God always does something new: Homily for Thursday, December 18, 2025

See, I am doing something new. Today’s reading from Isaiah reminds us that our relationship with Jesus is not static. It is dynamic. Jesus does not rest on his laurels. He always is active pouring out grace so that we have the invitation to become who it is we were meant to be. Readings for Today.

God always does something new

God says, “See, I am doing something new.” In a way, God is always doing something new, helping us to see in our lives where it is that we are called to become more like Him, acting like Him, believing in Him, and sharing the attitudes and the ways in which He sees the world.

And Isaiah underscores this newness of God in the first reading when he discusses the fact that what will happen is not simply a remembrance of the Israelites going into the land of Egypt. That had been such a common refrain and such a common identity for the people of faith. The Lord, who brought the children of Israel out of the land of Egypt. It was a miraculous event. It was something really outstanding and tremendous.

God longs to do new things. But what Isaiah reminds us is that oftentimes the new things that God longs to do, we make too small. We want to cling to little things about God. Or we cling to simply having cliches about God. We know that God loves us. We know that God is good. But do we really believe that God desires to do new things in our lives?

To be sure, the novices have had a recent experience of that because they’re here. Their lives are changed. Some for the better perhaps and some that have been challenges, but nonetheless they are doing something new because of the activity of God in their lives. But that’s not something that just is reserved to novices. It is something for all of us.

The birth of Jesus Christ coming into our world, which we are prepared to celebrate, changed everything. It reminded us and challenged us to know that we needed not to be stuck in our sinfulness. We needed not to be in a rut about our thoughts about God. That what awaited us was more than we could possibly have imagined was even possible. That our wildest dreams were not wild enough.

And from the very beginning of the actual incarnation of Jesus, we see the necessary hand of God because this is simply too big. Who could blame Joseph for wanting to divorce Mary quietly? He hadn’t had relations with her and yet she was pregnant. Using reason alone? Well, that means she had to have cheated on him because that’s the way that birth happens. It follows on sexual intercourse.

But the Lord has his hand in Joseph, helping Joseph to stretch what is possible with God. Just as the angel helped Mary to stretch what was possible for her, the angel even says, “With God all things are possible.” But it’s hard for us to believe that, really.

We look at around at our broken world and it’s hard to believe that God is active in the world, at least sometimes. We see terrible things that people are doing to each other. Our planet is filled with the scourge of war in places too numerous to count. There are people in our communities who are living in fear, not knowing what their future holds, not knowing whether they will be able to live in safety, not knowing where their next meal will come from, not knowing what kind of job they might be able to get.

The other day I read a very interesting statistic about homelessness, which challenged my understanding, not in a big way, but in some way. It comes from the federal government and their statistics on the homeless. Forty to sixty percent of the homeless have a job. They just can’t afford a place to live or even when they can, there’s no place to live that’s available.

It can be hard in those moments to believe that God is indeed doing something new and wonderful and fantastic, but that’s where faith comes in. For we are not people of reason alone. We are people of reason and faith. We are called to use both what Pope John Paul II referred to as two wings to recognize where God is active in our lives. God is with you and God is with me. Pay special attention these days to the new things that God longs to do in you.

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