For True Devotion

Third Sunday of Advent 2025

Today we sing psalm 146, the first of the five alleluia psalms which act as a final movement to the whole book of psalms. It’s easy to hear the poetry of this hymn, even in English: “Adonai frees imprisoned; Adonai opens closed-eyes; Adonai lifts the prostrate; Adonai loves the innocent.” Adonai is the Jewish word replacing YHWH.

The psalm is our response to the words of Isaiah just read. I urge you to get down your Bibles and read the whole of chapter 35 as if you are an Israelite in Isaiah’s day, waiting for the next invasion by Egypt, Assyria or Babylon, or the next drought destroying your crops. He was being urged to believe in the God who brought Israel out of Egypt. He Himself would take vengeance on the attackers and restore the fortunes of Israel. But His intervention would only come if the Israelites would put aside the perverse rites honoring false gods. They seldom did that, and so seldom put God first in their affections.

To the Jews of the first century who heard John and Jesus and longed for liberation from Rome and her tax harvesters, it must have seemed like the promise of Isaiah could be fulfilled in their own day. And it was through the faith of the virgin Mary of Nazareth and the birth of Her Son that these Isaian promises came to life in the Church Jesus left after His resurrection and ascension.

Our New Testament epistle is taken from the letter of James, a close relative of Jesus, probably writing a decade or two after the Resurrection of Christ. His theme is the virtue that should be shown forth in every follower of Jesus. The virtue in question is patience. Impatience is a sign and sin of pride. We await the coming of Christ, either His second coming in power or His “fractional comings” in our weekday life, like farmers. I’m a gardener and even have one surviving tomato plant I hope to bear fruit before Christmas. Thus must I and you be patient to see Christ in a neighbor who might have some unneighborly habits, or a boss who has no patience at all, or [you fill in the blank].

John the Baptist is in prison in our Gospel from Matthew. He’s not going to get out, so he sends some followers to Jesus, his cousin: “Are you the one who is to come, or should we look for another?” Jesus tells them to get scientific, to examine the evidence: blind people see, paraplegics walk, lepers cleansed, deaf hear, dead resuscitated, poor people hear good news. Without saying, “Yes, I’m the Messiah,” Jesus confirms His identity. And then He testifies about John as “more than a prophet.” He is the one whose message of repentance prepares the way in the people’s hearts for conversion to the Gospel of Christ. The rabbis were very strict about admittance to the Jerusalem Temple. The blind could not read Torah, so they were not on the guest list. The deaf could not hear Torah, so they were also kept out. Lepers? Not them either. But admission to Christ’s Church was encouraged for the disabled, for those left out of the synagogue.

Look at our culture, and its disabilities with respect to interior peace and communities without division and strife. We are without the Gospel of Christ even worse off than Jerusalem in the time of the apostles. Really even worse off than Rome and Athens back then. Our secular world is crying out for Christ’s salvation, for the sacraments He left us.

Let’s take up the challenge of John and Jesus, and better attune our hearts to Christ through prayer, fasting, and giving. Then we can pay better attention to those who are longing for deeper meaning in their lives.