3rd Sunday of Advent What do we do with our doubts?

Such poignancy in our Gospel.

Think back to last week’s gospel with John the Baptist.  He is announcing the coming of the Kingdom of Heaven.  He is in the desert making a difference; baptizing people, confronting the religious leaders and calling them on their attitude.  He is full of confidence!

And today, this confident, strident figure sits in jail, a dark place.  

Questions and doubts plague him.

What is going through his mind?  “Was I mistaken?  Have I wasted my life?  Why is this happening to me? Where are you God?”

And look at his reaction...He asks Jesus if he is the one?  He questions Jesus’ role.

So what happened?

I think a clue is in Jesus’ response in the final lines:  “John is a great man, but least in the Kingdom.”  

John has failed to grasp the true meaning of the kingdom.

I bet he tried to create the kingdom in his own image, and kingdom that he thought was best.  

He tried control something that was not his to control, and it came crashing down, the doubts arose.

Doubts, they are all within us.  They are not sinful in of themselves.  They are in fact signs, signs that we need of a new direction in life.

John needed to think and believe differently, so as to know Jesus and freedom.  How about us?

I think we all have our own ideas to how life is supposed to go.  We all have our own ideas of how God is supposed to work and operate in this world.  

And we often tell God exactly what to do and how to do it.  Listen to our prayers of the faithful at times.

Once, when I was a seminarian working in a hospital I entered a room with a Mother and daughter, and the daugher was fairly ill.  The mother as to be expected was upset.  So we talked.  She said something that caught my attention:  “it was not supposed to be this way.”  I asked her what she meant by that.  Well turns out they were recent converts to Christianity, and their pastor assured them that once baptized, nothing bad would happen to them. Yet it did.  She was angry.  Angry at God, angry at a church who seemingly misled her.  Now what?

The universe often doesn’t go according to our plans, and we doubt.  

Of course, our tendency like John we tend to place the blame on Jesus/God..”are YOU the one?”  Or we blame others, go back to story of the fall in Genesis, Adam blamed Eve, Eve blamed the serpent.

Did we catch that in the Gospel..See John questions Jesus’, not himself.  I think John subtly blames Jesus.

Whereas, if we want to grow, we need to ask ourselves “What was I thinking?”  What am I trying to control, and force to happen?

How often are we quick to blame God or blame some other when our way does not happen??

Whereas, the humble  & mature person looks inward, and ask himself or herself, “What in me needs to change?”

Jesus’ answer to John was for him to look at the world differently, see what was truly happening.  The Kingdom was coming; God’s love broke in the world and people are being restored to their dignity.

Eucharist is the sacramental sign of this.  The Father’s love, The Spirit, poured into the bread and wine, becoming the Body and Blood of the Son, given to us; God’s grace made visible so that our invisible dignity may be restored.

If there are doubts about this...then don’t blame Jesus; look inward and be transformed.

Freedom comes when we allow ourselves to let go of “my way” and follow “The Way.”