December 18, 2022: Fourth Sunday of Advent

“The Faithfulness of Our Immanuel” Isaiah 7: 10-17/ Psalm 80: 1-7; 17-19/Romans 1: 1-7/Matthew 1:18-25 Bishop Ariel P. Santos We are here to know God and to make Him known. During Advent, the Decalogue or the Ten Commandments is being proclaimed instead of the Summary of the Law. The Decalogue is designed for us to be a people of worship and justice. The first four commandments talk about our relationship with God and how we are to worship Him. The rest of the commandments talks about justice – on how we treat our brothers and sisters. The Ten Commandments is about how we treat God and how we treat our neighbors so that we can be a worshipful people and a just people. Moses and the prophets gave the commandments and their role is to call the people back to being a people who love God with all of their heart and loving their neighbor as themselves. If we know God and we love Him, then, that is eternal life. When we love Him, we will be like Him treating others with love, affection and compassion. Knowing God is not just a mental exercise, but it is participatory. One song talking about love says, “You gotta have it happen to you to know how it feels.” The Church’s thrust is to experience things for ourselves. We need to have the things of the Kingdom happen to us in order to understand. We need to actively participate. The Every Day Kingdom Way are the following: Active Participation (in the means of grace, in the activities of the Church so that we can hope in the glory); Active Involvement (in ministry and in the work of the Church). We have a Radio Ministry and we need a lot of help – talents, radio support among others. This is not for ourselves but for the ministry to the region of Calabarzon. Actually, it is for the whole world because it is on our Facebook page and on YouTube. The Church’s Steward Touch Ministry reaches out to the prisoners and to the poor people, and they need more people to volunteer to help out. It is not just about the mental, but it is about the people of God experiencing, through active involvement, the joy of the Lord. There is the Active Generosity - we are to display and to demonstrate the Divine likeness of God who is a giver. When we are generous ourselves, then, we know Him through this. In Active Discipleship, we are to help and to mentor our brethren so that they can grow in the knowledge and in the love of God. Only after we have done these four things can we be equipped so that we are able to reach out to those outside and bring them to the kingdom of God and get them to live the Every Day Kingdom Way. This is Active Evangelism. Salvation/eternal life is participation in the divine life of God now and forever. Eternal life is not something that will happen when we die; it is something that happens right now! When Jesus saw Zacchaeus, he stopped being selfish and defrauding people. He was saved from this and was transformed into being generous and compassionate. He said that half of what he owned, he will give to those who are in need. Jesus said to him, “Today, salvation has come to this house.” We are to renew our minds about what salvation is. Salvation is discovering and walking in the likeness of God who is a Giver and desires to pursue and to fulfill the good of others, not of self. We are to turn away from sin, which is turned toward self, and to have Divine likeness, that is, turned toward others. Sin is all about what is good for us at the expense of others. The Divine nature is what is good for others even to our own hurt. In the gospel, the angel told Mary not to fear because she conceived by the Holy Spirit. What she is to give birth to shall be named Jesus. Matthew 1:21 says, “She will bear a Son; and you shall call His name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.” Jesus means God saves, and He will save the people form their sins. We are being saved from being selfish which in Latin is “incurvatus in se” meaning a life lived "inward" for oneself rather than "outward" for God and others. Save doesn’t mean going to heaven when we die, but being delivered from the hell of self-concern. A Russian author, Fyodor Dostoevsky, said in one of his novels: hell is the suffering of being unable to love. Hell is being apart from God, being on the opposite side of where God is and what He is like. St. Peter said, “Be saved from this perverse generation; from this evil and self-centered ways.” He did not say being saved from hell (the understanding of hell with literal fire that will be burned). Hell can be experienced here, that is, when we are too selfish, it will kill us and make us suffer. We are saved to display the likeness of God, which is the only way life has meaning. How are we to be like God? It is by imitating Jesus Christ, the exact representation of God; the perfect God and the perfect man. If we want to understand what God is like, look at Jesus. If we want to understand what man is supposed to be, we are to look at Jesus. This is why God became man in Jesus Christ so that He can be with us, to save us from our sins and to be with us for eternity. God is with us; Emmanuel. This is the problem of people who suffer from depression which is also hell. They think that they are alone in going through their struggles. The good news that we need to give them is that God is with them! There is help! Jesus said, “In the world, we will have tribulations.” One may get depressed, but he should remember that God is with him and He will overcome. God is with us and no man is an island. No man is strong enough to face his problems and struggles alone. None of us are built to be like a superhero. We are built and created needing one another especially God. Jesus became incarnate to give us the good news that we don’t have to go things alone. Some who are depressed goes to the rich and the powerful because they think help is from money, power and influence. Hosea 5:13 said, “When Israel and Judah saw how sick they were, they turned to the great king of Assyria, but he could neither help nor heal them.” They went to the wrong person forgetting that God is their Healer and their Helper. We must never forget that God is with us. Realize who Jesus is in our lives. The Jews, in Jesus’ time, missed the visitation of the Lord. Jesus said, “The men of Ninevah on judgment day will condemn this generation. The men of Ninevah repented on the preaching of Jonah and yet, somebody greater than Jonah is here and you are missing His presence. You are rejecting Him. The Queen of the South will rise up on that day and will condemn this generation because she travelled far to see and hear the wisdom of Solomon for herself. And yet someone greater than Solomon is here and yet you are ignoring Him.” Let us not take the presence of the Lord for granted – in the Sacraments, during our prayer time, in the poor, the imprisoned. God is present in our situations. We get affected, depressed and get frustrated and hurt when bad things happen to us. Sometimes, Jesus is in the midst of the storm, which He did not cause. Sometimes He is in the earthquake, in the fire and sometimes in the still small voice. May we be sensitive to His presence and not take it for granted. There is nothing more important than His presence. Sharing you a story, many years ago, all the bishops went to Mindanao and we were on our way to airport going home. Five of us bishops were early and we were killing time. We saw a Starbucks Coffee shop and I ordered five cups of Café Americano. The barista asked for a name that shall be put on the cup for identification. I was playful at that time so I gave the name Piolo. The barista was game to note the name. When the coffee was ready, in a very loud voice, he said, “Five Americanos for Piolo!” All the people in the coffee shop dropped whatever they were doing to see for themselves who that Piolo is. They did not know that someone greater, someone better-looking than Piolo was there (pun intended). The point is: do we drop what we do because Jesus’ presence is more important than what we are doing? Nothing is more important than what Jesus’ presence brings and what He has to say to us! Drop everything we do when we hear the voice of God, when we sense that He is present. Nothing is greater than Jesus, our Emmanuel, Who is present among us in our lives than anybody or anything else. Sacrifice our sleep, our time, our work or our computer games and pay attention! It is for our good. He came for the life of the world. What we think is life that we get from temporary things, God has something better. Repent, change our minds and realize that God is more important than anything else. Let us be sensitive to His voice. He is present in the Word, in the Sacrament and in people around us – in the poor, in the homeless, and even in the most irritable person. Remember that God is at work in all of us. Jesus took on humanity in order to heal humanity. He dove into the mire to save and to cleanse us. This is the image and likeness of God that we are to imitate and to participate in His work of love in bringing the good to others. This is the only way we will have a meaningful Christmas and a meaningful and abundant eternal life. This is the only way that we will have His joy in us because this is simply that way it is in the kingdom of our God.