15 December 2024 – 3rd Sunday of Advent (Year C) | Bambinelli Sunday

by Fr Joachim Robert

Dear friends,

As we celebrate Gaudate Sunday today, we are invited to reflect on this theme of JOY. And some may ask what is the source of our joy? What is the source of why Christians, even though sometimes who are persecuted can find the joy in their lives?

But the Readings of today invites us, invites us to rejoice. And the prophecies that we see, especially in the First Reading today from the Prophet Zephaniah tells us that God is our security, that God comes into our lives, God makes His dwelling among us and Zephaniah declares:
Rejoice and shout for joy for great in your midst is the Holy One of Israel.

And here, dear friends, we come to see the security that we find in God. And when we allow ourselves to be embraced by God’s love, by God’s sense of love, we come to a deeper appreciation that we can secure our life in God.

And the second thing that Zephaniah speaks about is the closeness of God among us. The closeness of where we come to acknowledge that the Lord comes to comfort us, the Lord is close to us, and the Lord is near to us.

And as we look at this two aspect of God as our security and God as a person who comforts us, we come with deep experience of joy because we know who we are before God, because God’s love draws us and leads us towards where He wants us to be. And when we are happy, we indeed rejoice together with God because He delights in our joy.

For example, as a parent who sees their children being happy, being able to grow and blossom and mature in faith in their personhood, parents have a sense of deep joy as well that they are able to see the growth of their child. In that same way, dear friends, the Lord delights in our growth. The Lord delights in where we grow as an individual, where we find joy and happiness in our lives. 

And the Second Reading taken from Philippians also invites us and tells us that “I want you to be happy, always happy in the Lord. I repeat,” Saint Paul says, “What I want is your happiness.“

And here again and again, dear friends, the Lord is reminding us to be happy, to be joyful in God. Because when we know that God is our security, God is our comfort and He wishes us to be happy, we can be happy together with Him.

And that is our Christian message and that is our Christian joy.

But sometimes in our lives, we find ourselves being robbed of this joy, being robbed of what is close to us. And when we experience sadness, grief and isolation, we seem to find a lack of appreciation, a lack of gratitude.

And today’s Gospel, John the Baptist tells us what are the areas of our lives that we need to rid of so that we can rediscover the joy of encountering God, like it is expressed in the First and the Second Readings of today.

The first thing that John the Baptist speaks about is to speak the truth. You know John the Baptist was in a time where there was great expectancy of the coming of the Messiah. And if he wanted, he could say that ‘I am the Messiah’ and people perhaps would have believed him. But he was truthful to himself. He knew who he was before God and because of his identity in God, he was able to humble himself, recognise his own limitation and point towards the Messiah. And he says:
I baptise you with water but someone is coming, someone more powerful than I am and I am not fit to undo the strap of his sandals. And He will baptise you with the Holy Spirit and fire.

And here, dear friends, John the Baptist teaches us that the first path towards a joyful life in the Lord is to be truthful and recognise who we are, in humility. Because when we allow our ego, when we allow our self-pride, when we allow situations of life or the polarity in our life to cloud our minds, then we do not recognise who we are and we are not truthful.

And when we are not truthful because it is motivated by self-interest, we lose the joy of encountering Jesus so that we are called to move from selfishness towards selflessness so that we can find our identity in God, in all truth.

The second thing that John the Baptist invites us or the path He sets before us to prepare our hearts for the Lord is to share. Because when people ask what must we do, he answered:
If you have two tunics, he must share with a man who has none.

And this invitation, dear friends, to share our gifts, to share our talents, to share our time and to share all the giftedness that God has blessed us with, indeed gives us a deep sense of joy. And that is why during Christmas, in preparation for Christmas, when each one of you receive a gift from another, especially when you look at the excitement of children receiving the presents, that joy in their hearts and their eyes seem to resonate of how God sees us when we come back to Him.

And when we share in God’s love, when we share in God’s goodness, we also want to reflect that goodness that we have received from God towards one another. So the second path that we should take or that is proposed is the path of sharing.

And the third thing that John the Baptist speaks about today in preparing our hearts for joy is:
When the tax collectors came, He said, “What must we do for baptism?” and He says, “Exact no more than your rate. And when the soldiers came, He said to them, “No intimidation! No extortion! Be content with your pay!” 

And here, dear friends, we come to acknowledge the honesty that we need to have before God.
~Are we authentic in everything that we do?
~Are we allowing our true self to emerge when we are in a loving relationship with God?
And if we are truthful and we are authentic, we become honest, we speak for justice, and we allow that grace of goodness to radiate from our lives.

So these are perhaps the three ways of how joy is robbed from us. If we are not truthful, if we don’t share, if we are not honest. So these are the three types of people that came to John the Baptist because they want to prepare their heart for baptism.

And during this time of Advent, dear friends, this time of grace that God has blessed us with, He gives us this opportunity to redirect the focus of our lives to come back to where God wants of us, to allow God to rejoice together with us because of His love for us. And we must also acknowledge that God always wants what is good for us.

And very often during confessions, I mention, even when we had confessions for last week as well, each time when someone comes for confession with so much of burden, and they leave the confession with a load lifted from their hearts, you also can see a sense of freedom, a sense of joy, a sense of happiness that resonates in their hearts. Coming into confession with a heavy burden and after confession being lifted form that burden.

And this is how, dear friends, we need to prepare our hearts, to look in all honesty, in sincerity of where the Lord is leading us and to redirect our lives to see where God wants of us.

And I want to share with you one experience tha tI had when I went for the Prison Mass last week.

As we entered together with the Prison Ministry, we went to the prison in Jawi, there was so much of security, so much of tension all around you because you are not sure what would come because of all the uncertainty that is around you. But as you enter into the prison, you see, yes there is so much of security and feel a little bit intimidated.

But when they came for confession, some of them, when I listened to their confessions, some of them come to a deeper realisation of how disorientated they have been in their life. How misguided they were and how they were taking the path of not finding joy, the path of selfishness. Because the focus was on themselves.

But whenever they were there, they come to a deeper realisation of what they have done and that sense of that closeness or the imprisonment that they had made them come to a deeper realisation that something has gone wrong in their life. And when something has gone wrong in their life, they reflect and to see how they have contributed towards those situations that they are in today.

And one of them was sharing that he was in a death row. So what he had to do was only to trust in God, to pray, and whenever he prayed, he wasn’t sure of his future. But after praying for so many years, a news came to him some years back that they moved him from a death row to a longer prison term. So he was able to acknowledge how God has worked in his life.

And when I heard that I too was moved because from a sense of hopelessness, he was able to find hope in God. His situation around him did not change much but how he disposed his heart to acknowledge who he is before God, and to have this trust and faith in this God who loves him, the God who accompanies him and the God who leads him towards joy is what I said to him how he has inspired me. By his dedication, by his faithfulness, he was able to bring hope not only to himself but also the people around him. And his story and his message and his gospel is what I am sharing here today.

So as we prepare our hearts, dear friends, for Advent, you know each one of us are clouded with so many different types of problems. Each one of us have our own selfish interest, each one of us have our own problems in life. But like John the Baptist today, if we want to have baptism, if we want to live a life in the path that Jesus has paved for us, a path of goodness, a path of joy, a path of peace, then we need to allow his love to transform us, mould us, convert us so that we can come to this true awareness of who God is.

Lastly, in the Responsorial Psalm, if we have in our own families, by our words and deeds and by our actions, if we have come to realise how God has been our source of hope, how God has been our source of joy, the Responsorial Psalm can resonate together with us. It says:
Sing and should for joy for great in your midst is the Holy One of Israel.

And that is our Advent message, dear friends, that Jesus is coming. Jesus comes to make a dwelling among us and that gives us all reason to hope and all reason to be joyful.

And let us prepare our hearts, especially during this time of Advent, the remaining days of Advent, to welcome Jesus who is the source of our joy and our hope.

Click below to listen to homily and watch video:

Click to live-stream Mass on 15 December 2024