Homily for the Second Sunday of Advent
Scriptures for today's Mass
Audio
If St. Luke were writing today instead of some 2,000 year ago,
he might have begun this way:
In the
second year of the presidency of Donald Trump;
when John
Roberts was chief justice of the Supreme Court;
when Charlie
Baker was the governor of Massachusetts;
during the
pontificate of Pope Francis;
when Sean
O’Malley was Archbishop of Boston;
and Austin
Fleming was still the Catholic pastor in Concord:
the Word of
God came to some guy named John,
an
unemployed televangelist,
who was
often found preaching
on Boston
Common, near Park Street Station.
• And if indeed that were the case,
I suspect that most of us, myself included,
would have dismissed John
as a homeless man in need of social services,
someone whose message was far too simplistic and
extremist
to be deserving of any thinking person’s
attention.
• It’s often a revealing and instructive effort
to try to see ourselves in the scriptures
and wonder how we might have reacted and responded
had we been there.
• Of course, 2000 years ago, John the Baptist did have some followers:
people who believed in his message;
who acknowledged their sins and asked to be
forgiven;
who were truly looking for and waiting for Jesus
to come.
• But they would have been a minority and my
educated guess is
that most of us would have been in the majority
who paid John’s message little attention,
going about our daily lives, business as usual.
•John was a prophet and prophets are often treated and dismissed
in just this fashion.
Why is that so?
Why don’t we pay attention to prophets?
What about their message fails to engage us
- or even turns us away?
Well, let’s look at John’s message.
• He came preaching “a baptism of repentance
for the forgiveness of sins.”
So, at the heart of John’s message is a call for
us who hear him
to take some serious personal inventory and ‘fess
up:
that our lives aren’t perfect, that we fail - even
often;
that we often lack the integrity we’d like to
think we have:
that our success rate in choosing and doing
what’s right, just, fair, wise, generous and
loving
is in reality, sadly, often much lower
than what we imagine or hope it to be.
• Who wants to listen to this?
Who wants to hear what the prophet has to say?
Who wants to do what the prophet summons us do to?
Who wants to follow where the prophet is clearly
leading us?
• It’s no wonder, then,
that the prophet often sounds like someone
“crying out
in the desert” or preaching on Boston Common,
where the throngs rush by,
hurrying on to more important business.
• The rest of John’s prophetic message is equally
discomforting.
“Prepare the
way of the Lord!”
In other words:
Make more
room for God in our lives!
Do some
interior house cleaning,
get rid of
the junk cluttering your mind and heart
and make more
room for God.
Take a long,
hard look and see
all the
things in your lives that lead you closer to God
and all the
things in your lives
that
distance you from God, that keep you away from God,
that come
between you and God,
the things
that don’t at all enhance but instead,
definitely inhibit
your relationship with God.
• To whatever extent the prophet calls us out
and catches us up short;
- if the prophet’s word shines a light
on our crooked, short cut ways
that need to be straightened and strengthened;
- in whatever ways the prophet’s message exposes
the gaps,
the potholes, the veritable valleys of infidelity
that need to be filled in and leveled;
- in whatever ways the prophet calls us to make
smooth,
to buff away the rough edges on our lives:
- to these extents might we find ourselves
resisting,
even rejecting the prophet’s message.
• Well!
This isn’t a very Christmassy message at all, is it!
That’s because before Christmas, there comes
Advent,
before the feast, come the preparations,
before Jesus comes John, before mercy comes
repentance.
• And it would serve us all well to heed the
prophet’s words
especially because we so easily run the risk of
being duped.
We run the risk of being duped into believing:
that Advent is about decorating our houses;
that Christmas is about buying and giving,
]receiving and returning gifts we don’t really
need;
and that once this harried, hurried season is
over,
we can return to business as usual,
as if a prophet never spoke to us,
as if God’s word never became flesh,
as if the nativity of Jesus was just one more
birthday
to cross off on the calendar of our lives.
• Still not very Chrismassy is it?
Well, when you strip away all the tinsel and
glitter,
all the wrapping paper, ribbons and bows,
all the decorations and the boughs of holly
fa-la-la-la-la,
when you look underneath and behind all of that
you find that Christmas is mostly about us being
redeemed,
it’s about our being saved
from precisely those very things about us
we wouldn’t want others to find under the tree
on Christmas morning.
• I know - it’s still doesn’t sound like a
Christmas message!
Let’s try this, then.
Advent prepares us for Christmas,
for the coming of the who will judge us,
but he comes as a newborn infant,
inviting us to cradle his merciful love in our
arms;
he comes as the Prince of Peace,
inviting us to be reconciled with God and with one
another;
he comes as One like us
so that we might recognize in him divine love
seeking to find a home in our hearts;
he comes with tidings of great joy
because his only desire is for us all to be one
in a peace that has no end.
• In this crazy world of ours,
Advent and Christmas and the Jesus they promise
and bring
are our only hope.
In the midst of terrorism, war, mistrust and
enmity,
Advent and Christmas and the Jesus they promise
and bring
stand as our only answer to humanity’s fallen
nature.
In the nooks and crannies of our own hearts,
amidst the broken pieces of relationships we’ve
shattered,
Advent and Christmas and the Jesus they promise
and bring
are the only path to our healing,
our wholeness and our integrity.
In the aching of our deepest disappointments,
longings and losses,
the Jesus of Advent and Christmas
are the only path to our consolation, our
serenity,
our fulfillment and our peace.
The Lord who comes to judge us, comes as an
infant,
inviting us to hold him close.
The Lord who brings us mercy through the sacrifice
of the Cross,
invites us to his table where he shares himself
again and again
in the Bread and Cup of the Eucharist.
May the season of Advent and the feast of
Christmas
and the Jesus they promise and bring us
open our hearts to prepare the way for him to come
and to welcome him with open arms when he arrives.
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