by Father Anthony F. Raso

THERE IS a wonderful scene in the film, “The Greatest Story Ever Told.” It opens showing the Roman soldiers, marching through Jerusalem, strutting their usual unpleasant stuff, oppressing the people and beating hope out of the souls of everyone. The people on the street seem utterly drained of all power to resist, even within their own minds and hearts. They had been promised a Messiah Who would deliver them from this nightmare, but … He had never come and you can see in the faces of these people that they have just about given up on His ever coming.
One elderly man begins to weep and to cry out to God: “When, O Lord? How long must we wait? When, O Lord?” he lowers his head and in tears, walks away — and when he does, there is Jesus of Nazareth, Who had been standing there behind him all along. He has come down from Nazareth at last and He is on His way to the Jordan to be baptized by John. The night is over and the Day of the Lord has begun.
Nearer Than Ever
On this Third Sunday of Advent — the one on which we light the pink candle of joy on the Advent wreath — we acknowledge that the Lord is now very near, our waiting is almost over and the day will soon be here when we not only celebrate the anniversary of the First Coming of the Lord but, more wonderful yet, we will be able to rejoice in His Second Coming.
The frustration and despair of the elderly man in the film are feelings with which we can sympathize but we can know, as he could not, that the Lord is already in our midst and that the time of His coming again in glory is nearer now than it ever was. And there is nothing to cry about in that, nor anything to fear. As Isaiah tells us today, when He comes again He will bring us a new and more glorious springtime when “…justice and praise (will) spring up among the nations.”
As wonderful as all of this sounds, there is still a problem and, as usual, it is us. We have a self-defeating tendency not to believe all of this good news. Like the browbeaten citizens of Jerusalem in the movie, we just look around us at all of the bad things we see and conclude that all of those bad things are here to stay and will permanently stand between us and God. Instead of turning to see the Son of Justice, we shrug our shoulders and stay put in the shadows of our sadness, wondering where God is and giving up hope that He will ever be near us, ready to save us.
Not Giving Up on Us
However, even if we give up on Him that doesn’t mean, as the Word of God tells us today, that He has given up on us, or ever will. St. Paul’s Letter to the Thessalonians is not some private note to be read in the confines of someone’s home. It is a letter to a family of faith, encouraging them to work together for the coming of the Lord, to pray without ceasing, right here and right now. They were called upon by Paul to support each other in not quenching the Spirit nor despising the messages of the prophets among them (as the Levites and Pharisees were clearly doing with the message of John the Baptist).
With souls rejoicing in the Lord, they were to bring glad tidings to the poor each day. As we know, St. Paul was not just writing to the Church of the Thessalonians long ago but was also just as surely writing to the Church in Brooklyn and Queens, right here and right now.
In the next two weeks, we need to be especially careful not to become so relentlessly busy and distracted that we fail to hear the Lord knocking on the door, for this is something that He is doing now, on this Third Sunday of Advent. This is Jesus Who is at the door. We are not just supposed to be preparing our houses for Him to celebrate the first time He came to us: We ought to be joyfully preparing our hearts for Him for the great day, now nearer than ever before, when He will come to us again.[hr] Readings for the Third Sunday of Advent
    Isaiah 61:1-2A, 10-11
    Luke 1:46-48, 49-50, 53-54
    1 Thessalonians 5:16-24
    John 1:6-8, 19-28[hr] Father Anthony F. Raso is the pastor of St. Sylvester’s parish, City Line.