Looking for others

Third Sunday of Advent – Year A

“Are you the one who is to come, or should we look for another?” (Mt 11:3). If John the Baptist had doubts about Jesus, what hope is there for us to believe?

For a while now, many on the front lines of parish leadership have been questioning, wondering, retiring, or just leaving ministry (maybe even the church) altogether. They’ve seen up close too much false hope and hypocrisy and don’t know how much longer they can wait. Some version of “Are you the one…?” is their refrain: Is this the parish that will finally feel like home? Is this the job that will fulfill and not deplete me? Do I still believe in the work I do to serve the church?

Rejoicing on this Gaudete Sunday may be hard. Still, that is the Advent call—to rejoice in God’s reign here but not yet. We find comfort, then, in Jesus’s message to John. The work of bringing God’s reign is not ours to do; that belongs to the Spirit. But it is ours to witness.

Therefore, let us train our eyes and ears to look and listen for the cracks of God’s reign breaking into the hardness of our world. Then let us tell our coworkers in the vineyard what we have seen and heard. In that witnessing, may we all find reason to rejoice.

This post was first published in “GIA Quarterly: A Liturgical Music Journal.”

Image credit: Oleksandr Pidvalnyi from Pexels.

Read more reflections on the Sunday readings here:

• Heed and follow
• New life in Christ
• Now what?
• We are Loved and Longed For
• Called home