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December 18, 2025Fr. Matthew Hawkins: Third Sunday of Advent
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring glad tidings to the poor.” Isaiah 61:1 (cited in Lk 4:18)
Readings for December 14, 2025
Reading: Isaiah 35:1-6a, 10
Responsorial Psalm 146:6-7, 8-9, 9-10.
Second Reading: James 5:7-10
The Gospel: Matthew 11:2-11
The wilderness and the parched land shall exult; the desert shall rejoice and bloom. Isaiah paints Advent not as passive waiting but as urgent transformation—water rushing through dry ground, flowers bursting from sand. This is the season when creation itself strains forward, when even the landscape refuses to accept things as they are.
When John's disciples come to Jesus with their question—"Are you the one who is to come?"—they're asking the essential Advent question. Should we keep waiting, or has the waiting ended? Jesus doesn't answer with credentials or claims. Instead, he points to bodies: the blind receiving their sight, the lame walking, lepers cleansed, the deaf hearing. And then, almost as an afterthought, he adds what matters most: "the poor have the good news brought to them."
Notice that Jesus doesn't say the poor have been told the good news from a distance. They have had it brought to them. The gospel arrives not as information but as presence, as proximity, as the closing of distance between the comfortable and the suffering.
This is where the Psalm's litany becomes revolutionary. The Lord "secures justice for the oppressed, gives food to the hungry, sets captives free." These aren't metaphors for spiritual states. They describe material realities: bodies fed, chains broken, sight restored. The psalmist knows what we sometimes forget—that God's faithfulness appears not primarily in doctrines but in changed circumstances for those who suffer.
The "ministry of presence" we speak of so easily in church meetings is actually far more demanding than it sounds. It requires what James calls patience—not the passive endurance of unavoidable hardship, but the farmer's active vigilance, watching for signs of life, tending conditions for growth. True presence to the poor means staying when immediate solutions don't appear, when the desert doesn't bloom on our timeline, when we cannot fix what we encounter.
But this Advent warns against romanticizing poverty or our response to it. When Jesus lists the signs of the kingdom, he doesn't say "blessed are those who visit the poor." He says the poor receive good news. The measure of authentic presence isn't our feeling of having done something meaningful; it's whether those we claim to serve experience actual good news—whether hunger is satisfied, whether dignity is restored, whether isolation gives way to belonging.
St. Benedict the Moor, our parish's patron, understood this. A freed slave who became a Franciscan brother, he served in the monastery kitchen—not as performance of humility but as genuine service to his community. His presence transformed the ordinary work of feeding people into something sacramental. He knew that the ministry of presence doesn't require grand gestures; it requires showing up, consistently, in the places where people actually live.
This Advent, as we wait for the coming of the Lord, the readings challenge us to examine our proximity. Are we waiting alongside those who hunger and thirst, or are we waiting comfortably at a distance? When the desert blooms, when the blind see and the lame leap for joy, will we be close enough to witness it?
The one who is to come doesn't arrive in the abstract. He comes in the bodies made whole, in the prisoners released, in the good news that reaches those the world has forgotten. Our Advent waiting becomes authentic when we position ourselves not to observe these miracles from afar, but to participate in them, present to the very people in whom Christ chooses to be recognized.