2nd.
Sunday of Advent (C)
(Baruch 5: 1-9; Philippians 1:4-6, 8-11; Luke 3:1-6)
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 in 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 for all time a fact of past history; He came to bring
mankind the offer of salvation leading to eternal life. He came to offer it not only to men and women
of Jewish faith in Palestine come 2,000 years ago, but to us and to our
brothers and sisters throughout time, for God shows no favouritism. And Jesus is Personally with us today in and
through His Holy Catholic Church -- of which we are (or should be) most gratefully
proud to be members -- thereby fulfilling the promise He made to be with her,
to guide and protect her, by His Holy Spirit to the end of time.
Jesus,
then, is still with us -- among us and in us individually at this very instant
-- in His Church; but how are we personally to become more aware of this? How are we to enter into personal contact and
communion with Him?
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 reading for today, still performs that same
function today …. 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 men towards awareness and acceptance of
God’s offer of salvation: a recognition of themselves as sinners in need of God’s
salvation; and a recognition of God, that He is Lord of all and that He is 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
throughout the whole region of the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance
for the forgiveness of sins, as it is written in the book of the prophet
Isaiah: Prepare the way of the Lord,
make straight His paths. 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.
The
original inspiration of Isaiah (underlined) 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 -- had made
use of them in that beautiful prophecy we heard in our first reading:
Jerusalem,
God will show all the earth your splendour: you will be named by God forever
the glory of God’s worship. Look and see
your children gathered from the east and the west at the word of the Holy One …
God will bring them back to you borne aloft in glory as on royal thrones. For God has commanded that every lofty
mountain be made low, and that the age-old depths and gorges be filled to level
ground, that Israel may advance secure in the glory of God.
What
Isaiah had originally foretold as preparations to be made for the coming of the
Messiah, Baruch used to envision the Messiah leading His people on their way
back home to Jerusalem; finally, John the Baptist and St. Luke again spoke, as
did Isaiah, of the way being prepared for the coming of Jesus the Messiah.
Baruch
showed that Isaiah’s original prophecy is 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
under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit of Jesus – the way for Jesus’ final
coming. 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
they 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 God and obliteration of sin, however, the devil
is still able to worm his way into the hearts and lives of many so-called
disciples of Jesus to mar, or even totally disfigure, their lives, work, and
aspirations. In that way those other
wonderful words of Baruch’s prophecy have often been falsely seen as fulfilled:
Jerusalem,
wrapped in the cloak of justice from God, God will show all the earth your
splendour: you will be named by God forever the glory of God’s worship.
How easy
to betray words such as ‘splendour’ and ‘glory’ by lascivious 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. We must never forget, however, the
innumerable and unknown nominal Christians like ourselves who, most sadly,
lived their lives 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 professed; so-called
Christians, but with their hearts and minds fixed exclusively 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 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 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, Mother Church is,
according to the prophet Baruch, the
glory of God’s worship; and St. Paul, as you heard, 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 love of money
and lusts of the flesh are, in closest accordance with our modern tastes,
flourishing in glaring vulgarity; and though -- thanks to vague memories of Christian
attitudes – they may not always be publicly approved, nevertheless they cannot
be acknowledged and decried as great evils.
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 since human wit is rarely wisdom
and human virtue is rarely dependable, we should preferably throughout this
Advent season put all our trust in, and all our prayers behind, those words of
Our Blessed Lord Himself when coming into our world:
Behold, I come to do Your will, O God! (Hebrews 10:7);
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.
