Homely Avent III

Brothers and sisters 

May the Lord give you peace! 

I am really happy to be here and celebrate with you this important moment of our Catholic Church here in North Cyprus. The beauty of seeing celebrating together with all our communities: Kerynea, Famagusta, Lefke and Lefkosa. It truly is a great joy… And it is beautiful because the Church today invites us to celebrate the third Sunday of Advent, which is called “gaudete” Sunday, that is, of joy. And the readings from today’s mass help us understand what true joy is. 

Attention: Christian joy is not simple joy, nor the euphoria of the moment. Joy is not even pleasure: pleasure is the satisfaction of a need, which as an end in itself can lead to the loss of ourselves: think of drugs and alcohol, the sex abuse, violence, the gain of easy money with deception. The sad reality of divorce, abortion… Brothers and sisters this is not true joy. Truly if anyone proclaims to you, announces to you a joy that does not come from the Lord Jesus, it is truly false and deception. The world, false religions, and often even bad politics announce false joy to us. The season of Advent, in the preparation for Christmas, is a time of purification of false joys… 

And the question arises spontaneously: So what is joy? In the letter to the Philippians, St. Paul says: rejoice in the Lord because the Lord is near! Yes brothers and sisters «Christian joy flows from this certainty: God is close, even more so, God is with me, he is with us… Yes, true joy lies in the presence of the Child of Bethlehem. That he was born for us. Yes, our joy in the Christ who was born for us, who died and rose again for us. 

And I would like to be very clear brothers and sisters, If we want to be happy, and have true joy, we must welcome this light of Christ, to believe in the Love, the good, the charity, the charity of Christ. So from joy we move to light. Indeed, there is no joy without light. In fact, today’s Gospel speaks to us of God as light. Light is a wonderful symbol: it is what makes us live. Without light there would be no life. 

God is light because he makes us live, He is life and therefore illuminates, clarifies, comforts and warms the heart. Yet we are often afraid of his light and we are afraid of opening ourselves fully to God. Through the Gospel we are called to a fight: to accept the light, to believe in salvation, in goodness, in the love of God. We are called to turn with decision towards the light, towards that light which is not of this world. Brothers and sisters, when we truly live as Christians the light of Christ shines. And we feel true joy. Last Saturday with the nuns, the volunteers, and Monsignor Mauro we went to the Phornara camp to celebrate Christmas. With small gestures: simple gifts, a few things we have been close to those suffering brothers: Muslims and Christians. In those simple gestures, we saw true joy in the eyes of children and mothers. 

I lived in the Holy Land for 26 years, and when we are close to Christmas, I remember the Jewish holiday of “HanuKa”, which is the festival of light for the Jewish people. It is represented by the 9-branched candlestick. Instead, the 7-armed candelabra is called “Menoha” which represents the “Shabath”, Saturday. The rabbis of Jerusalem say: we have in our face the “menorah”, a candlestick, because we have in our face the seven orifices. Why? Because we must radiate the light…. The light of Christ in our face, in our lives.  

Brothers and sisters, true joy is possible because the spirit of love has been poured into our hearts, and there is no tiredness or disappointment that can disappoint the hope that now belongs to us, no one will be able to take away our joy: we have Christ, the child God who loves us, knows us and does not abandon us. And we want to prepare for Christmas, with songs, with smiles of joy. Happy Sunday of joy! Amen.