The Second
Sunday of Advent
(A)
Dear
brothers and sisters,
In
these days, we make use of the color violet – which we usually call purple – because
of its long association with a spirit of repentance and royal majesty. Advent
is marked by a joyful penitence because we await with eager expectation the
coming of Christ our King. Our hearts are joyful because we know the Lord is
coming again in his glory, yet our hearts are also filled with trepidation
because “with the breath of his mouth he shall slay the wicked” (Isaiah 11:4).
The
Lord will not judge us as we so often judge others, which is cause for joy; he
will not judge us on our appearance or on what others say about us, but on the measure
of our love, which is cause for trepidation (cf. Isaiah 11:3). Justice shall
indeed flourish in his days because he is himself the Sun of Justice, the
Radiant Dawn to whom we look, “his dwelling shall be glorious,” and in his
light all things will be revealed (cf. Malachi 3:20; Isaiah 11:3-10). This is
why we must heed the words of the prophets Isaiah and Saint John the Baptist to
“prepare the way of the Lord [and] make straight his paths” (Isaiah 40:3;
Matthew 3:3).
We
prepare his way when we repent, when we turn from our sins and turn again toward
Christ. This is the very message of the Baptist: “Repent, for the kingdom of
heaven is at hand” (Matthew 3:2)! The Baptizer does not make a mere suggestion,
but speaks a word of command; he speaks in the imperative, saying, metanoeite, a word that means “to change one’s mind or perspective.” John “is
calling for a complete change in thinking and conduct – [a] decisive,
fundamental change of direction in one’s life.”[1]
Saint
Bonaventure tells us John the Baptist “admonished us to prepare ourselves
according to the threefold excellence of [Jesus’] qualities,” saying:
First because
[Jesus] is the wisest master, we prepare ourselves as disciples longing to
believe the master, who teaches through the submission of the intellect.
Second, because he is the most powerful king we prepare ourselves as dutiful
servants to obey the commander in carrying out actions. Third, because he is
the most just judge we prepare us as penitent men to respond to the judge by
correcting shortcomings.[2]
This
is the proper task of these days of preparation for the great solemnity of Christmas;
everything else is secondary.
The
people responded in great numbers to John’s call to a complete turnaround in
life because they recognized him not simply as a prophet, but as the
prophet – indeed, the last of the prophets – who heralded the coming of God
himself. They recognized this in three ways: in his preaching, in his clothing,
and in his location.
In
that passage gloriously rendered in Handel’s Messiah, Isaiah said, “Get you up to a high mountain, O Zion,
herald of good tidings; lift up your voice with strength, O Jerusalem, herald
of good tidings, lift it up, fear not; say to the cities of Judah: ‘Behold your
God’” (Isaiah 40:9)! When he pointed to the Lord Jesus near Bethany, John the
Baptist cried out, saying, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of
the world” (John 1:29)! He went on to say, “And I have seen and have borne
witness that this is the Son of God” (John 1:34). The people also recognized
the great prophet had come in Saint John’s clothing. They knew the great
prophet Elijah “wore a garment of haircloth, with a belt of leather about his
waist” (II Kings 1:8). The Lord God also revealed through his prophet Malachi,
“Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and awesome day of
the Lord comes” (Malachi 4:5 [3:23]). Even the location of John’s preaching signaled a
moment of great importance, for it was at the River Jordan that the Lord healed
Naaman of his leprosy, where Elijah was taken up to heaven in the fiery chariot,
and through which the Lord led his people after their wandering of forty years
into the Promised Land (cf. II Kings 5:1-4, 2:1-11, and Joshua 3:1-17). Later
in his ministry, Jesus made the connection between John the Baptist and the
return of Elijah explicit when he said, “For all the prophets and the law
prophesied until John; and if you are willing to accept it, he is Elijah who is
to come” (Matthew 11:13-14; cf. Matthew 17:10-13).
Recognizing
the truth of John’s words, they streamed toward him to receive his baptism “as
they acknowledged their sins” (Matthew 3:6). We, too, need to hear the call of
the Baptist to acknowledge our sins and confess them to the Lord; we, too, need
to repent and reorient our lives toward Jesus; we, too, need to make the
decisive, fundamental change to believe, to serve, and to follow Jesus in all
things. By doing so, we prepare the way for him and make our hearts worthy of becoming
glorious dwellings for the Lord. We must remember that “if the way of interior
dwelling is not prepared well, Christ will not come to us nor will we be able
to meet Christ.”[3]
We spend so much time and energy preparing to receive and welcome our family and
friends into our homes, and rightly so; but how much more time and energy ought
we spend preparing our souls to receive the Divine Guest!
We
best prepare the home of our hearts for him by hastening to the confessional to
make a good confession of our sins. When we do so, he removes whatever keeps us
from him. In the honest and humble confession of sins, the Lord’s justice
flourishes, his peace is felt, and we are strengthened by his love to “produce
good fruit as evidence of [our] repentance” (cf. Psalm 72:7; Matthew 3:8). Beg
the Holy Spirit, then, to help you examine your conscience, to reveal your sins
to you, your failures to love, and to help you make a worthy confession of your
sins; if you open your heart to his promptings, he will lead you to be
reconciled to the Lord and to his Church so you can look with wonder upon the Face
of him who is love together with all who are his friends. It is only when we
are reconciled to the Lord and to one another that can we truly await the
coming of the Lord with the joy and eagerness proper to this season of Advent.
A
few days ago, I met with a young couple to begin preparing them for their
marriage. At one point in our conversation, they asked if I would hear
confessions after their wedding rehearsal. They asked this because they want to
enter the sacrament of marriage cleansed of their sins to be able to reflect
the love of Jesus to each other and to the world. It was a beautiful and humble
request, one I will be very happy to honor. How I wish we would all imitate
their example in these days of Advent to prepare our hearts to be worthy
dwellings for the Lord when he comes!
Saint
John warns us today that “even now the ax lies at the root of the trees” and
that “every tree that does not bear good fruit will be cut down” (Matthew 3:10). A great error has emerged today and is present in the minds of too many
people. This error says something like this: “God is great. He knows us, so sin
does not count; in the end God will be kind to us all. It is a beautiful hope,”
but it misses something rather important. It forgets that “both justice and
true guilt exist. Those who have destroyed man and the earth cannot suddenly
sit down at God’s table together with their victims. God creates justice. We
must keep this in mind.”[4] We
must remember that, as Pope Francis reminds us, “everyone, sooner or later,
will be subject to God’s judgment, from which no one can escape.”[5]
This is why Saint John warns us today that the Lord’s “winnowing fan is in his
hand” (Matthew 3:12) and why he calls us to repent. His call to repentance is one
of hope, because the same Lord who comes to “strike the ruthless with the rod
of his mouth” also comes with “faithfulness [as] a belt upon his hips” (Isaiah 11:5).
Let
each of us, then, prepare the way of the Lord by entering the confessional to
cast off all that is unworthy of Christ and so live fully, truly, and joyfully
as we await the blessed coming of the Lord Jesus Christ, of him who is our only
true and lasting hope. Amen.
[1]
Curtis Mitch and
Edward Sri, Catholic Commentary on
Scripture: The Gospel of Matthew (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Academic,
2010), 62.
[2] Saint Bonaventure, Sermon for the Fourth Sunday of Advent,
7. In Works of St. Bonaventure: The
Sunday Sermons of St. Bonaventure. Timothy J. Johnston, trans. (Saint
Bonaventure, New York: Franciscan Institute Publications, 2008), 104.
[3] Saint Bonaventure, Sermon for the Fourth Sunday of Advent,
11.
[4] Pope Benedict XVI, Address to
the Clergy of the Diocese of Rome, 7 February 2008.
[5] Pope Francis, Misericordiae vultus, 19.
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