3rd Sunday of Advent
Isaiah 35:1-6a, 10; James 5:7-10;
Matthew 11:2-11
Thy
Kingdom Come!
by Fr. John Martin Shimkus, O.S.B.
Certainly one of the most powerful
figures in the Bible is John the Baptist. Jesus said
that among prophets, he was more than a prophet. Among
those born of women, none was greater than he. John was
one of the most confident and intense people who ever
lived. He came charging out of the desert, dressed in
animal skins, crying out his message of warning: “Repent, for
the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand!” He knew for certain
what his mission was: to announce the Messiah. And he
gave everything he had – including his own life - to
accomplish it.
But then something happened to this
great and confident prophet, something totally
unexpected. When Jesus arrived with His ministry of
preaching and healing, when Jesus arrived as the compassion
and love of God, John had a doubt. Maybe it was not a
big doubt. Maybe John was still 99 percent sure.
But as he heard from prison about the activities of Jesus, as
he awaited the judgment the Messiah was to bring, he realized
that Jesus was not about judging and punishing sinners, but
eat and drinking with them. And John began to wonder
about this Messiah. So he sent his own disciples to ask
the Lord, “Are you the one who is to come, or should we look
for another”?
These final days before Christmas are
a good time to consider what the coming of Christ means to us,
a good time to ask ourselves who is this Messiah who has come
and is coming, and what kind of Kingdom does He bring into
this world?
And we might begin this inquiry by
reminding ourselves that Jesus the Messiah did not come to
judge, but rather to love – and so our judging of the people
who don’t measure up to our standards finds no place in His
Kingdom; rather he calls us to love each and every person as a
brother or sister, as one made in God’s image and likeness.
Jesus as Messiah also did not hold
people’s sins and offenses against them – even the sins and
offenses of those who persecuted Him and eventually put Him to
death. So the grudges we hold and the efforts we make to
get even with those who hurt us cannot be part of the Kingdom
of Jesus. Instead, our Lord, our Messiah, begs us to
forgive and, as much as possible, to be reconciled with those
who have harmed us.
And Jesus our Lord and Messiah had a
free and boundless love. So much so, that when we see
how focused we can be on our own narrow interests, we realize
that this also is not Christ’s way. Christ’s way, the
Messiah’s way, is that we grow in our awareness of the needs
and the poverty of others, and of our power to make a
difference in their lives.
Jesus is our Messiah; we believe He
really is the one. And because we believe this we want
to understand more deeply the meaning of His coming; we want
to realize more clearly, and to live more faithfully, the kind
of Kingdom He came to bring into this world!
Come, Lord, Jesus! Let your Kingdom come into our hearts
and let us be Your Face for those who seek You!