Rev. James A. Wallace, C.Ss.R.

Jan 13 2025

God’s Last Word

A recent movie called The Messenger tells the story of two soldiers on duty to inform next of kin about the death of a loved one in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. It poignantly portrays not only the grief that this word brings to families and loved ones but also the sorrow of those who have to deliver it.

Today’s readings remind us that both those who deliver and those who receive the word of God about Jesus are entrusted with something that is lifegiving. Isaiah’s messenger carries word of a birth that brings joy, hope, and song, so much so that the very feet that deliver this message are declared blessed. It is not dif

ficult to see why this reading was chosen for Christmas.

God’s own Son is the message sent to us in the fullness of time. While God is portrayed as One who turned to words from the very beginning of creation—“Let there be light”—and while God continued to speak to Abraham, Moses, and the prophets, this speech was partial and fragmentary, often seeming more like a bad connection on the receiving end for all it was listened to.

But in Jesus the Word became flesh and took up residence among us, truly one of us and truly God. The magnificent concerto that is the Prologue of John rings out in three movements, proclaiming the Word present at Creation as the Word enfleshed in Jesus of Nazareth, and finally as the Word that continues to be born in us who by baptism have received a share in his fullness.

Consider/Discuss

What does calling Jesus the Word of God tell me about God? • How does accepting Jesus as God’s Word have an impact on my/our lives?

Responding to the Word

We pray that we might first hear the Word that is Jesus, then that we might understand this Word, and finally that we might live out of our understanding. We pray that this Word may so imprint itself on our minds and hearts and souls that when we speak, others hear the spirit of Jesus singing its love song to the world.

Jan 13 2025

Living a Dream

The Bible offers us a rich variety of men and women who qualify as heroes, warriors, prophets, and wise men and women. And every so often it places before us a dreamer. Jacob had the first big dream, with that ladder connecting heaven and earth, bearing ascending and descending angels.

His son Joseph started off with dreams that put himself at the center, much to his brothers’ chagrin, but later he saved himself by interpreting the dreams of others, including Pharaoh. However, the most important dreamer of all was Joseph, spouse of Mary and foster father to Jesus.

Joseph was asked to live out his dream. “[D]o not be afraid to take Mary your wife into your home. For it is through the Holy Spirit that this child has been conceived in her,” he was told in a dream (Matthew 1:20). And not only that, he was to name the child Jesus, which means “God saves.” What all this cost him we don’t know. All we hear is that when he awoke from the dream, he did what had been asked and took Mary into his home.

That wasn’t the end of the dreams. “Joseph, take the mother and child into Egypt—Herod is trying to kill him.” “Joseph, take the mother and child out of Egypt—Herod is dead.” And Joseph did. Maybe once you begin to live God’s dream it gets easier.

God’s dream is that we live in the world as God’s adopted and saved children, working to bring God’s peace and justice, mercy and forgiveness into our world wherever they are needed.

Consider/Discuss

What do you think God’s dream is for our world today?
Do you know Jesus as Emmanuel (God with us)?

Responding to the Word

We ask God to continue to save us in our own day from all that would lead us away from God. We ask God to continue to help us to know Jesus as Emmanuel, God with us, so that our faith may be rooted in the wisdom and power of God.

Jan 13 2025

The Promise of Joy

Joy is different from happiness. Happiness is a transient experience, but joy has more depth to it, more lasting roots. It can be independent of what is going on around us. In John’s Gospel, the night before he died, Jesus says to his disciples that he wants his joy to be in them and their joy to be complete (John 15:11). And Paul writes to the Thessalonians: “Rejoice always” (2 Thessalonians 5:16).

Today’s readings invite us to think about what brings us joy. Isaiah offers images of a world that will blossom or bloom, flowering into fullness. The prophet gives us wonderful images of dry, parched land suddenly breaking into a colorful display of new and abundant life.

This fullness also results from something being restored that had been lost or that was missing from the start: sight, hearing, being able to sing and leap with joy, health of body and spirit. Such fullness comes from God. It is gift, pure and simple.

God wants us to have this fullness of life, to be sure. It will come with the coming of the Lord. In the meantime, we are to wait patiently, not complaining, but with hearts marked by certitude. We have assurance in that we have already been welcomed into the kingdom at our baptism. The rest is only a matter of time. In speaking of John as more than a prophet, Jesus concludes by saying, “Yet the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he” (Matthew 11:11).

Consider/Discuss

What makes you happy? What makes you joyful? Is there a difference?
How is God asking you to be patient at the present time?

Responding to the Word

We can ask God to give us that joy that the world cannot give, a joy that is found rooted in our faith in God, in our trusting that the God who raised Jesus up will also bring us to fullness of life.

Jan 13 2025

God’s Grace Draws Us Closer

I remember a young mother saying to me on Mother’s Day, “I hope you’re not going to preach to us about Mary. She makes us all feel so guilty. She never yelled or got angry. She was just perfect.”

The Immaculate Conception is often seen as a feast that puts Mary at a distance from us, since she was “free from all taint of sin.” But this feast is really a feast that should bring her closer.

God’s presence to and love for Mary surrounded and touched her life from its beginning. This was done because of the unique role she would play in God’s plan of salvation for all. Mary’s role was necessary to bring to fulfillment God’s desire that all be saved. So, her being graced in a unique way does not distance her from us, but places her even more at the heart of the human family.

As the Letter to the Ephesians reminds us today, God chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world “to be holy and without blemish before him” (Ephesians 1:4). God “destined us for adoption” and destined us to exist “for the praise of the glory of his grace” (Ephesians 1:5, 6). We all are destined to be drawn closer to God and each other through God’s grace.

Mary’s gracious response to God is a model of what God desires from each of us singly and as a community: our saying “Yes” to God’s plan, so that the world can know and love and serve the living God revealed in Jesus.

Consider/Discuss

Do I think of Mary as one removed from or uniquely close to the community of believers?
Do you see yourself as having been chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world to be holy?

Responding to the Word

Today we can praise God for revealing to us that what was done for Mary is a sign of God’s will for all of us, that we know ourselves as chosen by God and as existing to praise the glory of God’s grace. We ask Mary to lead us more deeply into the mystery of the God who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Jan 13 2025

Visions and Prophecies

Last year I went to a Christmas concert to help get myself into the Christmas spirit. The concert was moving along at a comfortable and comforting pace, enjoy able but nothing out of the ordinary, when suddenly the choir came out and sang a piece that moved me to tears. I searched the program and found its name and composer: The Dream Isaiah Saw by Glenn Rudolph. I went home and found it online, a youth choir performing it.

Its refrain brought together the passage of Isaiah we heard today and the event that we will celebrate in a few weeks. It does this very simply with several variations for the final line: “Little child whose bed is straw, take new lodgings in my heart, Bring the dream Isaiah saw: a) life redeemed from fang and claw; b) justice purifying law; c) knowledge, wisdom, worship, awe.”

Advent is a season that sets before us visionaries and prophets like Isaiah, the missionary Paul, and the herald John. Each offers us a vision of things coming together. For Isaiah, it is all creation—animal and human; for Paul, it is Jews and Gentiles; for John, it is the One who is coming to gather the wheat into his barn, God’s harvest, those baptized in the Spirit.

We are brought together each Sunday to think, live, and sing in harmony to the gracious God who has come to us in Jesus Christ, the One who came filled with the spirit of the Lord, to draw us more deeply into the life so generously offered by God.

Consider/Discuss

Does the dream of Isaiah with its pairing of opposites offer hope in our own day, when there is so much division in the world, in government, and even in the Church?
What would arouse John the Baptist’s wrath today? What in our lives can be considered as worthy wheat and as chaff to be swept up and tossed into the fire?

Responding to the Word

We pray this season that we may come to “think in harmony with one another, in keeping with Christ Jesus, that with one accord [we] may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ” (Romans 15:5–6).