6 December 2024 - Friday of the first week of Advent
Isaiah 29, 17-24; Matt. 9, 17-31
Homily
The liturgical lectionary, which is very rich in this season of Advent, does not simply give us a few brief texts to meditate on. Rather, it gives us a few points of reference to guide our lectio divina.
For example, in the first reading of each day's Mass, we quickly go through the Book of Isaiah. These few texts may be evocative, but it is impossible to grasp their full meaning without putting them into context. So it's the whole Book of Isaiah that we need to reread during this Advent season, following the rhythm of the Lectionary. (We can easily do this by reading a few chapters a day).
Isaiah was living in difficult times. He knew how to remind the king and the people of their sins, to warn them of divine punishment, to warn them against dangerous alliances with pagan peoples; but he also knew how to announce better days for Jerusalem in texts that have always been interpreted in the Church as messianic prophecies.
In today's reading from Isaiah, we have the prophecy to which Jesus himself referred when John the Baptist sent his disciples to ask Him: ‘Are you really the one who is to come, or must we wait for another? Jesus simply replied: go and tell John what you have seen: ‘The lame walk, the deaf hear, the blind see and the Good News is proclaimed to the poor’.
At the beginning of Advent, just as we skim through the Book of Isaiah in the Mass readings, so we skim through the beginning of Matthew's Gospel. Yesterday we had the conclusion of the Sermon on the Mount, as a kind of summary of that long discourse. In Matthew, this speech is followed by an account of ten miracles. Today we read the account of one of these miracles, as a summary of this whole section. It is the miracle of the two blind men who were healed because of their faith, and to whom Jesus advised not to say anything, but who soon began to shout it from the rooftops.
Let us ask the Lord for a similar faith, so that we too may be healed of all our blindness.
Armand Veilleux