December 6^th 2014.  Second Sunday of Advent

GOSPEL Luke 3:1-6

­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­Translated from a homily by Don Fabio Rosini, broadcast on Vatican Radio

Don Fabio’s reflection follows the Gospel reading ...

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GOSPEL Luke 3:1-6

In the fifteenth year of Tiberius Caesar’s reign, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judaea, Herod tetrarch of Galilee, his brother Philip tetrarch of the lands of Ituraea and Trachonitis, Lysanias tetrach of Abilene, during the pontificate of Annas and Caiaphas the word of God came to John son of Zechariah, in the wilderness. He went through the whole Jordan district proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins, as it is written in the book of the sayings of the prophet Isaiah:

A voice cries in the wilderness:
Prepare a way for the Lord,
make his paths straight.
Every valley will be filled in,
every mountain and hill be laid low,
winding ways will be straightened
and rough roads made smooth.
And all mankind shall see the salvation of God.

The Gospel of the Lord: Praise to you Lord Jesus Christ

Kieran’s summary . . . The first reading for Sunday says that we must be clothed with the garment of the justice of God. Where do we get that garment from? From our own just acts? No! It is something bestowed freely by God upon us! And this is the key to Advent. Advent is about God’s action in our lives, not our own actions. The Gospel lists all the powers that held sway at the time of Jesus. Then it switches to the desert, to the place where humanity has no power. In this place, the word of the Lord comes to John the Baptist who preaches the forgiveness of sins. Forgiveness of sins is something no earthly authority can bestow, only God. God is coming to me this Advent and always. He comes through the events of my life. I think I am doing things for God, seeking him out, but it is God who is seeking me! When we try to interpret the events of our lives, even the negative ones, then we must try to see how God is using that event to come closer to me. In the disasters and problems of life, in the people we have difficulty getting on with, God is trying to get closer to me. The Lord is searching for me in the events of my life, even the events that bewilder me. I must allow him to find me in these events. I must be open to his action. Through all these events he is sculpting me, correcting me, leading me.

In Advent we must be clothed with the garment of the justice of God. Where do we get that garment from? From our own just acts? No! It is something bestowed by God! Advent is about God’s action in our lives, not our own actions.

The first reading invites us to rid ourselves of our garments of mourning and to enter into the feast of joy. It is an unusual kind of joy, however. The prophet Baruch speaks of the mantle of the justice of God as the garment that will be worn at the feast, and the guest will wear the diadem of the glory of the eternal one. Normally, when we are invited to a feast, we try to emphasize our own beauty, our own attributes. But in this feast to which God invites us we are to be clothed with the justice of God, with his glory - not our own. The point is this: Advent is about the coming of the Lord. In our anguish and fear, we have the tendency to be always preoccupied by what we think we need to do. But Advent is all about what God is bringing about in the world.

The Gospel lists all the powers that held sway at the time of Jesus. Then it switches to the desert, to the place where humanity has no power. In this place, the word of the Lord comes to John the Baptist who preaches the forgiveness of sins. Forgiveness of sins is something no earthly power can do, only God.

In the Gospel we hear a list of the powers that be in this world. The Emperor Tiberius, Pontius Pilate, Herod Tetrarch of Galilee and his brother Philip, and even the religious leaders, Annas and Caiaphas. In the midst of all of these rulers, the word of the Lord comes to John in the desert. In the desert there are no kingdoms or worldly interests. It is a place where there are no human achievements. The human being is weak and powerless here. And the prophet who inhabits this place preaches nothing less than baptism of conversion for the forgiveness of sins! The forgiveness of sins requires being oriented to the work of God, because it is something that only God can do. It was one of the essential parts of the liturgy of the Temple. All the acts of purification and rituals were directed towards this work which could only be accomplished in the end by God. John the Baptist cries out: “Prepare the way of the Lord! Make straight his paths!” He is not talking about our paths, but the paths of the Lord. The issue is to cease being fixated by what we are doing and to begin being captivated by the Lord’s action in our lives. It is a radically different way of looking at life.

God is coming to me this Advent and always. He comes through the events of my life. I think I am doing things for God, seeking him, but it is God who is seeking me. In the disasters and problems of this life, in the people we have difficulty getting on with, God is seeking me.

Let us consider this a bit more closely. We are fundamentally ill at ease with our own insufficiency and limitations. We have a profound difficulty in understanding events that happen in our lives when we seek to comprehend them using our own criteria. Advent is about looking at the events of our lives and discerning the way that the Lord seeks to encounter me, seeks me out, by means of these events. Even through events that are dramatic, violent and devastating, the Lord is trying to encounter people. It is a mystery, but the Lord can also use events that derive solely from human sinfulness, events that did not arise from the will of God, and he can still find a way to come to us through those events. What does the Lord wish to do in this encounter? Nothing less that save us. We have the tendency to think that it is our initiative and our action that has overriding importance. It is true that our action has importance, but it is the Lord in the first place who wishes to come to us. We tend to think in horizontal terms, fretting about things from the point of view of this world. We need to be open to the vertical, to the fact that the Lord wants to encounter me and teach me how to love in and through these difficult events. Sometimes it is the defects of those around us that serve to challenge us, to lead us to the light, to help us to grow and deepen our humanity.

The Lord is searching for me in the events of my life, even the events that bewilder me. I must allow him to find me in these events. I must be open to his action. Through all these events he is sculpting me, correcting me, leading me.

The Lord is searching for us in every event. Therefore we must seek to simplify his paths, to “straighten them”, to make the encounter with him more direct. We must allow God to search us out and to make us his through the things that happen to us on a daily basis. Salvation comes from God! The last line in this Gospel passage says: “Every person will see the salvation of our God”. Sometimes we treat our faith as if it were something just to comfort us in times of distress. When we are in a difficult moment, we go to the Lord and he caresses us and puts us back on our feet. It is true that the faith can comfort us, and this is important, but the faith is not something inert. In the same Gospel of Luke, the virgin Mary recites the Magnificat, and here we learn that the mercy of the Lord involves casting people down from their thrones, exalting the humble, filling the hungry with good things and sending the rich away with empty hands. It is the mercy of God that accomplishes all this! The action of God corrects us and makes us grow, it topples us from the ridiculous thrones where we lodge ourselves, thinking that they give us security. Sometimes it is in moments of instability that the action of God is felt. Often, by contrast, the work of God involves forgiving our sins and raising us up in moments of desperation or despair. John the Baptist says that “every valley will be filled in and every mountain laid low”. This is not the work that God asks of us: it is he himself who does it! Our lives are a constant development of being filled in and laid low by the action of God who seeks to encounter us in the process. Advent is not just about preparing for God at Christmas; it is allowing God to encounter us in all the events of our lives. Let us not be content with a banal relationship with God whose parameters are the actions that we do with regard to the Lord; instead, let us allow him to relate to us in every aspect of our lives. God does not will sin. He does not wish people to do wrong to me, but he knows how to bring good from that wrong behaviour. He is capable of making himself present through that wrong because he is omnipotent. So let us allow ourselves to be operated on by God! Let us allow him to examine us, mould us, sculpt us, that he will correct us when we have need of correction, that he will console us when we need consolation. Advent is not just a particular period of the year. God is always, constantly, coming in search of deeper encounter with us.