Advent4-A4 Homily by Fr. Gábor
Sick and Housebound: Before reading this homily it is strongly recommended that you read the following readings as a background info for this homily. Isaiah 7:10-14; Romans 1:1-7; Matthew 1:18-25.
When I read the Gospel reading what caught my attention was Joseph’s faith and trust in what he heard from an angel in his dream.
First of all we do not normally listen to messages that come to us through dreams, because dreams often seem to have nothing much to do with reality. However with the development of modern science we are discovering more and more about dreams and we start recognising the connection between dreams and reality.
Even if dreams were connected to reality, we do not normally receive messages from angels in our dreams, and even if we do, we do not believe in them, unless we see them. Remember, when was the last time a child told you he or she spoke to an angel or Jesus; what was your reaction?
Also for Joseph it would have been much easier to dismiss Mary in secret as he originally planned, and not to listen to his dreams, which nobody, except he, would believe.
Yet Joseph chose to believe what the angel said. Why?
We would be right to think that perhaps Joseph knew about incidences from the Old Testament where God did actually speak to chosen people through dreams.
I am also sure that as part of his plan the Lord God prepared Joseph in many other ways, just like Mary, for the advent, or coming, of his Son into the world.
However no amount of preparation can replace or supress our free decision to believe what we see and hear. This free decision is what we call the obedience of faith (see Catechism, paragraph 144). Joseph believed that the truth of the angel’s message is guaranteed by God himself, because He is Truth itself: ‘she has conceived what is in her by the Holy Spirit…’, said God to him through the angel. Abraham and Mary are both models and perfect examples of such faith in the word of God. They both received God’s message through angels.
Faith is both God’s grace and a human act (CCC 153-155)
As grace faith is God’s supernatural gift to each one of us. The Holy Spirit prepares us to receive this gift of faith and to grow in it. But first we need to hear about the wonderful things God has done, and his teaching, as St. Paul says: faith comes by hearing, and while this happens the Holy Spirit moves our hearts to accept the Good news about God, and also moves us so that we turn towards God more and more aspects of our lives, until we completely dedicate our whole life to him in obedience of faith. This is what we see in Joseph’s case as well. It was through his regular reading and study of the Hebrew Scriptures and through the teaching of his parents and elders about God that the Holy Spirit prepared him throughout his whole life to believe what the Lord told him and to dedicate his life to God. The Holy Spirit prepares us in the same way. This is why it is so important to read the Bible at home on a regular basis.
Faith is also a human act, by which we submit our mind and will to what the Lord reveals to us in so many ways (cf. Dei Filius3, a Dogmatic constitution of Vatican I). St. Thomas Aquinas explains that by God’s supernatural help, or grace, our intellect is moved to accept what God reveals to us (St. Thomas Aquinas,SThII-II,2,9). Joseph was open to be moved by God’s grace and so he accepted the words of God as it was revealed to him through the angel in his dream.
Let us therefore open ourselves to God’s grace; ask the Holy Spirit to prepare and move our minds to believe what the Father tries to reveal to us about himself and about our lives, let it be a challenging truth or an encouraging word, and most of all let us ask the Lord Jesus to increase our faith, especially in times of trials and struggle, so that the light of faith may always reveal in our darkness the way we should walk, and the decisions that we should take.