2nd. Sunday of Advent (B)
(Isaiah 40:1-5, 9-11; 2nd. Peter 3:8-14; Mark
1:1-8)
John came baptizing in the Jordan
and preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins to those
members of God’s Chosen People who were sufficiently religious and humble to
want to hear him. This was his
message:
One mightier
than I is coming after me. I am not worthy to stoop and loosen the thongs of His
sandals. I have baptized you with water; He will baptize you with the Holy
Spirit.
John the Baptist, the greatest of
the prophets of Israel -- indeed, as Jesus said, the greatest of all those born
of woman -- was sent to immediately precede Jesus and personally introduce Him to His People, and
John fulfilled that commission by proclaiming Jesus as the Messiah, the One who
would baptize with the Holy Spirit. And
that, People of God, is what makes us Christians and Catholics: the fact that we
have believed in and been baptized into Jesus from Whom -- as members of His
Body in the Church -- we have received the gift of His Holy and life-giving
Spirit which has made us adopted children of the Father, aspiring to and hoping
for eternal fulfilment in His heavenly Kingdom.
It is the Holy Spirit within us Who enables us to cry out “Abba”,
“Father” in response to the One God Who not only speaks to us but also with
us, thereby enabling us, even here on earth, to share in some measure the
Heavenly Communion which is the life and love of the Most Holy Trinity: being
loved by the Lord Who died and now lives for us, cherished by the Spirit Who
guides and forms us, and called by and to the Father Who will glorify us. John the Baptist was brief and to the point,
in a few words giving us the essential characteristic of the coming Messiah Whom
he John would point out:
He will
baptize you with the Holy Spirit.
The person of John is no longer with
us, but his words remain for all time as the only preparation whereby we can
fittingly receive the Lord into our lives:
John the
Baptist appeared in the desert proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the
forgiveness of sins.
Jesus Himself, indeed, when later on
as a man He began His public ministry, simply took up John’s call in His own
very first words, as St. Mark tells us (1:14-15) :
After John had
been arrested, Jesus came to Galilee proclaiming the gospel of God: “This is the time of fulfilment. The kingdom
of God is at hand. Repent, and believe in the gospel.”
Now, there are many who regard that
call to repentance proclaimed in Mother Church today as over the top and
excessive, looking for sin, for fault and guilt in all aspects of our lives.
Should not our lives as Catholics and
Christians, they would say, be
characterised rather by manifest joy in the Lord?
Yes, it is possible for certain
people who specialise in being their own spiritual guide to become obsessive in
their introspection as they search for sin to be repented, but such a mere and
unhealthy possibility can in no way justify any general teaching that would
proclaim a sort of truce with sin; for neuroticism is no true fruit of authentic
Catholic teaching or practice.
Again, it is most true that our
lives should bespeak our joy in the Lord, but such witness is not one that can
be ‘stirred-up’ and ‘put on’ in a clap-happy display of emotional
excitement.
For the authentic Christian
understanding and practice of repentance we need to look closely at our readings
today in order to appreciate Mother Church’s teaching in this matter. What
was it that John said? What had Isaiah
proclaimed? What was Peter’s
warning?
John said ‘repent’ first and then --
to Andrew and another of his disciples -- ‘Behold the Lamb of God’ just as Jesus
was passing by. Such is the composite nature of conversion, repentance: first
turn from sin, then turn to the Lord.
Turn from sin, start to correct the
ravages of sin in your life. That is
what we heard from Isaiah in the words:
A voice cries
out: In the desert prepare the way of the LORD!
Make straight in the wasteland a highway for our God! Every valley shall be filled in, every
mountain and hill shall be made low; the rugged land shall be made a plain, the
rough country, a broad valley.
Such indeed is the first requirement
of repentance in our lives, turn away from sin in all sincerity; and, in doing
that, turn to the Lord:
Then the glory
of the LORD shall be revealed, and all mankind shall see it together; for the
mouth of the LORD has spoken.
Were would-be-Christians simply to
give themselves to turning from sin without turning to the Lord -- that is,
without actively acknowledging that the Lord (alone) is good -- that could only
lead to pride, even of devilish proportions.
Were such would-be-Christians, on the other hand, to simply proclaim the
glory of the Lord without a serious endeavour to reject and avoid sin, such
praise would be hypocritical, certainly not what ‘the mouth of the Lord has
spoken’. The prophecy of Isaiah is one,
entire and whole:
In the desert
prepare the way of the Lord …make it straight, level, and plain … then the glory
of the Lord shall be revealed, for the mouth of the Lord has
spoken.
Notice too, People of God, that
Isaiah’s prophecy provides us with a sure way to test the quality of our
repentance, to appreciate how much and what sort of repentance we need: is the
glory of the Lord being revealed
to you? Do you, as you grow older
year by year, see and admire in Jesus more and more of the glory, that is, of
the beauty, the goodness, the truth, and the wisdom, of God? Do you, as the years pass by, become ever
more grateful to the Father for His goodness to you in Jesus: perhaps, even, for
His goodness to all mankind? Do you find
yourself more and more willing to trust Him completely, to trust Him alone? Do you aspire to know, love, and serve Him
with your whole being? If you can say
“Yes” to questions such as these then indeed, you are both sincerely repenting
and truly seeking the face of the Lord; and I can say that confidently, because
the glory of God is, indeed, being gradually revealed to you.
But what if, as the years go by,
when you seriously look at yourself and sincerely question yourself before God,
what if then you recognize that you are thinking less and less of Jesus because
you are increasingly absorbed in worldly interests and aspirations, more and
more preoccupied with cares about people and money and less and less attentive
to God speaking to you in your conscience or touching your heart-strings? Do you feel yourself obliged to respond in
kind for every little benefit you receive from others -- a Christmas card for a
Christmas card, an invitation for an invitation, a gift for a gift -- and yet
never think that you owe a debt of gratitude to God for all the many blessings
He has bestowed on you throughout your life?
All these failings are quite
possible, People of God, where Christian people are no longer living with God,
for God, sufficiently, but always looking at and responding to others in order
to justify, protect, satisfy and advance themselves.
In our first reading from the
prophet Isaiah we heard his striking evocation of Israel’s return from her
Babylonian exile as a triumphal procession of God’s People, freed from the
chains of captivity and having paid for their sins, following the lead of the Lord their God towards
a Jerusalem urged to become a radiant herald of good news. And that good news was that:
The Glory of
the Lord shall be revealed, and all people shall see it
together.
After 500 years that prophecy
approached fulfilment when Jesus, the glorious Son of God made flesh, Himself
entered Jerusalem with humble acclaim shortly before He was delivered over to an
ignominious death on a Roman cross at priestly behest. Then, indeed, on the third day, the Glory of
God was most truly and sublimely revealed in His glorious resurrection: not
visible to the bodily eyes of some few then present in
Jerusalem, but to be seen by all
people together, as the prophet says; to be seen, that is, with eyes of
faith offered equally to all people, of all times, and in all places.
Mother Church, however, now bids us
hear St. Peter speaking as a prophet of the New Testament, and telling
us:
The day of the
Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a mighty
roar and the elements will be dissolved by fire, and the earth and everything
done on it will be found out.
That day will be the final coming
and manifestation of the Lord, a divine and transcendent vision of ultimate
reality, both solemn and glorious, introducing no mere jingoistic national
triumph, but individual judgement and universal consummation. However, Saint Peter adds for those who are
impatient or doubting:
With the Lord
one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years like one day.
And so, no matter what might be the
state we find ourselves in at this moment, advent is the season when we are
urged by Mother Church to aspire to welcome Jesus into our lives anew: that His
truth might enlighten us, His love inspire us, and the Gift of His most Holy
Spirit be our sustenance and guide along His way to the Father. The moment in time is irrelevant to God, His
glory, and our salvation; what matters is that we be found to have the desire to
listen and the humility to learn, the love and the longing for the good He
promises, and finally the patience and fortitude to forget ourselves and to
trust Him for the achieving of it.
Oh, the wisdom of Mother Church who
sets before us today two prophets: Isaiah, so lyrical and Peter so solemn! Yes, how very different, but ultimately how
very complimentary they are for us today. Isaiah was proclaiming comfort to my people in the name of
God for those returning home from exile in Babylonia, following the Lord
journeying with them to dwell once again in a renewed Jerusalem …. Peter was
comforting too, but he was offering comfort to a people suffering persecution
and experiencing uncertainty. For those
hearing Isaiah the nation was about to be re-established, the capital city to be
rebuilt, and the Temple -- the glory of Jerusalem and of the whole nation -- was
to become glorious again with God’s Name dwelling there! For those reading St. Peter’s letter,
however, there was no nation, no capital city, no renowned Temple or Church,
just the wide and thinly spread Christian body, a spiritual unity indeed, but
almost invisible in a hostile and multitudinous world. Both Isaiah and Peter were appealing to faith
in their hearers, but in Isaiah’s case national pride and expectations were also
very strong in the hearts and minds of the people …. whereas for Peter’s message
there was nothing but the faith of confessors and martyrs to welcome and uphold
it … no national pride to identify themselves, or to unite and bolster them
against their enemies.
Nevertheless, Isaiah’s message was
heard by a people unaware of the dangers inherent to their apparent strength,
while Peter’s message was given to a scattered group whose sore-tried faith was
becoming, under much pressure, a firm basis for the nascent Church.
The joyful remembrance of the birth
of Our Lord is not an end in itself.
Christmas joy is a means towards our salvation, it is a providentially
repeated stage on the way: a time of refreshment, renewal, and
re-direction.
At Christmas we are meant to recall
the Almighty God and Lord of Hosts Who became, for love of us, a little Child
destined:
For the fall and rising of many, and for a
sign which will be spoken against;
a Child Whose mother would have to
experience a sword pierce her soul, when
ultimately, despised and rejected of men, He was
crucified on a little hill just outside Jerusalem. And St. Peter reminds us that the memory of
such unheard-of love, promising us atonement and eternal salvation, is for our
unfailing and grateful refreshment as, conducting ourselves in holiness and
devotion, we journey on, eager to be found without spot or blemish
before Him; at peace, and waiting for the coming of the day of the
Lord, when there will be new heavens and a new earth in which
righteousness dwells. Therefore,
such Christmas joy and heavenly expectations must never be used as a pretext
for, soiled by, earthly revelry replete with drunken and/or sordid
excesses.
During this Advent and the Christmas
season therefore -- in the spirit of Isaiah’s original prophecy -- let us indeed
embrace St. Paul’s words (Philippians 4:4-7):
Rejoice in the
Lord always. Again, I will say, rejoice!
Have no anxiety at all, but in everything, by
prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, make your requests known to God. Then the peace of God that surpasses all
understanding will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.
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