Third Sunday of Advent

Readings:

• Zephaniah 3:14-18a -The prophet composes a hymn of hope for Jerusalem and the temple where “the Lord is in your midst.”
• Philippians 4:4-7 – Rejoice in the Lord always … The Lord is near. Present your needs to God. Then God’s own peace, beyond your comprehension, will stand guard over your hearts and minds.
• Luke 3:10-18 – John the Baptist preached reform within people’s daily round of duties and announced the one who would baptize with the Holy Spirit.

Thoughts for your consideration: by Fr. Sebastian MacDonald, CP

On December 10^th, there was a celebration of Human Rights Day.  This should be a reason for rejoicing, in the spirit of this Sunday’s joy (Gaudete Sunday) that the Messiah’s coming is near at hand.  For the emergence of human rights as a distinctly recognizable feature of human existence has been a long time coming.

But wouldn’t you know that, just as it emerges out of the dust bin of history, it encounters the danger of another immersion into forgetfulness. The concept of human rights seems to be taken for granted and people pick and choose which rights they wish to defend and which ones they wish to violate. Some promote economic rights while others defend only political rights. Some skip over human rights and prioritize the rights of animals and trees. This process of “dumbing down” universal rights to subjective preferences reduces its significance to the point of asking: why get wrought up over rights when they are as commonplace as dirt?

Perhaps we do better to follow the route laid out by John the Baptist in Luke’s gospel account today, as John engaged in his preaching ministry by the river Jordan.  He chose not to proclaim rights, but obligations.  The word “should” in this account betrays his approach: the crowds ask him: “what should we do?”  And he replied that whoever can should share with another who has nothing.  Likewise, with those lacking food.  And the tax collectors’ question about their “should”, is followed by the soldiers’ similar query.

What’s interesting about this account is that John’s listeners, instead of being “turned off” by John’s list of “shoulds”, “were filled with expectation” because he sounded just like what the Christ ought to be proclaiming: meeting human needs.  For as this account concludes, it points to the “good news”, in John’s remark about a coming baptism with the Holy Spirit and fire, to cleanse, purify and fill the barn.

In other words, the obligations the Baptist laid on his hearers were the foundation of the rights they had every reason to expect at the hands of the Messiah: spiritual rights to freedom from sin, human rights to freedom from foreign occupation.  The roots of the U.S. Bill of Rights and the U.N. Declaration of Human Rights lay hidden here.

So on this Gaudete (rejoicing) Sunday let us make our own the upbeat expectations of the crowds, the tax collectors, and the soldiers that the obligations they acknowledge trigger a sense of the rights to be cherished.  This joy reflects that of the prophet Zephaniah who sees the Lord removing judgment from his people, by turning away the enemies who trampled their rights.  And it unites us with the Philippian Christians in their joy that “the peace of God that surpasses all understanding” will endow their hearts and minds—another basic entitlement as Christians.

Human rights are fundamental freedoms coming into their own, once the obligations facing us are satisfied.  When the primordial obligation owed God is met, freedom of a religious kind is born.  For freedom of religion is humankind’s basic freedom, underlying all the rest.  The opportunity to approach God endows the human person with a dignity unsurpassed by any other quality the human person might come by, whether that be the faculty of reason or freedom.  People argue over rights vs. entitlements vs. privileges vs. merits vs. benefits vs. gifts.  But, on a scale of 1 to 10, the ability to approach God through religious practices rates a 10, ahead of any other human endowment.  That is why the very first sentence in the very first of the 27 Amendments to the U.S. Constitution (the first 10 of which are called The Bill of Rights) reads: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…”  And for this reason we rejoice on this Sunday as, with the people around John the Baptist, we await one mightier than he, who is coming as the center of our religious faith, and the origin of our rights.

One Response to “Third Sunday of Advent”

1. Pat Brennan says:

   December 13, 2009 at 12:40 am

   I just want to thank Sebastian for his wonderful insight into the origins of human dignity especially at this time when we see such devaluation of the dignity of the human person. I am weary of all the analysis of Tiger Woods and his fall from grace. I am often left with the feeling that he is being publicly flogged for his sins rather than invited into an embrace of forgiveness and healing. It seems to me such an invitation is the consequence of recognizing in every person, saint or sinner, their great human dignity bestowed by God and reaffirmed in the mystery of the Incarnation. Of course I hope I can practise what I preach in this area!