Homily: Tuesday of the 1st Week of Advent - God is Salvation

Throughout Advent, as we await and prepare for the coming of the Savior, so many of our scripture readings are taken from the prophet Isaiah.

Isaiah lived about 700 years before the birth of Jesus,  in a very troubling time, a very dark time for God’s people.  God’s people abandoned many of God’s commandments God, they were even worshipping false Gods.  Because of their wickedness, they became vulnerable to their enemies.  An enemy army marched into their homeland, destroyed the city, destroyed their temple, and took the men, women, and children from their homeland and carried them to a foreign city.

So God sent Isaiah the prophet to tell the people to have hope, that God will deliver you from your enemies, that he bring you back to your homeland, restore your temple.  Isaiah then told the people, that God will send them a Messiah, who will deliver them from all of their enemies, and make Jerusalem the most important city in the world, he will heal the wounds of sin, and division, and will usher in a kingdom of peace that will last forever.
Isaiah’s name in Hebrew literally means “God is salvation”.  That’s the bottom line of Isaiah’s prophecies—God is salvation.

Near the beginning of the Advent season, we celebrate every year the memorial of the great Jesuit missionary, St. Francis Xavier devoted his life to bringing God’s salvation, the Gospel of Jesus Christ, to the far corners of the earth.  In the course of his 10 years of missionary work, he traveled to India, the Philippines, Japan, baptized over eighty thousand people.

What a wonderful saint for Advent, reminding us that preparing ourselves for the coming of Christ also involves bringing Christ’s salvation to others.

During Advent we turn to God who promises to save us, bringing those parts of our personalities and attitudes and habits to him which are in need of salvation—that he might bring about an end to the reign of sin in our hearts and in our world—and end to destruction and ruin and hatred and oppression and violence.
Then having received the salve of salvation may we bring that salvation to all those we meet for the glory of God and salvation of souls.