Daily Gospel Reflection
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December 16, 2021
When the messengers of John the Baptist had left,
Jesus began to speak to the crowds about John.
“What did you go out to the desert to see a reed swayed by the wind?
Then what did you go out to see?
Someone dressed in fine garments?
Those who dress luxuriously and live sumptuously
are found in royal palaces.
Then what did you go out to see?
A prophet? Yes, I tell you, and more than a prophet.
This is the one about whom Scripture says:
Behold, I am sending my messenger ahead of you,
he will prepare your way before you.
I tell you,
among those born of women, no one is greater than John;
yet the least in the Kingdom of God is greater than he.”
(All the people who listened, including the tax collectors,
who were baptized with the baptism of John,
acknowledged the righteousness of God;
but the Pharisees and scholars of the law,
who were not baptized by him,
rejected the plan of God for themselves.)
While doing improv comedy in college, our improv group would occasionally perform a cold open.
A cold open is a short act that precedes the main event. It transitions people out of their busy lives and transports them into the realm of the upcoming performance. The cold open also exists to build excitement. It sets the tone.
A good cold open is simultaneously superior to what the vast majority of people could do— “among those born of women, no one is greater than John”—and inferior to the main event— “yet the least in the kingdom of God is greater than he.”
John the Baptist was the cold open for Jesus Christ, but why would Jesus need a cold open? Why would God need a messenger to prepare the way?
Had Christ come cold without warming us up, he would’ve brought a message of salvation through the Incarnation that no one was ready to hear, like a comedian who tells a joke to people who aren’t really listening.
Over the course of thousands of years, God has been methodically preparing our slow-believing hearts to accept news so good that an unprepared person might dismiss or never notice at all.
Once through ancient prophets of Israel and today through the Church, the Lord still prepares us for the revelation of God’s glory. Yet, as the gospels make clear, even thousands of years of preparation is no guarantee that we will welcome Jesus’s advent.
Let us spend some time this Advent asking God to point out Christ to us. Through our practices of daily prayer, Mass, service to the poor, reading Scripture, or our experiences of beauty, truth, and goodness, may God warm up hearts that may have grown cold.
Prayer
Lord, John the Baptist was no reed swayed by the wind. He prepared the way before you by his preaching, and died a martyr’s death. Now it is up to us to continue your work of salvation by the lives we lead and the witness we give. Help us do so with faith and courage. Amen.
Saint of the Day
Blessed Mary of the Angels was a mystic nun from the 18th century whose life was marked by a number of supernatural experiences.
She is a distant cousin of St. Aloysius Gonzaga, and was named Maria Fontanella when she was born in Turin in 1661. As a child, she was drawn to the religious life. At one point, she made a plan with a brother to run away and live in the desert. She began to receive visions in her dynamic prayer life.
At the age of 12, she entered a community of Cistercian nuns, but when her father died soon after, she returned home to help her mother. Still, she felt called to religious life, and at the age of 16 she joined a community of Carmelites in Turin and took the name Mary of the Angels.
She found life in a community of religious sisters to be difficult—she was very homesick and did not get along well with her novice-master—but she persevered. After seven years in the convent, she began to experience desolation in her prayer life—she was even attacked by demonic manifestations. She had a very capable spiritual director who helped her through this period, however, and after several years, she began to find peace and enter into even deeper levels of prayer.
Eventually, she was chosen to lead aspects of the community, and to become prioress of the convent. She established a new house for the community in another city, and wanted to move there, but the people of Turin would not hear of it. They valued her wisdom and would regularly consult her for advice.
She had a deep devotion to St. Joseph, and dedicated the city of Turin to him after his intercession helped save the city from being destroyed in a war with the French. She is depicted in this stained glass window asking St. Joseph for help.
One of the gifts of her faithfulness was a distinct odor that accompanied her in the last 20 years of her life. People described it as a scent of sanctity—it came from her body and spread to things she touched. The scent was a permanent condition after 1702, and was even difficult to remove from things that she had contacted. Her spiritual director, who later became archbishop, described it as a scent “neither natural nor artificial, nor like flowers or aromatic drugs or any mixture of perfumes, but only to be called an odor of sanctity.” Some of her relics still retain this scent today.
Blessed Mary of the Angels died on this date in 1717. Her relics rest in the reliquary chapel in the Basilica, and she is depicted there in these stained glass windows. The foundry that created the stained glass windows of the Basilica was located in a former Carmelite convent in Le Mans, France—in the window shown here, the artists who adorned the Basilica pay homage to the community that gave the world holy people such as Blessed Mary of the Angels.
Blessed Mary of the Angels, you literally smelled like holiness and spread that scent to things you touched—pray for us!