“Be strong, fear not! Here is your God, he comes with vindication; with divine recompense he comes to save you.” – Isaiah 35:4
Have you ever been misunderstood? Have you ever made a very carefully constructed statement, only to have your words be twisted and interpreted the wrong way? It is a frustrating feeling. Even if we try our best to be precise, we often cannot control how people receive and react to our words.
Sadly, the teachings of the Catholic Church are misunderstood more than nearly anything else. Click through the Facebook comment boxes, and you’ll likely find the Church being criticized for doing things She does not do and accused of teaching things She does not teach. Venerable Archbishop Fulton Sheen was right when he famously said, “There are not one hundred people in the United States who hate the Catholic Church, but there are millions who hate what they wrongly perceive the Catholic Church to be.”
This is the case, because the Church proclaims the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and this Gospel does not fit into the tidy, dualistic categories that modern people like to use. It is stricter than their worst fears, but far more freeing than they could possibly imagine. It is timeless, yet ever new. It is a logical lunacy that they refuse to comprehend.
As such, Christ and His Church will likely continue to be misunderstood until all things are revealed at the end of time. What a glorious day that shall be, when the Truth will be vindicated! This is the hope of which the prophet Isaiah speaks in the first reading for this Third Sunday of Advent. He calls us to believe that the Lord will set all things right eventually, even if we are mistreated, maligned, and falsely accused in this life.
Even if the truth is oppressed in this present age, we can be certain that it will be set free at the end of time. Even if the poor are trampled down in this world, we have hope that they will be exalted in the world to come. Even if our faith is mocked by the kings of this earth, we know that it will not go unrewarded by the King of Heaven.
In this Advent season, we await with joyful hope that day when all will be set right. We await the day when every heart will come to know the gravity of God’s justice and the depth of God’s love. We await the day when every eye will see the true depravity of sin and the utter splendor of mercy. We await the day when “every knee will bend… at the name of Jesus… and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Philippians 2:10-11).
Come, Lord Jesus. Come, and lay bare the hearts of all people. Bring about Your justice, and consecrate us in Your love, which is rooted always in eternal truth. Amen.
