Second Sunday of Advent C December 7, 2003. Our Lady of Grace 7:30, 11:00, 6PM.

It takes a great artist like Michelangelo to create the moving and beautiful image of Mary holding her crucified son from a piece of marble rock. While the skill of the artist is very important, so also is the quality of the marble or other substance out of which the artist is creating his or her masterpiece. A good human artist needs good materials. The better the material the better the work of art.

God is more skillful than any human artist or builder could every be. God creates everything out of nothing. God doesn’t need wood, or steel or rock. God created everything that is and everything that will every be out of absolutely nothing. God spoke a word into the emptiness of space and our vast universe exploded into existence.

God has a second specialty. When God makes things out of something, he is particularly good at creating something new out of something that has been ruined or spoiled. God created Adam and Eve and placed them in the garden of Paradise. When Adam and Eve sinned, ruined paradise and brought sin and death into the world God had created for the human race, God did not walk away from the rubble of our lives. God spoke a new word of creation into the ruins of paradise and into the heart of our confused and sinful human race. God spoke a word to Mary of Nazareth and turned the sinfulness of humanity into the sinless temple of his glory as God was clothed in our humanity and born into a human family in Bethlehem.

God likes to create and build out of things that have been spoiled. God likes to make the desert bloom. God likes to turn poverty and sinfulness into beauty and pure joy.

The gospel of Luke quotes and amplifies the words of the prophet Isaiah, “A voice of one crying out in the desert; ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make straight his paths. Every valley shall be filled and every mountain and hill shall be made low. The winding roads shall be made straight, and the rough ways made smooth, and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.” And so it is, God began to make new things happen in a sinful world.

Christopher Columbus discovered Ameica in 1492. Soon, Europeans began conquering and controlling both Ameican contents with great speed. This began a wonderful period of expansion and growth for the nations of Europe and a time of great loss and pain for the Native Indian people. A whole Indian way of life that was regarded as primitive by the English and the Spanish was destroyed by soldiers and missionaries. Both good things and bad happened. Often the Native people were left powerless and too often they were treated unkindly, even cruelly, by the newcomers.

God watched the pain and suffering of the Indian people and God intervened. In 1531 a poor Indian named Juan Diego was on his way to Mass. As he walked along a cloud appeared with a young woman clothed in the dress of an Aztec princess in its midst. The young woman had the face of an Indian and spoke in the local Indian language. She asked that a church be built on the sight of her appearance. When the poor Indian went to the bishop to tell him about the Lady’s request, the bishop would not believe him. When Juan Diego returned to the bishop a second time with a new message from the Lady, he opened his cloak in front of the bishop and roses came tumbling out of it onto the floor in the middle of winter. This could have been miracle enough, but the bishop saw something more and fell to his knee. Imprinted on the poor Indian’s cloak was the image of the heavenly Lady – the image we have before us in the sanctuary. Mary had come to show herself as the mother of the poor and the conquered. She had come wearing the face of the Indian, not the European. She was pregnant – filled with the presence of her divine child. She had come to speak words of comfort and hope to those who thought they had no future to hope in. Mary said to Juan Diego, “My dear son, I am the ever Virgin Mary, Mother of the true God….it is my desire that a church be built here in this place for me, where, as your most merciful Mother and that of all your people, I may show my loving clemency and the compassion that I bear to the Indians, and to those who love and seek me…” In response to the compassion of the heavenly Lady with the Indian face, whom we know as Our Lady of Guadeloupe, 9 million Indians became Catholic Christians in the following few years.

God always meets us with Good News and new hope in the humiliating, sinful or devastating moments of our lives. John the Baptist preached the good news of repentance, forgiveness and new life. Jesus came into the world to overcome darkness and sin by proclaiming good news. Jesus did not come merely to condemn or destroy, or even to point out our sinful ways. Jesus came to proclaim a new creation. Jesus came to proclaim God’s goodness to the confused and sinful. Jesus came to show us that God can make a new world out of the rubble of the old. Jesus came to turn our poverty and our sinfulness into new life and pure joy.

Gossip is telling the bad news about people. We would never say that telling good news is gossip. Gossip is wrong because it glories in the rubble rather than proclaiming God’s new creation. Putting people down is wrong because it focuses on the defects of others, real or imagined, rather than proclaiming new possibilities and good news. Being judgmental is wrong because it traps people in the past rather than opening up for them a future full of new opportunities and good news. As we prepare for Christmas we’re invited to join both John the Baptist and Jesus in proclaiming God’s Good News for us and for our world. We are invited to speak words about new beginnings and a hope filled future. The coming of Jesus makes us heralds of God’s Good News. For the power and the responsibility to proclaim God’s Good News to our world we give God thanks and praise