This is the edited text of the homily for the Centenary Mass of St Ambrose Concord West Parish, 2nd Sunday of Advent, 8 December 2024.
Last week (Lk 21:25-28,34-36) and this (Lk 3:1-6) we read from the Gospel of St Luke and will continue to do so every Sunday for the year ahead. St Luke the Evangelist was something of an overachiever, not content with just one area of expertise or writing just one book. He was, as his title suggests, a saint and evangelist: a faithful Christian who shared the Good News of Jesus Christ with his generation. While not one of the Twelve, he clearly knew the apostles and the Blessed Virgin, or had access to their memories of Jesus. Whether a gentile Christian or a Hellenised Jew or something in between, he was the most highly educated of the New Testament authors. A disciple of St Paul (Philem 1:24; Col 4:14; 2Tim 4:11), he was martyred and buried in Thebes in Greece.
Luke was also a careful biographer—of the life of Christ in his Gospel, and of the life of the early church in his Acts of the Apostles—singlehandedly writing more than a quarter of the New Testament. He was a skilful storyteller and preserved for us many of Jesus’ parables and much of his own story. He had a passion for women, children and the poor, and so was careful to pass on all Jesus had to say on these subjects, and to record most of the details we have of Jesus’ early life with Mary.
Perhaps his attention to detail is behind the tradition that he was the first icon painter and indeed the author of the Black Madonna of Częstochowa, Our Lady of Vladimir in Moscow, and the Roman images of Maria Advocata, Salus Populi Romani and Perpetual Succour. And that same attention to detail fits with St Paul’s description of Luke as “the beloved physician” (Col 4:14). Thus, Luke was preacher, chronicler, artist and medic!
In today’s Gospel, we glimpse his penchant for research and detail in action. In just a few verses he bombards us with reference points. He gives us a date: in the 15th year of the reign of Tiberius, while Pontius Pilate, Herod, Philip, Lysanias, Annas and Caiaphas were also ruling. He provides the geography: Judæa, Galilee, It/urea, Trach/on/itis, Abilene and the whole Jordan district. He tells us the political context: Tiberius was emperor, Pilate governor, Herod, Philip and Lysanias tetrarchs. He affords us some religious context also: Annas and Caiaphas were high priests of the Jerusalem temple, John was preaching the word of God and offering a baptism of repentance. He gives us some very human details also: Philip was Herod’s brother, John was Zechariah’s son, John felt he was like “a voice crying in the wilderness”…
We might be tempted to view all this detail as the obsessive-compulsive behaviour of an historian with too many footnotes or a pathologist writing up an autopsy report. Maybe Luke was like that. But there’s good reason for all these specifics. Luke wants his readers—us—to know that the Good News of Jesus Christ is not just a popular fable, nor the account of some first century hysterics. No, this is real history! Luke wants everyone to know there really was a man named John Bar-Zechariah, who lived in a particular time and place. That he really did preach in the wilderness, call to conversion, and baptise people. That he understood his prophetic mission as preparing a way for the Lord, so all mankind might see the salvation of our God. No old wives’ tale this, no spin or advertising, but fact pure if not so simple…
Luke’s concern for history does not mean he lacks a perspective or purpose. Of course he’s writing for a particular audience, selecting what to include, using a language, drawing upon a culture or two. But the detail helps resist our tendency to mine the Gospel for the “messages” that interest us, whilst discarding the rest as unimportant or unreliable. Such an approach is deeply problematic. Christianity is not simply a series of neat messages, a moral system, a philosophy or path of enlightenment. When we reduce it to ideas, stripped of real persons and events, we end up with an impoverished version of our story, usually one made to suit our tastes and biases.
As the late Pope Benedict XVI noted, Christianity is above all, an encounter with a person. It’s a coming together with the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity. We can meet him because he truly came to meet us, in history, as Jesus the man. He became one of us in all things but sin and shared in all it means to be human, including the time and space, politics and spirituality, life and death. Luke knew the importance of this and sought to make it crystal clear: Jesus really lived, really died, and really rose. His advent coming to us was and is a call to each of us to encounter him, to have a personal relationship with him, so we might share in his offer of salvation.
But an encounter this profound requires preparation. Luke’s Gospel records the drum-roll of the Lord’s first Advent, the angels proclaiming, the husband dreaming, the mother pondering, the shepherds adoring, the temple prophets cooing—and John calling all to repentance. Advent gives us time to heed the call of these angels and prophets. To smooth out the rough bits of our lives. To confess our sins as the Baptist bade us. To fill in the valleys of our sins and vices, and build up the virtues and graces. To make straight a path for the Lord into our hearts. And to do all this, not alone, but alongside the people of Judæa, Jordan, Rome and, dare I say, Concord West.
For 100 years, this parish has retold the story of Advent, Christmas and all that follows. It has been a home of prayer and worship, of proclaiming the Gospel and forming young and old, of reaching out to the community, especially the needy. For a century now you and your predecessors have declared this is true, this is historical fact, God really did become one of us at the first Christmas. He came with a promise of his second Advent, of an eternal Christmas, when all will be revealed and made new, when the glory of God on high and the peace there should be among men will finally be visible and realised. This parish has been preparing people for that New Advent by building them up in faith, hope and love.
So “my prayer for you,” as St Paul says in our epistle, “is that your love for each other” here in Concord West “may increase more and more and never stop improving your knowledge” of the faith “and deepening your perception” of the good, so that you will live “pure and blameless” ready for the Day of Christ’s Second Coming (Phil 1:4-11).
We give thanks for the century past of St Ambrose Parish Concord West. May God continue to bless it in the century to come. Congratulations! Ad multos annos!