2nd Sunday of Advent 2021 - "Take off your robe of mourning and misery"

 

It was the worst of times….and the worst of times…During the most disastrous time in Israel’s history, the time of the Babylonian exile, lived the author of today’s first reading: the prophet Baruch.  The armies of the Babylonians had swept through Judea, killing many, laying siege to Jerusalem and destroying the city, burning the temple to the ground, and carrying-off the elite of the nation into slavery.  

Think of how horrific this must have been.  The chosen people, living in the heart of the kingdom, David’s city, and watching the temple built by Solomon be destroyed.  The Temple was supposed to be the spiritual center where one day all people of the world would come to worship in harmony.  Jerusalem is sacked, the nation destroyed, the temple burnt to the ground, priests and civic leaders carried away.  Think of something like the United States being conquered, Washington DC being destroyed, the capital and the white house burnt, our government leaders taken into slavery AND our churches demolished and priests and bishops arrested and taken away.  That is the background for the first reading today.  It seemed to the Israelites as if God had abandoned his people.

And what was the prophet Baruch’s message? Standing in the rubble of Jerusalem, the prophet says, don't be sad. “Jerusalem, take off your robe of mourning and misery; and look to the east.”  Why the east?  The east is the direction of the rising sun. 

So Baruch is saying don’t mourn. It looks dark right now.  But you will see God arise and set captives free, establishing justice, restoring the glory of Israel. 

And that theme of hope recurs over and over in the Old Testament: that in life’s darkest moments, when things look bleakest, we must trust that God has not abandoned us, that he will ultimately fulfill his promises to deliver us from evil. 

Just about 50 years after Baruch’s prophecies, in the year 538 BC, the Babylonians fell to the Persians, and the Persian King Cyrus freed the exiles, and allowed the Jews to return to Jerusalem and rebuild the temple.

Now fast forward, five hundred years. It was the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar,

when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod was tetrarch of Galilee, during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas.

Again, another dark time in Israel’s history.  Tiberius Caesar the successor of Caesar Augustus was a ruthless dictator—oppressive, violent, capricious.  Pontius Pilate, a name we know pretty well was Tiberius’ equally ruthless and violent local representative in Judea.  Governor Pilate was only too willing to crucify Jews by the thousands; he raised the Roman insignia in the Temple, which was blasphemous.  Herod, the tetrarch of Galilee, and Philip his brother, were fearsome, hateful, ruthless, collaborators with the Roman Government. 

Annas and Caiaphas the Jewish high priests, as leaders of God’s flock were supposed to be men of righteousness, but they used their religious power for political gain, and instead of conducting the worship of the Temple in righteousness according to God’s commandments, they had allowed corruption to sink into Temple life.

St Luke sets the stage—he calls to mind this corrupt and vicious hierarchy which governed political and religious life in the first century.  And after describing these dark circumstances, Saint Luke tells us that God made his instrument not one of these high and mighty men. God used as his instrument this nobody, John, in the desert.  Not a mighty ruler, but a man eating locusts in the desert.  

And John’s message?  God is about to act again.  To all of you who are oppressed, beaten down, hoping, waiting, tired of the violence, the corruption, and the suffering: 

"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."

A change is coming, a revolution is on its way.  The destruction of the old oppressive powers is at hand.  God is about to act. So, “Prepare, ye, the way of the Lord.”

How are the people to prepare?  John called them to a baptism of water and repentance.  A baptism of water in the river Jordan, calling to mind the passing through the waters of the Red Sea, when God led the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt.  God is going to free you, just as he freed the Israelites from slavery, leading them into a promised land. 

And John called them to repentance. The word he uses for repentance is metanoia, the greek word, that meant to change your mind, change your heart, change your attitude, change your behavior, so that it is in keeping with the God’s commandments. You can’t and won’t be prepared for God to break into your life without repentance.

The world of Tiberius Caesar, the oppression of Pilate, the religious malaise of Annas and Caiaphas had stunted their hopes, and the chosen people had fallen into mediocrity.  And John was saying, get your hearts and minds ready, because God is about to act, the in breaking of the kingdom of God in your midst.  

During Advent we consider how God has already begun such good work in us, bringing us goodness, freedom, and peace, but also how God, as St. Paul said in the Epistle, wants to bring that good work to completion. He wants to strengthen us in virtue, he wants to drive out hopelessness, he wants to conquer addiction, he wants to transform selfishness into Christ-like self-donation. But we have to do our part. “Prepare the way of the Lord” requires some work on our part. 

If you can’t identify some crooked aspects of your life that need to be made straight, look again. If you can’t identify some valleys of selfishness that need to be filled in with generosity, look again. If you can’t identify some rough parts of your personality that need to be smoothed over, look again.  

If God can break into history in the dark time of Caesar, Pilate, Herod, Caiaphas and Annas, he can break into our lives. The Gospel, however, exposes these men to be on the wrong side of history, for they rejected Christ when he came. But that doesn’t mean we have to be.

May we prepare the way for the Lord to come more deeply into our lives, by repenting as John tells us, by renewing our hope in Christ by taking God’s promises to heart, that the good work God has begun in us may be brought to completion, for the glory of God and salvation of souls.

2nd Sunday of Advent 2019 - The Spiritual gifts of the Messiah

700 or so years before the birth of Jesus, Isaiah the prophet taught the people of God to look forward to the coming of the Messiah. Last week on the 1st Sunday of Advent, Isaiah spoke about how the Messiah would usher in a new eternal age of peace.  “They shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks; one nation shall not raise the sword against another, nor shall they train for war again.” Peace, security for your families, these are some of our deepest longings.
Our lives are filled with so much chaos; history is filled with so much violence and bloodshed. One has to constantly be looking over one shoulder, sizing-up our neighbor, asking “is he friend or foe?” Well, Isaiah says that the Messiah will put an end to this cycle of strife.

This week, on the Second Sunday of Advent, Isaiah continues to tell us a bit about the mission of the Messiah, what he will do: he will strike the ruthless with a rod and bring about justice. And the peace that he spoke about last week, will even extend to nature: the wolf will be the guest of the lamb, babies shall play in cobra’s dens.

But, Isaiah doesn’t just speak of what the Messiah will DO, but who he IS, how we will identify him.  “The spirit of the LORD shall rest upon him: a spirit of wisdom and of understanding, a spirit of counsel and of strength, a spirit of knowledge and of fear of the LORD, and his delight shall be the fear of the LORD.”

733 or so years after Isaiah, Jesus of Nazareth stood in his childhood synagogue, and applied that line of Scripture to himself. He said, “the spirit of the Lord is upon me.” Jesus identified himself as the Messiah, the savior, the Christ.

And You might remember how that went. His own townsfolks drove him to the town’s edge to throw him over a cliff. They wanted nothing to do with him. We know people who do the same, don’t we? Catholics who have some familiarity with Jesus, but who, now, for whatever reason, want nothing to do with him. Or, folks outside the Church, who think they know him, but erect barriers so they never really meet the real Jesus. And each of us in a sense, are often hesitant to really allow Him to get too close. He might change us and make demands of us. God forbid! But we are invited, during Advent especially, to get to know Him, and to allow him to bring about the transformation that God wants for us.

When John the Baptist preached “repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” That word John used in the Greek New Testament for repent, as we know, is “metanoia”—metanoia means change your heart, change your mind, change your attitudes. Well, the Hebrew word he probably used was “Teshuva” which means turn and answer, turn toward God and respond to Him.  And that’s really the Advent invitation, isn’t it? To turn to Jesus and respond to Him by changing our hearts and priorities and attitudes to be like His.

So, let us turn and look at the Messiah, particularly those characteristics described by the prophet Isaiah in today's passage, that we might be like Him.

The Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him. The Spirit of wisdom and understanding, counsel and strength, knowledge and fear of the Lord.

How was Jesus’ life filled with wisdom? Well, what is wisdom? Saint Thomas Aquinas called wisdom “the view from the hilltop”.  The wise person sees from the high vantage point, and puts his life in order according to the big picture. His priorities are in order. To be wise is to recognize that our highest priority in this life, certainly, isn’t career or wealth, pleasure or power, but getting our souls to heaven.

Jesus, the Messiah, certainly teaches wisdom in his preaching and by his life. “Seek first the kingdom of God” he says, and he shows us the priority of saving our souls by dying for them on the cross. He died, not that we might be rich and famous in this life, but for our salvation.

Secondly, Isaiah tells us that the Messiah has the gift of knowledge and understanding. Over and over in the Gospels we see Jesus explaining the scriptures, explaining the meaning of scriptures to people. Even as a young boy of twelve he was found teaching in the Jerusalem temple. St. Luke tells us that his audience marveled at his understanding.

Advent is certainly an invitation to grow in knowledge and understanding. How? We should be reading the scriptures daily. We should be studying our faith, our catechism, seeking knowledge of WHAT the Church teaches and understanding of WHY she teaches it. St. Anselm explained, “Fides quarens intellectum” – Faith seeks understanding. It is the nature of faith to seek to understand the faith.

We have a parishioner who nearly every time I see her, she asks a question about the faith. I love that, it shows a healthy faith.

Thirdly, Isaiah says the Messiah will have the gift of counsel and strength. Counsel is the ability to judge actions as good or evil, and strength is the ability, obviously, to carry them out.  In a teaching on the Gifts of the Spirit, Pope Francis said that “Counsel enables us to apply the gifts of knowledge and understanding in the actual circumstances that confront us in our daily life.”

Not only did Jesus talk the talk, he walked the walk. The gift of counsel was evident in His life. He was able to judge the best way to act in any given situation and had the might, the power, the fortitude to go through with it. And he bestows those gifts upon us.

We grow in counsel by studying the moral teachings of Jesus, examining our consciences regularly in light of those moral teachings, and confessing our failures to live up to them.

Sometimes we know what we should do, but fail to muster the fortitude, the inner strength. So we must have recourse to prayer, praying “Lord help me do what is right.” If you are facing a particularly difficult challenge, go to daily mass, receive the Eucharist daily for the moral strength to do what is right.

Lastly, the Messiah will have the fear of the Lord. Fear of the Lord is a good and holy thing. Pope Francis said, “The gift of fear fills us with awe and reverence for God. It makes us dread the thought of displeasing God because of our love for Him. A right-ordered and healthy fear of God is the beginning of wisdom.” Fear of the Lord enables us “to avoid sin and attachment to created things out of reverence and love of God.”

Pope Francis teaches, “Fear of the Lord does not mean being afraid of God: we know well that God is Father, that he loves us and wants our salvation, and he always forgives, always; thus, there is no reason to be scared of him! Fear of the Lord, instead, is the gift of the Holy Spirit through whom we are reminded of how small we are before God and of his love and that our good lies in humble, respectful and trusting self-abandonment into his hands. This is fear of the Lord: abandonment in the goodness of our Father who loves us so much.” And doesn’t Jesus, Messiah teaches us just that, Father, into your hands I abandon my Spirit.

This Advent, metanoia te, teshuvah, turn toward the Lord, learn from him, allow the spiritual gifts that filled his life to fill yours, for the glory of God and salvation of souls.

2nd Sunday of Advent 2018 - Prepare the Way through Sacramental Confession

At my first parish assignment at St. Columbkille in Parma, concluding Mass every Christmas, the choir would break into a full-voiced, exultant rendition of the Halleluiah chorus—a song praising Christ as the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. The well-known Halleluiah chorus is just one movement of George Frideric Handel’s Messiah oratorio—which begins, not with loud jubilation, but rather softly—with single voices, singing verses from the prophet Isaiah. Music lovers and aficionado’s would probably tell you that you can barely begin to really appreciate the Halleluiah chorus, only when you’ve allowed those soft melodies to lead you to that point.

Similarly, with Christmas as a whole. Advent is very subtle and soft season, only with hints of Christmas jubilation. Primarily next week, the third Sunday of Advent, Gaudete Sunday is rather jubilant, but most of Advent is quiet and reflective. In fact, those eight days before Christmas, beginning December 17, are especially solemn and quiet. We call those days late Advent or deep Advent, like the deep of night during which Christ was born.

Advent beckons to us to seek Christ in the quiet, to listen to the voice crying out in the desert, as we heard in the Gospel today. Many of our contemporaries seek to “get in the Christmas spirit” by listening to Christmas music piped over department store speakers, but Christians prepare for Christmas best, not by way of the bombardment of the senses, but with the contemplation of messages nearly drowned out by modern noise—the promise of God’s desire to come to souls who wait in expectant longing.

What was the message of the voice crying out in the solitude and quiet of the wilderness, in the Gospel today? It was a message of repentance, the call to conversion, to seek the Lord’s help in straightening the crooked parts of our life.

St. John the Baptist preached a message of repentance. The Greek word for repentance, you’ve probably heard before is Metanoia. Metanoia involves a change of heart, a change of mind, a willingness to change one’s life, a willingness to hand over to God the coldness, the impatience, the lust, the self-centeredness that always seeks to take root in us.

Jesus wants to live in you and reign in you.  What’s the obstacle to that?  Us, our sin and our selfishness. How do we open the pathways of our life best to Christ? Through the Sacrament, Christ himself has given us. In the Sacrament of Confession we seek that Metanoia, that change, that encounter with Christ that changes us forever.

As you will read in my bulletin column this week, I will be increasing the availability of the Sacrament of Confession for this season and for the indefinite future. Confessions will be available for a whole hour on Saturdays, from 3:30 to 4:30, and also in between the Sunday morning masses. Additionally, our area’s annual communal penance service will be on Tuesday, December 11 at 7pm at St. Mel’s.

If it’s been more than a few months since your last confession, it’s time! Make a good thorough examination of your conscience, an examination of your life in light of the 10 commandments and all the teachings of Christ and the Church. Allow the Holy Spirit to help you identify some of those crooked parts of your life, that parts God desires to convert and transform.

Envy, callousness, pride, all these things threaten God’s life in us—these attitudes drive out the life of God in us, and confession prepares our hearts for God to once again dwell and live and reign. Confession banishes darkness and reignites the light of Christ in our souls dimmed through venial sin or extinguished through mortal sin.

God is so eager to wash us and purify us in the Sacrament.  And Advent is the time the Church eagerly runs toward encounters with God. Our Collect for this 2nd Sunday put it well, asking God to not allow any earthly undertaking to hinder us in setting out in haste to meet God’s Son. What an important prayer, as so many people are running toward Christ but, in all honesty, running away from him.

In the confessional, we receive a comfort that nothing in the world can possibly provide. The comfort, the consolation and the joy of hearing from the priest that our sins are absolved. We cannot absolve ourselves, though many try. But, unabsolved guilt will always eat at us until it is absolved, through the means Christ instituted. So, the sooner we go to confession the better. The fear, perhaps, of confessing an embarrassing sin cannot compare to the relief we receive when that sin is confessed.
To hear those quiet, subtle words, I absolve you from your sins…your sins are forgiven…are probably the most consoling words we can hear this side of eternity. For they are a true sign of God’s love for us and his mercy. I don’t know about you, but I’ve often emerged from confession wanting to sing the Halleluiah chorus myself. The angels are certainly rejoicing, for as the Lord himself taught, there is more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents, than over ninety-nine who do not repent.

We willingly undergo acts of repentance, we seek to make straight the paths of our lives so that not only we can walk in the ways of righteousness, but so Christ, the Righteous One may walk the corridors of our lives. He desires to seek out the lost through us, to challenge the complacent and comfort the afflicted through us. And the absolved soul is eminently more hospitable to Christ than the one who does not think he is in need of confession.

I may be belaboring this point, only because I know the Lord wishes to meet many of you in the confessional this Advent. And I hope you respond to his invitation.

For there is no greater way to prepare our hearts, minds, and souls for Christmas, than by taking seriously the call to Advent conversion, metanoia. that in the words of our second reading today: “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” and the salvation of souls.