4th Sunday of Advent Year B. By Tobe Eze

 4th Sunday of Advent Year B. By Tobe Eze

1st Reading: 2 Samuel 7:1-5. 8b-12. 14a. 16

2nd Reading: Romans 16:25-27

Gospel: Luke 1:26-38

Theme: The Intention to House God.

Every voluntary action of any human being is first of all intended before the actual execution of that act. Both our good and bad actions are intended insofar they are being done willingly. We think before doing any of them and that makes us different from other animals. If this is true, then, our intentions count in a great manner in whatever we do or say. As we have seen the place of intention in our actions, we need to ask ourselves certain questions about our intentions on certain issues and decisions we make especially this period of preparation. Continue Reading...........

What is my intention of being a Christian in the first place? It may be surprising that some persons are Christians or even Catholics just because of burial when they die and other erroneous intentions.

What is my intention for my family, friends, relations and well-wishers? It may interest us to know that not all that we intend good for are planning to reciprocate that, many are planning evil for those doing good to them. The uglies aspect of it is that it is even found in a family circle.

This is the fourth Sunday of Advent, what is my intention for this Christmas? If we are to see our hearts, we will be surprised to see what many of us have in mind for this Christmas. Funny enough some of them may even be very far from the spirit of the celebration.

When trying to answer the above questions, we may have many things as our wonderful intentions for those we love and for ourselves, God not excluded. Some of these our intentions we may not be able to achieve now or even in our lifetime. Having this in mind, we can now turn to the first reading.

In the first reading, David said to the prophet, “see now, I dwell in a house of cedar, but the ark of God dwells in a tent. I will build a house for God”. This intention was a wonderful one but David could not achieve it because God did not want him to do that. Many of our good intentions, we may not achieve them because God may have other wonderful plans for us. Last Year, we made many promises to do charity works this Christmas but our earnings are not telling us the truth as we planed. God is now telling us to look at other aspects and find things we can lay hands on and not strictly that as we promised. When God stopped David from building him a house, Bible did not say, he relaxed and did nothing again. We may have planed that we would complete one or two projects before the end of this year, the year is already ending but we are not seeing ourselves achieving that, do not loose heart. God is counting your good intentions and sincere efforts you have put in to achieving that and not the outcome of it. You may have made promises to avoid one sin or the other or one bad habit or the other this year and you saw yourself committing them from January till now. Do not conclude that you will not try again, add little effort more and change your method. Keep on trying, God is taking record of your sincere efforts. Funny enough, the Bible did not tell us if the servants given different talents by their master made mistakes while trading but we know from our experiences, we know that business is filled with mistakes. Again, Bible did not also tell us that their master scolded them for making mistakes. He accepted the little they were able to achieve. The only person he punished was the one who did not have the intention of making efforts and who was extremely avoiding mistakes. Seeing that some of our intentions do not materialize to what we planned, then we are to turn to the Gospel to see what we are to do when faced with situations like that.

We are to follow the example of Mary who though did not fully understand the message of the angel said, “Let it be done to me according to your word”. We make efforts and still get confused; may we give room for the will of God to be done in our lives. Trying to understand everything to its empirical end will only lead us away from what the second reading I pointing at.

Mystery, we certainly know that we cannot understand everything about mysteries with our limited human minds. If so, then we have to:

Always accept the will of God as David did in the first reading and Mary in the gospel. The most important thing here is to have good intention to carry out the task if God permits. Have the intention of housing God in your life. God does not dwell in a dirty house. Let us clean our hearts as we clean our areas in preparation for Christmas. The house we shall offer God is a contrite heart, loving heart, caring heart, kind heart etc. God will certainly come into our houses to dwell in them this Christmas if we sincerely intend to offer him our hearts. Thanks and Happy Sunday.