2 December 2025 – Tuesday of the 1st week of Advent
Isaiah 11:1-10; Luke 10:21-24
HOMILY
The Gospel we have just read has some points of contact with the Magnificat of the Virgin Mary, which are very interesting and extremely revealing.
When Jesus gives glory to His Father for revealing to the little ones the things hidden from the wise, the little ones He speaks of are His disciples. And these were not naive children. They were adult men who knew the ways of the world: Matthew, the tax collector, knew how to make money; Jude, the Zealot, knew the art of guerrilla warfare; Peter, James and John were fishermen who knew how to steer their boat on the lake and cast their nets. They had given up everything to become disciples of Jesus. When He invites them – and us – to simplicity of heart, He is not inviting us to a childish attitude or a childish kind of spirituality. He invites us to a very demanding form of poverty of heart. He invites us to follow Him as disciples and therefore to abandon all our sources of security, especially our thirst for power, just as His disciples had given up everything to follow Him.
The main characteristic of a child is its powerlessness. A child can be, in its own way, as intelligent, loving, etc. as an adult. But because they have not yet accumulated knowledge, material possessions and social relationships, children are powerless. As soon as we become adults, we want to exercise power and control: over our own lives, over other people, over material things, and sometimes even over God. This is what Jesus asks us to renounce when He asks us to be like little children.
A useful exercise in self-knowledge might be to examine the various forms in which our thirst for power is expressed in the different aspects of our lives, and how we defend that power. Let us then contemplate our Lord, who came not as a powerful king on His throne, but as a little child in a manger.
It is in His light that we must reread the first reading (from the Book of Isaiah) and see in it the message of God who wants a humanity without borders, without wars, without wolves and snakes, without violent men. He wants a humanity marked by harmony - harmony between women and men, between humans and their environment; a humanity marked by justice, without privileges, without oppressed poor people, without unjust judges; a humanity where nations will no longer be separated by the mountains and ravines of their religions, their political creeds, their theological or philosophical systems. In a word, a humanity without wars.
Isaiah's prophecy paints a picture where the little boy leads the wolf and the lamb, the leopard and the kid, the calf and the lion cub together; where the cow and the bear will have the same pasture, the lion will eat with the ox; and where the infant will play on the cobra's nest. Yes! The movement of history is heading in this direction. And yet the daily newspapers remind us that violence, the thirst for power and money are still present. So many daily crimes remind us that not everyone is yet filled with a spirit of love and peace... Are we?
Is this a utopia? Of course! Just like the call to be perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect. A utopia to which it is worth devoting our whole lives. An ideal and a goal that we can only achieve in one way, through conversion. And this is what the Spirit of the desert, speaking through John the Baptist, demanded of everyone. The radical conversion that the Pharisees and Sadducees were unable to achieve, we are no more capable of than they were. We need the baptism of fire: that is, the action of the Spirit, the burning wind of the desert, consuming all the impurities and defilements of our lives and hearts.
Armand Veilleux