The Desert Blooms: Is 35; the Patience of Jas 5 and Jesus’ Answer to John in Mt 11

Caeci vident, claudi ambulant, leprosi mundantur, surdi audiunt, mortui resurgunt, pauperes evangelizantur.
Mt 11:5

The Third Sunday of Advent, Year A, called Gaudete from the antiphon that opens it, brings together three texts centered on the joy that God’s coming brings to those who were waiting. Is 35:1-6a, 10 describes the desert in bloom and the blind, the deaf, and the lame being healed, with the redeemed of the Lord returning to Zion in joy. Jas 5:7-10 exhorts us to the patience of the farmer who awaits the early and the late rain, with a firm heart because the coming of the Lord is near. Mt 11:2-11 presents the question of John the Baptist in prison, “Are you he who is to come?”, and the answer of Jesus: go and tell John what you hear and see. The three texts describe messianic joy as a response to concrete works: the sign that the Messiah has arrived is not an abstract proclamation but the transformation of what was broken.

I. The First Reading: Is 35:1-6a, 10

Isaiah sings of the desert and the parched land that will rejoice, of the wilderness that will exult and blossom like the crocus (Is 35:1). “It shall blossom abundantly and exult with joy and acclamation. The glory of Lebanon shall be given to it, the splendor of Carmel and Sharon” (v. 2). Feeble hearts will be strengthened, faltering knees made firm (v. 3). “Behold, your God comes; divine vengeance comes, the recompense of God comes. He himself will come and save you” (v. 4). And then the signs: the eyes of the blind will be opened, the ears of the deaf unstopped, the lame will leap like a stag, the tongue of the mute will sing for joy (vv. 5-6a). And the return: the redeemed of the Lord will return, they will enter Zion with acclamations, with everlasting joy upon their heads (v. 10). Isaiah is not describing a parallel reality: he is describing the transformation of this reality. The desert does not disappear: it blooms. The blind are not replaced: they see. God’s salvation does not eliminate what was broken: it repairs it from within.

II. The Second Reading: Jas 5:7-10

James exhorts the brethren to patience until the coming of the Lord with the image of the farmer: “The farmer awaits the precious fruit of the earth, being patient until he receives the rain of the first and the last season” (Jas 5:7). Patience is not resignation: it is the confidence of one who sows knowing that there is a law binding the seed to the fruit, that the rain will come because it has always come. “You too, strengthen your hearts, for the coming of the Lord is near” (v. 8). The nearness of the coming is not a calculated date: it is the disposition of one who lives as if the Lord could arrive at any moment. And the warning against mutual complaints: “Do not complain against one another, brethren, so that you may not be judged” (v. 9). The judge is at the door. James proposes the prophets as a model of suffering and of patience (v. 10). Advent is not merely a passive waiting for the future: it is active work in the present, the work of the farmer who cultivates what he has already sown while he awaits what he has not yet seen.

III. Evangelium: Mt 11:2-11

John, in prison, heard of the works of Christ and sent him the question through his disciples: “Are you he who is to come, or should we look for another?” (Mt 11:3). John’s question is not a personal doubt: it is the most important theological question of Advent. Jesus answers with an inventory of works: “Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind see, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead rise, and the poor have the Gospel preached to them” (vv. 4-5). The answer is a composite quotation from Is 35 and Is 61: whoever knows Isaiah recognizes that the works of Jesus are the fulfillment of the messianic prophecies. The final beatitude: “Blessed is he who takes no offense at me” (v. 6). Then Jesus speaks of John to the crowds: they did not go out to see a reed shaken by the wind, they did not go out to see a man in fine clothing, they went out to see a prophet and more than a prophet (vv. 7-9). “No one born of woman is greater than John the Baptist. Yet the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he” (v. 11). John is the greatest of those who wait: but those who receive the kingdom are greater, because what John only announced, they receive.

IV. Mary and the Joy of the Desert That Blooms

Gaudete Sunday invites us to rejoice in the very midst of Advent. Mary is the figure of Advent in whom this joy is manifested with the greatest intensity: the Magnificat begins with “my spirit rejoices in God my Savior” (Lk 1:47), even before the birth, when the pregnancy is still invisible. Is 35 sings of the desert that blooms: in the patristic tradition, Mary is the parched desert of fallen humanity which, preserved from all sin by the grace of God, brought forth the most precious fruit. The Immaculate Conception, celebrated on December 8, a week before Gaudete, is precisely the blossoming of the desert: the creature poorest in herself, “God chose what is nothing to reduce to nothing what is” (1 Cor 1:28), becomes the garden in which the Son of God plants Himself. Jas 5 proposes the patience of the farmer: Mary lived the longest wait of the human Advent. Humanity had awaited the Messiah for centuries. Mary awaited Him for nine months in her womb. And Jesus says that “no one born of woman is greater than John”: the unspoken exception, which tradition has made explicit, is she of whom He was born, the Mother of the Messiah, who not only awaited the kingdom but brought it into the world.