Homily For 2nd Sunday of Advent, Year C

SECOND SUNDAY OF ADVENT HOMILY YEAR C

Bar 5:1-9 Phi 1:3-6, 8-11 Lk 3:1-6

Getting Ready: Removing Obstacles to Complete Joy

Coming Events Cast Their Shadows; Prepare the Way of the Lord;

We Are Filled with Joy; Optimism.

1st Reading – Baruch 5:1-9

¹ Put off, O Jerusalem, the garment of your mourning, and affliction: and put on the beauty, and honour of that everlasting glory which you have from God.

² God will clothe you with the double garment of justice, and will set a crown on your head of everlasting honour.

³ For God will show his brightness in you, to everyone under heaven.

⁴ For your name shall be named to you by God forever: the peace of justice, and honour of piety.

⁵ Arise, O Jerusalem, and stand on high: and look about towards the east, and behold your children gathered together from the rising to the setting sun, by the word of the Holy One rejoicing in the remembrance of God.

⁶ For they went out from you on foot, led by the enemies: but the Lord will bring them to you exalted with honour as children of the kingdom.

⁷ For God has appointed to bring down every high mountain, and the everlasting rocks, and to fill up the valleys to make them even with the ground: that Israel may walk diligently to the honour of God.

⁸ Moreover the woods, and every sweet-smelling tree have overshadowed Israel by the commandment of God.

⁹ For God will bring Israel with joy in the light of his majesty, with mercy, and justice, that comes from him.

Responsorial Psalm – Psalms 126:1-2, 2-3, 4-5, 6

R. (3) The Lord has done great things for us; we are filled with joy.

¹ When the Lord brought back the captivity of Zion,
we became like men comforted.
^2AB Then was our mouth filled with gladness;
and our tongue with joy.
R. The Lord has done great things for us; we are filled with joy.

^2BC Then shall they say among the Gentiles:
The Lord hath done great things for them.
³ The Lord hath done great things for us:
we are become joyful.
R. The Lord has done great things for us; we are filled with joy.

⁴ Restore our fortunes, O LORD,
like the torrents in the southern desert.
⁵ They that sow in tears shall reap in joy.
R. The Lord has done great things for us; we are filled with joy.

⁶ Although they go forth weeping,
carrying the seed to be sown,
But coming they shall come with joyfulness,
carrying their sheaves.
R. The Lord has done great things for us; we are filled with joy.

2nd Reading – Philippians 1:4-6, 8-11

Brothers and sisters:
⁴ Always in all my prayers making supplication for you all, with joy;

⁵ For your communication in the gospel of Christ from the first day until now.

⁶ Being confident of this very thing, that he, who has begun a good work in you, will perfect it unto the day of Christ Jesus.

⁸ For God is my witness, how I long after you all in the bowels of Jesus Christ.

⁹ And this I pray, that your charity may more and more abound in knowledge, and in all understanding:

¹⁰ That you may approve the better things, that you may be sincere and without offence unto the day of Christ,

¹¹ Filled with the fruit of justice, through Jesus Christ, unto the glory and praise of God.

Alleluia – Luke 3:4, 6

R. Alleluia, alleluia.
⁴ Prepare the way of the Lord, make straight his paths:
⁶ all flesh shall see the salvation of God.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.

Gospel – Luke 3:1-6

¹ Now in the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, Pontius Pilate being governor of Judea, and Herod being tetrarch of Galilee, and Philip his brother tetrarch of Iturea, and the country of Trachonitis, and Lysanias tetrarch of Abilene;

² Under the high priests Annas and Caiaphas; the word of the Lord was made unto John, the son of Zechariah, in the desert.

³ And he came into all the country about the Jordan, preaching the baptism of penance for the remission of sins;

⁴ as it is written in the book of the words of the prophet Isaiah: A voice of one crying out in the desert: “Prepare the way of the Lord, make straight his paths.

⁵ Every valley shall be filled; and every mountain and hill shall be brought low; and the crooked shall be made straight; and the rough ways plain;

⁶ And all flesh shall see the salvation of God.”

Homily

Attempts to make sense of life are universal. A famous poet (TS. Eliot) expressed the wish to have carved on his gravestone about life: “I’ve had the experience, but I’ve missed the meaning.” Viktor Frank], an Austrian Jewish psychiatrist who was thrown into the concentration camp of Auschwitz during World War II, addressed his fellow prisoners as they were lying motionless in despair-filled silence with only an occasional sigh in the darkness of their cell.

He told them that whoever is still alive has reason for hope; that whatever they were going through could still be an asset to them in the future; that the meaning of human life includes privation, suffering, and dying; that someone was looking down on each of them with love — friend, wife, somebody else alive or dead, or God—and wouldn’t want to be disappointed. They should courageously integrate their life into a worldview that has a meaning beyond immediate self—grasping, and know how to die.

Does your acquaintance with life find this optimism and hope remote? Does your experience make you dwell upon the shadow side of life, the many ways in which we suffer, fail, lose heart, or feel that nothing’s worthwhile? Are you as unimaginatively pessimistic as the old lady who was taken to see the beautiful ballet “Swan Lake”? Later, when asked how she liked the story, she said to her friend: “He fell in love with a duck. So what good could come of it?”

Today’s liturgy constitutes a vision of optimism and hope that can sing of the Lord’s wonders and recognize His providence at work in everything that happens Today’s portion of the Book of Baruch was written by an anonymous author around 200 B.C., probably at Alexandria for the Jews living there who had a problem keeping their faith: The Temple was far away, they were living in a culture which was completely opposed to the heritage of Judaism, and some were finding local prosperity very attractive, to the detriment of their faith. Significantly telling the Jews to “look to the east,” today’s passage personifies Jerusalem as a mother about to receive back her exiled children.

In a broader sense, the passage urges all who are struggling with faith in an alien culture to stand up, to have confidence, to be strong. The mood of the passage is full of celebration. Inasmuch as it directs our attention toward how expectation and anticipation of the Messiah find fulfilment in the birth of the child in Bethlehem, it’s good Advent reading. Baruch’s image of flattening the high mountains and filling out the valleys was frequent in First Testament times. It derived from the custom of having a herald precede a king when the king was going on a journey, to forewarn the inhabitants of his arrival so that they could repair their ill—kept roads.

St Luke begins his narrative of Jesus’ public ministry with John the Baptist, who was straightening out the crooked paths of human hearts and levelling the valleys and hills of people’s selfishness to prepare them for Jesus. The Baptist was also trying to straighten out the calf—paths of the human mind “—— those paths into which human minds, like some modern roads, continue to follow primitive trails made by calves for their own reasons, but which reasons are no longer valid for people. John’s personality, conviction, and enthusiasm for his message caused people to overlook his odd dress and come to him.

Luke provides a roll—call of who held power at the time. Five of his seven historical figures are secular, two religious, Among the secular figures, all of the individuals mentioned were corrupt, cruel, lecherous, barbaric, and depraved, and provide a great contrast for the righteousess of John the Baptist’s message.

The religious leadership links the story of salvation history to events in contemporary Palestinian and world history. Luke reserves the place of honour for the high priest. Annas had occupied that post from A.D. 6 to 15, when he was deposed by the Romans. For three years he was succeeded by various members of his family and then, from A.D. 18 to 36, by his son-in-law, Caiaphas. Though Caiaphas was the actual high priest, it was to the more powerful and influential Annas that everyone, including Caiaphas, paid honour.

From this background of intrigue and power emerged, as if from a polluted fog, the solitary figure of John the Baptist, with a message of optimism. He preached in the desert. The ancient Israelites often romanticized the desert: There they wandered as a rebellious people and in later centuries came to idealize the desert as being the time and place , when they were closest to the Lord. John’s prayer to Jesus Was, in the words of St Richard of Chichester adopted by “Jesus Christ, Superstar”, “to see you more clearly, to love you more dearly, to follow you more nearly”. That invitation was depicted in a painting pone by the artist Holman Hunt in 1854 entitled “The Light of the World”. It portrays the Christ, crowned with thorns, carrying a lantern, knocking at a closed door. When the artist’s friends pointed out that he had put no handle on the door, he replied, “We must ourselves open the door to the light; the handle is on the inside.”

Luke associates the preaching of John with a call from God (v. 2), thereby identifying him with the prophets whose ministries began with similar calls. John preached repentance. Repentance signifies not regret for the past or the performance of “penance”, but rather a new outlook on life in keeping with the will of God. This was to be a heightening of the Jews’ response to deliverance from captivity: an attitude of gladness, joy, laughter, song, and — above all — grateful recognition of the God responsible for effecting their deliverance. In the words of today’s Responsorial Psalm, “The Lord has done great things for us; we are filled with joy.”

To perform his mission well, John went about the entire region of the Jordan. This makes sense. Since John wished to encounter, sermonize, and baptize people, he would naturally have sought an audience among the people traVelling the main trade routes. The roads leading from Jerusalem, Bethel, and Bethlehem met in that area before continuing into ‘Perea on the eastern shore.

All of that was the attitude of St Paul when he wrote one of his loveliest letters, the letter to the Philippians, “The Epistle of Joy”. Although Paul was in prison while writing this letter, he was completely taken up with the optimism of the day of Christ Jesus (v. 6). The Son of God had become a human being, true God and true man (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 456-470), and will come again. That will be a glorious day that will mean the general resurrection and unending happiness for all who are faithful to Jesus. With that before him, Paul underscored his concern for ethical growth, reminding us all to discern what is of value (v. 10) in life. He was not unlike the British writer GK. Chesterton, for whom the possibility of enjoying anything at all must be based on a kind of humility and wonder that takes nothing for granted, but lives in a state of continual surprise. That’s like the best of Christmases.

Paul in Philippians shows a great ability to let go and surrender, without becoming passive: With prison chains hanging from his wrists, he writes of great joy and love. This kind of surrender involves a growth in freedom — not the freedom to be whoever we want, but the ability freely to become who God is calling us to be; not the freedom to do whatever we want, but the freedom to love others, in ever ‘widening circles, as we’ve been loved.

Some people look back to the “good old days” for better opportunities for hope. But what was life really like in the past? For most of human history, the worker was considered a cross between a rodent and a beast of burden. In the “golden age” of the British Queen Elizabeth I, flowering around 1600, human conduct was a brutish, nasty spectacle. When Shakespeare wrote and Drake sailed, every man carried a lethal weapon and went about prepared to kill or be killed. Nobles sported three-foot swords, the lesser gentry 12-inch daggers or ponderous clubs. Cut-throats roamed through London, plundering and killing with impunity.

Care of the insane, the crippled, and the blind was unknown. Lunatics were chained in dungeons or exposed in cages for public View; sometimes they were thrown into a pit of snakes “to bring them back to their senses”. Sadism disfigured the games of the day; unless a sport was cruel, spectators were bored. At local fairs men fought each other with heavy clubs, the combat ending when one was beaten to insensibility. In the England of Charles Dickens, who died in 1870, the treatment of children — a sure index of human progress — was brutal.

And in the United States? As late as 1820 indentured servants were virtual slaves. The master could beat them, systematically starve them, and shoot them if they tried to escape. Popular punishments for minor offences were the clipping of. ears, maiming, and branding. The fight for the 12—hour day was violent. And 150 years ago life expectancy was a gruelling 38 years for males. The work week was 72 hours. Women had it worse: Housewives worked 98 hours a week. Chances are that in your entire lifetime then you would never hear the sound of an orchestra or travel more than 20 miles from your birthplace.

In New York during Theodore Roosevelt’s early manhood unscrupulous men sent small boys into the streets as bootblacks and peddlers, then collected their small earnings and herded the children into a filthy pen for the night. Imprisonment for debt — even for $5 — was universal in the United States until 1820. In foul prisons debtors were locked in the same cell with murderers, thieves, and degenerates; together they starved, froze, and rotted — unless they could purchase favours from the warden.

The cruelties of previous times were nowhere better exhibited than on the high seas. Herman Melville’s White Jacket, published in 1850, describes how in the United States Navy 3 man could be flogged till his bones gleamed white. Records show that the merchant marine continued that practice as late as 1870. More murderous yet was the practice of keelhauling, common among American whaling ships during the first half of the nineteenth century. To keelhaul a man, you tied him to a rope that had been passed under the ship’s bottom. His shipmates pulled at the other end of the rope, dragging him overboard, under the keel and up the other side of the hull, while the barnacles lacerated him to ribbons. Sometimes, mercifully, he was drowned.

Let’s rather root ourselves in the present, with all its difficulties, and in the tradition of today’s liturgy. Let’s pray that we may be willing to have the crooked paths in our lives straightened and the valleys and hills of our selfish desires levelled. Let’s join more fervently in the prayer after the Lord’s Prayer that we say with optimism at every Eucharist — that “we wait in joyful hope for the coming of our Saviour, Jesus Christ.”

That Advent optimism should be realistic. We’re not like the little boy who was overheard talking to himself as he strode through his back yard, baseball cap on sideways and totting ball and bat. “I’m the greatest baseball player in the world,” he said proudly. Then he tossed the ball into the air, swung and missed. Undaunted, he picked up the ball, threw it into the air and repeated to himself, “I’m the greatest player ever!” He swung at the ball again, and again he missed. He paused a moment to examine bat’and ball carefully. Then once again he threw the ball into the air and said, “I’m the greatest baseball player who ever lived.” He swung the bat hard and again missed the ball. “Wow” he exclaimed. “What a pitcher!”

Rather, we ought to be like David of the Older Covenant When Goliath came against the Israelites, the soldiers all thought, “He’s so big we can never kill him.” David looked at the same giant and thought, “He’s so big I can’t miss.” In our reflections, we ought to take into account not only our major sins, but also our personal dispositions that may be causing them: the laziness that prevents us from doing kind acts, the resentment towards another that blocks communication, the fear that forces us to compromise our principles, the pride, which precludes true regard for others, the social sins of prejudice and intolerance that can destroy a society.

If we take any other perspective, the epitaph for our life may be, “I’ve had the experience, but I’ve missed the meaning.”