ADVENT III [A] Is 35:1-6a, 10; Jas 5:7-10;Mt 11: 2-11

Not seeing Jesus as a fiery reformer, John the Baptist send his disciples to ask Jesus, “Are you the one who is to come or should we expect someone else?”  Jesus answers by pointing to what is happening, quoting what  the prophet Isaiah had said about the works of the expected Messiah: “the blind see, the lame walk, the lepers made clean, the deaf hear, the dead brought back to life and good news is reaching the poor.”  Jesus repeated what he had proclaimed at the synagogue at Nazareth, “Today these prophetic words come true even as you listen.” (Lk 4: 21)

If an unbeliever were to ask now for evidence that the Messiah has come, what answer could we give?  Can we say that, as the heavens proclaim the glory of the Creator God, the earth proclaims the coming of the Messiah-Christ?

We should remember two things:  that the kingdom of Christ, though here, is not yet and that the kingdom of God is indeed invisible.

As Vatican Council II wrote, the Church “becomes on earth the budding forth of that kingdom.”  We are a pilgrim people, fashioning the kingdom and the rule of Christ over human hearts through tears and trembling, through suffering and death, in the midst of sin and selfishness.

Though Jesus himself declared that “the kingdom of heaven is at hand,” he also said that the kingdom of God is “within us.”  It is “a kingdom of holiness and grace.”  

Though God’s kingdom is not fully established, though God’s rule is primarily hidden in our hearts, it should have effects in our everyday world of flesh and blood.  In other words, why are we not holier than we are?  Why are we not more visible and transparent signs that Christ is with us?

Advent lays an awesome responsibility on all believers, to let the world see that “he-who-is-to-come” is indeed with us. We are the works that reveal, or conceal him. Advent calls us to constant conversion, even radical reform, so that whether playing or praying, laughing or weeping, living or dying, we radiate Christ and his kingdom to the world, here and now, wherever we are.