(Homily for the
2nd Sunday of Advent Year A)
The Spirituality of Advent - II
Today
is the second Sunday of Advent, the
message of the readings seems to draw our attention to what should be the
nature and style of our waiting and expectation. Advent is not a sterile
and disengaged expectation, rather it is an active one, for we are called to prepare. In Advent we relive two
kinds of waiting: waiting with Mary for the birth of Jesus, and waiting for
Christ to come again in glory (his second coming). We wait for the birth of
Jesus, the baby wrapped in swaddling clothes in the manger and the coming of
Christ in glory, no longer wrapped in swaddling clothes, but clothed in light.
But as we wait, the word of God today calls our attention to the need to
prepare, to prepare not with our homes and shops adorned with bright and
colourful lights, not by decorating our Christmas trees or by fretting with our
shopping lists, but to change our hearts
and to mend our habits. The liturgy of the Word today makes it possible for
us to listen to two great Advent
preachers: Isaiah and John the Baptist. Isaiah preached the coming of the
Lord from afar. His preaching nourished the expectation of many generations:
“Behold, a virgin will conceive and give birth to a Son”. John the Baptist was
the one who announced the imminent coming of the Lord: “He who is coming…”.
Indeed, we can figure out a link between these two precursors, in the prophecy
of Isaiah which Mathew put in the mouth of John the Baptist: “The voice of one
crying in the wilderness: prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths
straight”. And in the second reading, St. Paul cites Jesus Christ
as an example, who gave himself both to the Jews and to pagans in order to
create unity.
The
first reading from the prophecy of Isaiah (11:1-10)
presents the coming of the Messiah in the image of a shoot that will spring out
from the stump of Jesse, from the dynasty of David. And he further buttressed
that on Him will rest a great divine richness: the Spirit of the Lord. He will
possess the Spirit in six ways: of Wisdom, of understanding, of counsel, of
might, of knowledge and of fear of the Lord (cf. Is. 11:2). He is to be endowed with
the Spirit of Yahweh and with charismatic gifts. His kingdom is announced as a Kingdom of justice, for he will judge
the poor with justice and will take equal decision for the oppressed. Who more
than Christ took preferential option for the poor! His judgement is not based
on appearance or on hearsay, but on righteousness. His, is a kingdom of peace. For therein, humanity experiences a cosmic
and existential peace: the wolf shall be the guest of lamb, and the leopard
shall lie down with the kid etc. This pacific co-existence of ferocious animals
and the weak ones without any victim, is a symbol of the reconciliation amongst
men and the created order, inaugurated by Christ in the world. That is the prophecy of the new world led
by a little Child, a world transformed by and through the Messiah. And as
He transforms the world, He offers us transformation individually. Behold
Christ came to inaugurate a new order and a new rapport between God and man,
and amongst men, a rapport of brotherly help and reciprocal understanding. Jesus is making something new, and as He does
it, He wants us to leave the past (Cf.
Is. 43:19; 2Cor. 5:17; Rev. 21:5, 7). In all, in the spirituality of
Advent, this is a period of celebrating the realization of the divine promises,
a time to prepare in order to celebrate the Messiah through whom and with whom
all this was realized. Can you see the new things He has done?
Similarly, the Gospel (Mt. 3:1-12)
features John the Baptist a prominent figure in the Advent season. It evidences
justice and harmony amongst men, which is as a result of conversion. And the
word conversion was repeated three times in this gospel passage. Conversion
here entails a profound and interior-spiritual change that overhauls and
changes one’s way of living and thinking. John the Baptist was shouting:
“repent for the kingdom of God is near”. The
central figure of the gospel is John the Baptist. At his birth Zechariah
the father of John the Baptist announced his mission in the Benedictus
thus: “And you, little child, you shall be called Prophet of the Most High, for
you will go before the Lord to prepare a way for him, to give his people
knowledge of salvation through the forgiveness of their sins, because of the
faithful love of our God in which the rising Sun has come from on high to visit
us” (Lk. 1:76-78). And to those who
were asking him: who are you? John was responding: “I am the voice of one
crying in the desert” The whole life of
John the Baptist was that of being the voice that announces to his
contemporaries this wonderful message of salvation through the forgiveness of
sins: “Look, there is the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world”
(Jn. 1:29). He presented Jesus in such a manner that the people will begin to
desire and ache for his presence, “the one who comes after me is more
powerful than I, and I am not fit to carry his sandals; he will baptize you
with the Holy Spirit and fire” (v.11),
in his words: “he has to increase and I have to decrease”. Indeed, it is true the voice remains silence after
it must have echoed the Word. The friend of the Bridegroom retires at the
appearance of the Bridegroom.
John
the Baptist realized the prophecy of Isaiah: “A voice of one that cries in the
desert, prepare the way of the Lord, make straight his path”. In reality Isaiah
announces with these words the future liberation of the people of Israel from
slavery in Babylon and the return from exile. Israel has undergone untold
sufferings and injustice, but now the
time has come when God is about to turn their situation around for good. It
is in this context that John’s preaching came and stirred up hope and
enthusiasm, and as such people wanted baptism to be administered to them in
view of the New Kingdom. The preaching of John the Baptist and his invitation
to conversion received two responses:
·
The ordinary
people who confessed their sins, repented and asked for baptism.
·
And the Pharisees
and Sadducees who were just coming for baptism.
What type of response is the Word of God going to
receive from us this day? Are we ready to bear good fruits that befit
repentance? Moreover, John the Baptist talks about two types of Baptism, his
and that of Christ: ►The baptism of John is baptism of repentance (he baptizes
only with water). ►While the baptism of Christ is a baptism of and for new life
(He baptizes with the Holy Spirit and fire).
Interestingly, Mathew and the early Christian
community see in John the Baptist the one who realized those words of Isaiah.
John is the voice that invites all to prepare for the coming of Christ, in
order to welcome his gift of liberation and redemption. He is the Precursor of
the Messiah. Mathew presented him as a man that lives in the desert, in
solitude, he practiced an austere life. Therefore, he in primis, prepared himself for the coming of the Savior, in the
following ways: ● In silence, in prayer
and in the meditation of God’s word. ●In
the exercise of mortification and a more rigorous penitence. By so doing, he
prepared himself as the precursor. Indeed,
every Advent requires a precursor, a herald that prepares the hearts of people,
that redirects the attention of the people, such that the One expected, is
desired and accepted, and his coming will not pass-by unobserved. Jesus still
need precursors, those who announce his coming and presence in the world, those
who make His presence felt between his historical coming and future coming. In
the Gospel passage, John the Baptist helps us to understand how we can be
precursors of the Savior, he says: “Repent, for the Kingdom of heaven is at
hand”. But modern day precursors have to announce not just that the Kingdom of
heaven is at hand, instead that “the Kingdom of heaven is already in our
midst”.
In the
same vein, even today, we need precursors, those who will continue to call the
attention of all to the preparation for the continuous coming of Christ in our
hearts and in our lives, through their words and actions. For us priests and
religious we have more motives to become voices like John the Baptist, because
our vocation, our consecration and our ordination call us to dedicate our lives
completely for the service of the Lord. We are to become precursors of Jesus.
And by extension, we are all called as Christians to be at the fore front in
the preparation for the Savior’s coming. No doubt, to be precursors entails becoming agents of preparation for His coming,
therefore ready and willing to remove all obstacles that can impede His coming
into our lives and societies: iniquities, ignorance, prejudice and
indifference.
Furthermore, as John cries in the wilderness, the basic question we
should be propelled to ask is this: “what shall we do?” (This emanates from the
spirituality of Advent). And this question is exemplified in the Acts of the
Apostles (2:37; Lk. 3:12, 14). This
question presupposes a quest for transformation and conversion. We have to emulate
John the Baptist who prepared for the coming of the Messiah in both words and
deed. That is what we have to do. We need to join our voices together to that
of John the Baptist shouting: “repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand”. In
fact as Jesus would say: “His kingdom is already in your midst” (Lk. 17:20-21). Here, “entos” is the Greek word for “in your
midst”, and it can be translated within you. And the phrase “within you” is a
better translation, with respect to the context. Joining our voices together with that of John the Baptist, we have to
tell our generation that there is Someone in our midst, that we do not know
(cf. Jn. 1:26), One that is in search of us. But in order to take cognizance of His
presence we need to repent, to change our mentality.
In the
second reading (Rm. 15:4-9) St. Paul
prays that by the encouragement of the Scriptures we may be strengthened in
hope. For during the Advent there is an emphasis on the Old Testament as the
book of promise and hope. Furthermore,
he was worried about the tension that existed between Christians (the
weak and the strong), and as such, he recommended charity to all. For this, he
admonished Christians “to think in harmony with one another”, “to welcome one
another, as Christ welcomed you”. Elsewhere, he invites us to have for each
other the same sentiments that where in Christ Jesus (Phil. 2:5), sentiments of love, mercy and pardon. He enjoins us to
welcome each other irrespective of our limitations and defects. St. Paul talks
here in a more concrete terms “welcome each other”. Indeed, the spirituality of Advent calls each one of us to make a
space, to have a place for each other in our hearts.
In
all, the coming of Christ should be for us a life changing and transforming
event. Basically the Good News of Christ
is a Good News of reconciliation of men and God and amongst men themselves,
made possible by the sacrifice of Christ. This season therefore, we are
obliged to take this Good News to all, bearing in mind that words alone cannot
suffice. As a matter of fact, one of the fascinating duties of the disciples of
Christ ought to be: giving to the world
the knowledge or better the certainty of salvation. As disciples of Christ
called therefore to be precursors, should we go around shouting repent? We can
respond in the affirmative thus, that all are called to preach the words of
salvation, but not all with words. And again, before going about preaching and
shouting repent, the Christian in question must ensure that he has been
converted, because before John came out to preach, he lived in silence in the
desert, “He lived in the desert until the day he appeared openly to Israel” (Lk. 1:80). Therefore, before assuming
the role and the state of a preacher and precursor, we need to ensure that we
have passed through the stage of conversion. At the heart of advent is an invitation to be better Christians. At
the same time, John the Baptist gives us a warning thus: “Every tree that does
not bear good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire”. Therefore, like John the Baptist, we need to leave our
deserts in order to announce Christ!
We may
ask ourselves: as Christians where are the fruits of justice and love, of
reciprocal respect and mutual understanding? In the Gospel, John the Baptist
tells the Pharisees openly and also to us, that it is not a mere physical
descendant from Abraham that will save, but a spiritual reborn or rebirth,
followed by good works. Therefore, to us it is not enough that we have been
baptized as members of the Church, we need to produce good fruits of harmony,
peace, love and justice. At the heart of
the Spirituality of Advent, therefore, is a clarion call for a serious
existential revision (what I may call Revision of life or spiritual check-up)
and for spiritual re-start. May the
Lord bless our efforts! Happy Sunday brethren and friends!
(Fr.
Vitus Chigozie, SC)
