2nd. Sunday of Advent (C)
(Baruch 5: 1-9; Philippians 1:4-6, 8-11; Luke 3:1-6)
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Why all these names of men and places? Why
all these precise details about time in this section of St. Luke’s Gospel?
Because, People of God, individuals are most
important to God. Our faith is not based on imagination or legendary
tales, but on public facts that occurred and are recorded in human history.
Jesus Christ is the best attested fact of the past: we have immeasurably more
information about Him than about any other person in ancient history.
But Jesus did not intend to be simply a fact of
past history for all time. He came to offer
salvation to all mankind, not only to those of Jewish faith in Palestine some
2,000 years ago, but to us and to all our brothers and sisters throughout time:
an offer of salvation leading to eternal life in and with Jesus, before the God
and Father of all creation Who shows no favouritism. And therefore, Jesus
is with us Personally today in and through His Holy Catholic Church -- of which
we are (or should be) most gratefully proud to be members -- fulfilling the
promise He made to be with her, to guide and protect her, by His Holy Spirit to
the end of time.
How are we, individually, to become more personally
aware of this saving presence, because, obviously many former Catholics and
many, many, more former Christians seem have lost any meaningful contact with Jesus?
How are we to enter into personal contact and communion with Him, now,
in a world boasting in its secularity and in its disdain for Christian, and
indeed for religious teaching of any sort?
John the Baptist was sent by God to prepare the
Jews to welcome Jesus with understanding and appreciation; and his message, his
preaching, of which we have just heard the introduction from St. Luke’s Gospel reading
for today, still performs that same function …. it tells us how we are to first
enter into contact, and subsequently how to deepen that contact and communion,
with Our Lord. We heard that John:
Went through the whole Jordan district, proclaiming a baptism of
repentance for the forgiveness of sins.
That -- for John sent by God -- is the first
step for us towards awareness and acceptance of God’s offer of salvation: a
recognition of ourselves as sinners in need of God’s salvation; and a
recognition of God, that He is Lord of all, able and willing to save, renew,
and restore for eternal beatitude with Himself, all sinners, according to their
recognition of and response to the One He is sending them.
John went proclaiming: Prepare the way of the Lord, make
straight His paths.
And that, dear People of God, is the supreme
difficulty for our modern world, because modern society likes to think that it
is sufficiently holy to do good things without any acknowledgement of Jesus, or
help from His Spirit. And that is why
John’s continuing words are supremely relevant:
Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be
made low.
The winding roads shall be made straight, and the rough ways made smooth, and
all flesh shall see the salvation of God.
That is, every
aspect of religious indifference, every vision of pseudo-holiness, every manifestation
of, and all satisfaction with, human pride in our society and world, must be
brought to see the salvation of God.
The original inspiration of Isaiah made a great
impression on God’s Chosen People because we heard how the prophet Baruch --
long before John the Baptist quoted by St. Luke -- made use of Isaiah’s words in
that beautiful prophecy we heard in our first reading:
Jerusalem, take off your robe of mourning, for wrapped in the
mantle of justice from God, (He) will show all the earth your splendour.
Look and see your children gathered from the east and the west at the word of
the Holy One. For God has commanded that
every lofty mountain be made low, and that the valleys be filled to make level
ground, that Israel may advance securely in the glory of God.
What Isaiah had originally foretold as
preparations to be made for the coming of Israel’s Messiah, Baruch used to
envision God bringing His people back from their Babylonian exile home to
Jerusalem; before ultimately, John the Baptist used them to speak of the imminent
fulfilment of Isaiah’s original prophecy, and the way being prepared for the
coming of Jesus the Messiah.
Baruch thus showed that Isaiah’s prophecy was powerful enough to bear several interpretations or adaptations,
and we today can use it to understand our own calling before God as disciples
of Jesus: called to prepare – by our own conversion and renewal in the
power and inspiration of the Holy Spirit of Jesus – the way for Jesus’ final
coming at the end of time. Jesus Himself originated the Kingdom of God on
earth by His life, death, and resurrection, before bequeathing His own most
Holy Spirit to His disciples in Mother Church that she might continue His work
here on earth until the time appointed for its culmination and fulfilment in
Jesus’ final coming in glory.
Until that ultimate manifestation of the glory
of God and the obliteration of sin, however, the devil has been and is still
able to worm his way into the hearts and minds of many fragile disciples of
Jesus to mar, or even totally disfigure, their lives, work, and aspirations.
In that way those wonderful words of Baruch’s prophecy have often been falsely portrayed
as fulfilled:
Jerusalem, wrapped in the mantle of justice from God, He will show
all the earth your splendour: you will be named by God forever the glory of
God’s worship.
How easy, dear People of God, for those fragile
in faith to betray words such as ‘splendour’ and ‘glory’ by pomp and arrogant
display; how easy to imitate ‘wrapped in the cloak of justice from God’ with an
outward show of humble discipleship cloaking hypocrisy and lustful pride!
So human, to want glory for God along with power for oneself! So
devilish, to pretend devotion and commitment while seeking reputation,
pleasure, and profit!
It is easy to recall figures past and present --
popes, bishops, clerics and religious -- who have been prominent in such
betrayals and transgressions. But we must never forget, however, those
innumerable nominal Christians past and present who, most sadly, lived and are
still living their lives largely forgetful of the commandments of God and the
teaching of Jesus: abusing Jesus in the sacraments of Mother Church out of
human respect, rarely if ever bearing witness to the faith they publicly still profess
as so-called Christians, with their hearts and minds fixed firmly on the things
of earth.
All of us, all like us, are weak in one
way or another; so weak, that though we may and should regret, even hate, the
ignorance, betrayals, cowardice and corruption that have gone before and are
still ripe and rampant around and among us, nevertheless we can never despise or
denigrate those persons whose weakness has led them to such faults, for
we share their weaknesses if not – thanks to God – their faults and
failings, and we should all be most attentive and grateful to St. Paul
for his teaching in our second reading:
This is my prayer: that your love may increase ever more and more
in knowledge and every kind of perception, to discern what is of value, so that
you may be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of
righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ for the glory and praise of God.
Jesus is at the right hand of the Father in
heaven, never forgetful of us, always interceding for us in all our needs; and
we, as His disciples, are called to continue to proclaim His Gospel for the
salvation of mankind, in His Name and by the power of His Spirit. We
cannot do this work unless we allow His Spirit to expand and extend, enlighten
and inflame, our minds and hearts, so that Jesus may be presented and offered
to all those yet to come in a way that will help them both recognize Him and,
embracing His truth, respond to, and find joy in, His love:
May your love increase ever more and more in knowledge and every
kind of perception, to discern what is of value, so that you may be pure and
blameless for the day of Christ.
People of God, thanks to the Spirit Jesus has
bestowed on her, Holy Mass in Mother Church is -- as the prophet Baruch
foretold -- the glory of God’s worship; and Mother Church herself is, as
St. Paul declared her to be:
Filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus
Christ for the glory and praise of God.
Ultimately, the Spirit will make the glory of
Mother Church’s worship perfectly manifest to the whole world, as a faithful
reflection of the heavenly liturgy celebrating her God and Saviour. Let
us, therefore, pray that our lives may indeed reflect something of the beauty
of her inheritance by our knowledge of her teaching and our appreciation and
proclamation of her values.
Much good is being done in our irreligious,
non-Christian, and increasingly God-denying world of today, People of God, but
it is being done in the name of enlightened humanity, freed from the shackles
of religious oppression! And all such self-styled benefactors of humanity
will not, in any way, accept what they regard as the odious Christian doctrine
of mankind’s native sinfulness and weakness; nor will they consequently
entertain any idea of -- let alone obey and worship -- a Personal God Who wills
to raise mankind up to an eternal and beatifying personal relationship of love
with Himself, in Jesus – God made Man for men -- by the Holy Spirit. And
so, despite human good being intended, the root of all evil, human pride is
more deeply embedded than ever in the minds and hearts of many of our
contemporaries, while those other curses of humankind, the desire for money, the
love of power, and the lusts of the flesh are -- in closest accordance with our
modern tastes – openly flourishing in glaring vulgarity, along with other,
rarely acknowledged, even greater evils and betrayals of the dignity of man, secretly
indulged in in our society.
God, the very idea of God, demands reverence,
obedience, and supreme love; and therefore, there can be no God where human
pride and self-love rule. Dear People of God, such is our modern dilemma,
and we should therefore, throughout this Advent season, put all our trust in,
and all our prayers along with, those words of Our Blessed Lord Himself when
coming into our world (Hebrews 10:7):
Behold, I come to do Your
will, O God!
Words which He solemnly recommended to us in the
one prayer He bequeathed us in response to His disciples’ explicit request:
Our Father, Who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name; Thy kingdom
come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
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