gift
The Time Has Come!
4th Sunday of Advent – Year A
Deacon Tom Vert
Preached: December 21, 2025
“The time has come!”
35 years ago on Boxing day, Carmela and I just got home from my grandparent’s place where we had celebrated our annual Christmas visit with them enjoying the special punch and Christmas goodies.
Carmela was 9 months pregnant, and we settled in for the night on the couch ready to watch Sister Act with Whoopi Goldberg. Just when we were comfy with the warm blankets Carmela’s water broke!
“The time has come!” and we scrambled to call the doctor and 26 hours later our first daughter was born!
We had waited in anticipation for months, preparing, planning and getting ready for that day when our lives would change forever!
Today we are called to have this same feeling as Advent is almost over, and the birth of the Christ child is 4 days away.
However, if you are like me, the distractions of the season can take my gaze away from the manger and instead I am focusing on the list of things to do.
I need finish the Christmas shopping, I have to load up the fridge as our daughter is coming home this week, I must help clean up for the guests arriving, make sure the hot tub is working properly, and on and on and on….
The distractions of everyday are taking over my focus and my stress level is increasing, and I am finding it hard to connect to the spiritual side these past few weeks.
Then I read St. Paul’s letter to the Romans in the 2nd reading preparing for the homily this weekend and I heard the final line “Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.”
St. Paul was writing to the Romans in anticipation of his journey there one day, and to help them as they navigated the trials and tribulations of early Christian life.
Paul reminded them as he does us, that the gifts of grace and peace are available to us in our connection with God each day. We can tap into this if we truly understand the Christmas gift given to us by our heavenly Father.
What is this gift?
It is the gift of God’s presence among us, “Emmanuel”, which means “God with us”; and the name “Jesus” which is the Greek translation for the name “Joshua” that means “God saves”!
This is the point of the entire book of Romans that Paul wrote!
Paul says to the people, look at Christ!!
He is the fulfillment of the entire Old Testament as we heard in the readings this past month and the first reading today:
From Isaiah, “Therefore the Lord himself will give you this sign…the virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall name him Emmanuel” and “For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace”.
From Micah “But you, Bethlehem, though you are small among the clans of Judah…will come…one who will be ruler over Israel”.
From Jeramiah ““The days are coming…when I will raise up…a righteous Branch,
a King who will reign wisely and do what is just and right in the land…this is the name…The Lord Our Righteous Savior.”
The anticipation and waiting for the time when God would send a Saviour, a Messiah, was an active yearning by the Jewish people, and God fulfilled this plan in sending his Son into the world.
Paul tells the Romans in today’s readings the entire holy Scriptures foreshadowed the gospel about his Son, “descended from David according to the flesh…but established as Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness”!
This incredible gift of God himself present among us is what we celebrate this week, the Incarnation, or entry of God into the world so that we can relate to God in a wonderful way as God who understands our journey as he has walked with us!
Then Paul tells us the second gift that we receive and that is that “we have received the grace of apostleship…who are called to belong to Jesus Christ.”
We receive the gift to be disciples, brothers and sisters, and we are then called to share that gift with others that they may see the joy and peace that is beyond all understanding available to each of us through God’s grace.
It is not easy to keep the focus on this gift, to avoid the distractions, and to eliminate the stress as the world comes at us.
So, I would challenge us these next four days, when we get a little overwhelmed, or when get the feeling of anxiety welling up inside us, go to your nativity scene, take the child Jesus and look at him closely and say, “the time has come!”
Grace: God’s Free Gift
4th Sunday of Lent
Fr. Mark Gatto
Preached: March 10, 2024
Sometimes I feel like an atheist. When I see or hear the way some Christians speak of God, I think to myself, I do not believe in such a god. If you were speaking to someone about God and could use only one word, what would you choose?
No word really captures the mystery that is God. Human language always falls short. But, we need words to point us to that mystery, to keep us awake to the mystery of God.
One word found in the readings today is the word, Grace. St. Paul says that “it is by grace that you have been saved.” Paul speaks of the “immeasurable riches of his grace.” Grace is free gift. It is unearned. Paul says that we are saved through faith and this grace is “the gift of God.” We do not earn or deserve this grace of God.
Yet, at times we act as though we can earn or deserve grace. Someone will say, I go to Mass every Sunday, I have not committed any serious sin, I pray regularly, therefore God should reward me, things should go well in my life. But, love is grace, it is free gift, or it is not love at all. Love is only true if it is freely offered and freely received.
We cannot bribe God. God does not demand a bribe from us. We are loved in grace that is free gift. We heard that famous passage from John’s Gospel, chapter 3. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.” It goes on to say, “God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.” Why are we so fearful at times expecting that we will be condemned. God’s will is our salvation.
Where do we find grace? God is not something in the universe, not one being among things in the universe. God is the grounding of all in the universe. God is holding all that exists in this universe. There is no place where we can go where we are unable to experience the grace of God. Sometimes people think, I am too great a sinner, I am not praying enough, I have too serious a failing in my past.
There is no environment, no place in which the grace of God is not present. We just need to open our eyes. But, as Jesus says, sometimes people love the darkness rather than the light. Have you ever encountered a family member or friend who has taken a dark turn in life. Someone married who has become involved in an adulterous relationship, someone who is being greedy and fighting over a will, or someone who has gone down a harmful path with alcohol or drugs. You might try to speak to that person and shed light on the wrong path they are on. But, often they prefer to remain in the dark and so avoid the light.
Each of us need self awareness, to be utterly honest with ourselves in letting light to face any darkness in our lives. Honesty with myself is crucial, to live in light not darkness.
Grace is all around you. It is free gift being offered by God. God desires your salvation. Each day give thanks that you are loved. Honestly face any ways that are keeping you in darkness, unable to see the immeasurable riches of the grace of God.
When we are speaking of God or sharing our faith with others, hopefully others will experience grace, the utterly free gift of God’s love.
The Gift
Christmas 2023
Fr. Peter Robinson
Preached: December 24-25, 2023
On this holy Christmas morning, we find ourselves surrounded by gifts! I remember, as a child, dragging my dad out of bed in the pitch darkness at 0500 in the morning. Then, my sisters and I would race to the Christmas tree to see what “Santa” had left us. Meanwhile, dad was soon sound asleep again — on the couch. As you all know from experience, those moments are burned into our memories for the rest of life.
So, this morning I want to turn our attention to a wonderful gift that God himself has given to us on this Christmas Day. In particular, I’m referring to an event that happened many years after Jesus was born. I’m speaking of the occasion in Luke’s Gospel (11:27) when Jesus, performing a miracle, heard a woman’s voice call out in the crowd: “Blessed is the womb that bore you and the breasts that nursed you!”
Because Jesus’ miracles gave proof of his divine power, this woman wanted to honour not just Jesus, but his mother, too. That is, given Jesus’ greatness as a miracle-worker, this woman wanted his mother to share in that greatness. After all, she gave him birth, right? Millenia later, that woman was right — think of every Rosary that you have ever prayed: “Hail Mary … blessed art thou amongst women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb …”
But the Lord Jesus had another priority: that is, he did not wish for people to seek happiness only in a purely physical relationship. That is why he replied: “Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and obey it!” You see, as great as the honour is that we give to Mary in a physical way (because she is Jesus’ birth mother), Mary is to be blessed in another way, in a spiritual way: she, as a teenage woman, heard God’s word and kept it.
Which is why, in Jesus’ opinion, Mary is truly blessed. She kept God’s truth in her mind — even while she carried the body of God’s Son in her womb. The truth of Jesus’ identity (as God the Son) and the body of Jesus (the man) were both Christ.
Four centuries after Jesus, St Augustine would write that Jesus was kept in Mary’s mind, insofar as he is truth; and he was carried in her womb, insofar as he is man. But St Augustine teaches that what is kept in the mind is of a higher order than what is carried in the womb.
So, though the Virgin Mary is both holy and blessed, the Church is greater than she. Why? Because Mary is a part of the Church. She is the first member of the Church, the first to profess and follow Jesus. She is a holy and eminent – in fact, the most eminent – disciple of Jesus. But she is still only a member of the entire body of the Church. The body of the Church is greater than Mary, who is the first of its members. In fact, this body of the universal Church has the Lord Jesus himself for its head. And the head (who is divine) and the body (which is us, and all believers) together make up the whole Church — including Mother Mary.
Brothers and sisters, on this Christmas morning our greatest gift (from God himself) is belonging to the one, holy, Catholic, and apostolic Church: of belonging to Jesus, through the Church, and to his beloved mother, Mary.