Third Sunday of Advent, Year A
First reading: Isa 35:1-6a, 10
Second reading: Jas 5:7-10
Gospel reading: Mt 11:2-11

How wonderful it will be for the blind, to see; the deaf, to hear; the dumb, to speak; and those confined to wheelchairs, to walk! 

Compared with what we will be in heaven, we are now all blind, deaf, lame, and speechless.

God the Son became man so that we “might have life, and have it to the full,” Jesus said. Here, “life” means not our natural human life, nor merely the fullness of natural life, nor human life continued forever. It means God’s life, divine life, supernatural life, spiritual life, eternal life, everlasting life.

The two kinds of life are so different (infinitely different) that in the Greek of his Gospel, St. John gives them distinct names: Bios for human life and Zoë for God’s life.

Bios resembles Zoë only dimly, as a photo resembles a landscape, or a statue a man. A human who acquires Zoë goes through a change infinitely greater than a statue that changes from stone to living flesh.

Zoë is what Jesus offers us. The Catechism of the Catholic Church quotes the saints: God the Son became man so that we might become “sharers of the divine nature” (St. Peter); “so that man, by entering into communion with the Word and thus receiving divine sonship, might become a son of God” (St. Irenaeus); “so that we might become God” (St. Athanasius).

Perhaps St. Thomas Aquinas puts it most forcefully: “The only begotten Son of God, wanting to make us sharers in His divinity, assumed our nature, so that He, made Man, might make men gods.”

In his book The Great Divorce, C.S. Lewis imagines mere mortals meeting “gods.” The “gods” are solid people, at home in heaven: able to walk, talk, hear, and see. In contrast, the mortals are transparent, like ghosts; barely able to walk, for the grass is too hard for their feet; hardly able to talk, for their breath barely disturbs the air.

No amount of improvement will change a mortal into a “god”; it takes a transformation, a rebirth. “No one can see the reign of God unless he is begotten from above,” Jesus told Nicodemus. When Nicodemus asked how a man could be born again, he replied, “No one can enter God’s kingdom without being begotten of water and Spirit. Flesh begets flesh; Spirit begets spirit. Do not be surprised that I tell you, you must all be begotten from above.”

That rebirth takes place in baptism. Once, after baptizing a baby, I said impulsively, “This child now has as much right to heaven as Jesus Christ himself!” Then I bit my tongue. Had I committed blasphemy? No! The Holy Spirit himself “gives witness with our spirit that we are children of God. But if we are children, we are heirs as well: heirs of God, heirs with Christ.”

The baptized are not just forgiven humans, or improved humans; they are a different kind of being from the unbaptized. For example, Jesus said that “among those born of women, no one has arisen greater than John the Baptist; yet the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.”

We all say we want life, and want it to the full, and yet, as Jesus said, we are unwilling to go to him to possess that life.

It is a fearful thing to be reborn. It involves a kind of death and a return to the child-like. We are tempted to stay blind, deaf, dumb, and immobile rather than risk that other kind of life.

It is we, then, whom the readings address: “Strengthen the weak hands, and make firm the trembling knees”; “strengthen your hearts, for the coming of the Lord is near.”

God is coming to make us “gods.” We who know this long for his coming. It is we whom St. James encourages: “Be patient, beloved, until the coming of the Lord.”

Father Hawkswell is again teaching The Catholic Faith in Plain English, with new insights. The whole course is available in written form and, one session per week, in YouTube form at beholdvancouver.org/catholic-faith-course. Father is also teaching the course in person: on Sundays at 2 p.m. in the John Paul II Pastoral Centre, 4885 Saint John Paul II Way, Vancouver (33rd and Willow); and on Mondays at 10 a.m. in St. Anthony’s Church hall, 2347 Inglewood Ave., West Vancouver. Next week’s topic is “Supernatural Life.

To comment send us a letter to the editor here.