We have journeyed through the weeks of Advent — a season of hope, repentance, and joyful expectation. Today, on this Fourth Sunday of Advent, the Church invites us to pause and contemplate the nearness of the Lord. The candles on our Advent wreath are almost all burning, reminding us that the Light of the World is about to break into our darkness.
On this Sunday of Advent, the mood of the liturgy shifts from the intense calls to conversion to a focus on the events immediately surrounding the birth of Jesus. All the readings from the prophets, the apostles, and the gospels cluster around the mystery announced to Mary by the Angel Gabriel and the Holy Family of Nazareth. The Holy Spirit is powerfully at work in the Church now as he filled the womb of the Virgin Mary with his power.
In the first reading, the prophet Isaiah speaks in the year 734 BC when King Ahaz was facing a very powerful enemy. Isaiah urged Ahaz to have faith in the Lord’s power to deliver Jerusalem, and he offered the king a sign from the Lord. When the king hypocritically refused, Isaiah angrily proclaimed that a sign would be given him anyway, the sign of a virgin with a child whose name shall be called Emmanuel, which means “God with us.” God is with his people in the midst of their powerful enemies.
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