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Gospel: Saint Matthew
11: 2-10
(Notice: Advent being a
season established by the Church to prepare the faithful to celebrate
properly Our Lord's coming into this world and to draw him into their hearts
so that they may no longer live save by his Spirit, it would be very proper
for us today and on the following Sundays to apply ourselves to prayer in
order to prepare our hearts to receive Our Lord, all the more because the
Gospels of these three Sundays provide us with an opportunity to do this,
and urge us to do so.)
You should prepare your
own hearts and the hearts of those you
are charged to instruct to receive Our Lord and his holy maxims.
2.1
First Point
Today's Gospel informs
us that Saint John the Baptist, while in prison where he had been thrown by
Herod's command, sent two of his disciples to Jesus Christ to ask him
whether he was the Messiah. This gave Jesus Christ the opportunity to praise
Saint John before the people; he ended by saying that John was the man of
whom it was written: I am sending my angel before you, to prepare for you
the path where you will walk.[i]
You, too, as well
as Saint John, are real angels sent by God to prepare a path for him, so
that he can enter your own hearts and those of your disciples. For this
purpose you need to do two things: first, you must resemble the angels by
your interior and exterior purity. Like the angels you must be entirely
detached from your body and the pleasures of the senses, so that nothing
seems to be left in you but your soul, that you are concerned about it
exclusively, that it is the only object of your care.
For you are
destined by God to apply yourselves, like the holy angels, only to what
refers to his service and the care of souls. In you, as Saint Paul says,
the outer man must decay, so that the inner man may be renewed day by day.[ii]
You must become like the angels and like them, as the same Apostle says,
not consider things that are visible but only those which are invisible,
for, he continues, the former are temporary and pass away, whereas the
latter are eternal[iii]
and will be forever the object of our affection.
2.2
Second Point
Jesus Christ highly
praises Saint John in the Gospel of this day. He says that John lived in
the desert and was no reed shaken by the wind,[iv]
because he always continued the life of penance he had begun. He says
John was not wearing soft garments,[v]
for, as we read in Saint Matthew, he was clothed in camel's hair, and
wore a leather belt around his waist.[vi]
Jesus Christ further adds that Saint John ate no bread and drank no wine;[vii]
in fact, as we learn from Saint Matthew, he lived only on locusts and
wild honey.[viii]
Jesus Christ then declared there has never been a prophet greater than
Saint John the Baptist.[ix]
Why, do you think,
did Jesus Christ praise Saint John so highly? It was to lead the people to
accept his teaching, and to make them understand that what John had said
about himself was true: that Saint John had been sent to prepare their
hearts to receive Jesus Christ himself and to profit by his teachings. This
saint, who was Christ's precursor, began by living a life of seclusion,
prayer, and penance, to practice what he wanted to teach others, and thus to
dispose his own heart to receive the fullness of the Spirit of God in order
to make himself fit to carry out his ministry properly.
Because you
have to prepare the hearts of others for the coming of Jesus Christ, you
must first of all dispose your own hearts to be entirely filled with zeal,
in order to render your words effective in those whom you instruct.
2.3 Third Point
After having prepared
himself interiorly to preach to the Jewish people and in order to make them
ready to receive Jesus Christ, Saint John proposed to them six ways to
prepare a path and an entry into their hearts for Jesus Christ. First,
he required of them a true horror for sin, reproaching them with being a
generation of vipers.[x]
Second, he urged them to fear the Last Judgment, assuring them that
at that moment their sins would be closely scrutinized and strictly judged.
Flee, he urged them, from the wrath to come.[xi]
Every tree that does not bear good fruit will be cut down and thrown into
the fire.[xii]
Third, to help them escape the rigor of that judgment, he incited
them to do penance by the words: Bring forth worthy fruits of penance.[xiii]
Fourth, he did not want them to be satisfied with lamenting their
sins and doing penance for them; he wanted them to do good works, without
which their penances would be of no avail. This he pointed out to them by
these words: Every tree that does not bring forth good fruit will be cut
down and thrown into the fire.[xiv]
Fifth, he declared that it was not enough for them to claim Abraham
as their father, that they had no right to glorify themselves on that
account unless they acted as Abraham did. Do not say, he told them, we
have Abraham for our father.[xv]
Sixth, he gave them to understand that they could not be saved,
whatever good deeds they might perform, unless they practiced the good works
proper and becoming to their state of life. For this reason he pointed out
to the wealthy their obligation of giving alms;[xvi]
he told the publicans not to exact anything beyond what was due,[xvii]
and enjoined on the soldiers to be content with their pay.[xviii]
Take these
counsels to heart yourselves and follow them carefully; pass them on to your
disciples and see to it that they practice them.
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