A message reflecting on the Gospel for the Third Sunday of Advent, December 14, 2025 from Rev. Patrick J. McDevitt, CM, PhD, President & CEO of Saint Luke Institute
During these days of late Advent and the coming Christmas Season, Christ invites us to GO BEYOND, BE DIFFERENT, and FIND HOPE.
Presumptions—those quiet often unexamined assumptions we carry—keep us from encountering truth. Learning is never about presuming; it is about expecting, growing, and being changed. Presumptions trap us in comfort and fear, while change invites us deeper into the mystery of our lives. As the newest Doctor of the Church St. John Henry Newman said, “To live is to change, and to be perfect is to change often.” Far from being an invitation to instability, it is an invitation to the vitality of life.
Faith calls us to risk, to trust, and to act. In this past Sunday’s Gospel, John the Baptist, on King Herod’s death row in prison for his bold faithful actions, risks to send his disciples to Jesus, asking if he is the Messiah. Jesus’ response to them and the crowd: “Trust all that you see and hear in me, and know that if each of you risk, trust, and act as John has done, your life will be fruitful and transformed.”
Pope Benedict XVI said, “Faith is not merely an idea; it is life and it changes us.” Like John, Jesus was faithfully, wildly fearless – awakening us to God’s Reign and summoning us to the fullness of life.
Another saying I’ve heard is “Keep your expectations low and your hopes high.” Life has taught me the opposite: high expectations create high hopes. Jesus says the blind see, people with illness are healed, the dead are raised, and the poor receive Good News! High expectations! High hopes! We are called to set noble expectations that help ourselves and others rise and be transformed.
Repentance, conversion, metanoia – a true change of heart – will invite us to go beyond our limits. The Desert Fathers and Mothers counseled, “Let your thoughts be ever on your change.” Faith expands what we see is possible. Jesus says: “Blessed is the one who finds no stumbling block in me!”
Jesus shakes up or presuppositions and urges us to listen to the prophetic word: To prepare God’s way in our lives by breaking free from routine, presumption, and comfort. He calls us to GO BEYOND, BE DIFFERENT, and FIND HOPE in the One who still invites us to prepare and make ready for His coming – soon now, very soon!