2nd Sunday of Advent B
The image of the “desert” appears in the first reading and in the Gospel, and summarizes the liturgical message of this Sunday of Advent. In the exile from Babylon, when it is drawing towards the end, a voice cries out: “Prepare in the desert a way for Yahweh” (first reading). In the Gospel, the voice that cries out is that of John the Baptist, the precursor of the Messiah, whose coming is near. In the “desert” man will also have to prepare for the great final coming of the Lord: “What we are waiting for, relying on his promises, is the new heavens and new earth, where uprightness will be at home” (second reading).
P. Antonio Izqeuirdo, L.C., Copyright © Dicastery for the Clergy
Conversion
6 December 2020 | Saint Peter’s Square
2nd Sunday of Advent B
This Sunday’s Gospel passage (Mk 1:1-8) introduces the person and work of John the Baptist. He reveals to his contemporaries an itinerary of faith similar to the one that Advent proposes to us, who are preparing ourselves to receive the Lord at Christmas. This itinerary of faith is an itinerary of conversion. What does the word ‘conversion’ mean? In the Bible it means, first and foremost, to change direction and orientation; and thus also to change one’s way of thinking. In the moral and spiritual life, to convert means to turn oneself from evil to good, from sin to love of God. And this is what the Baptist was teaching, who in the desert of Judea was “preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins” (v. 4). Receiving baptism was an outward and visible sign of the conversion of those who had listened to his preaching and decided to repent. That baptism occurred with immersion in the Jordan, in water, but it proved useless; it was only a sign and it was useless if there was no willingness to repent and change one’s life.
Conversion involves suffering for sins committed, the desire to be free from them, the intention to exclude them from one’s own life forever. To exclude sin it is also necessary to reject everything that is connected to it; the things that are connected to sin and thus, we have to reject: a worldly mentality, excessive esteem for comforts, excessive esteem for pleasure, for well-being, for wealth. The example of this detachment comes to us once again from today’s Gospel in the person of John the Baptist: an austere man who renounces excess and seeks the essential. This is the first aspect of conversion: detachment from sin and worldliness: commencing a journey of detachment from these things.
The other aspect of conversion is the aim of the journey, that is, the search for God and his kingdom. Detachment from worldly things and seeking God and his kingdom. Abandoning comforts and a worldly mentality is not an end in itself; it is not an ascesis only to do penance: a Christian is not a “fakir”. It is something else. Detachment is not an end in itself, but is a means of attaining something greater, namely, the Kingdom of God, communion with God, friendship with God. But this is not easy, because there are many ties that bind us closely to sin; and it is not easy…. Temptation always pulls down, pulls down, and thus, the ties that keep us close to sin: inconstancy, discouragement, malice, unwholesome environments, bad examples. At times the yearning we feel toward the Lord is too weak and it almost seems that God is silent; his promises of consolation seem far away and unreal to us, like the image of the caring and attentive shepherd, which resounds today in the reading from Isaiah (cf. 40:1, 11). And so one is tempted to say that it is impossible to truly convert. How often we have heard this discouragement! “No, I can’t do it. I barely start and then I turn back”. And this is bad. But it is possible. It is possible. When you have this discouraging thought, do not remain there, because this is quicksand. It is quicksand: the quicksand of a mediocre existence. This is mediocrity. What can we do in these cases, when one would like to go but feels he or she cannot do it? First of all, remind ourselves that conversion is a grace: no one can convert by his or own strength. It is a grace that the Lord gives you, and thus we need to forcefully ask God for it. To ask God to convert us, that we can truly convert, to the degree in which we open ourselves up to the beauty, the goodness, the tenderness of God. Think about God’s tenderness. God is not a bad father, an unkind father, no. He is tender. He loves us so much, like the Good Shepherd, who searches for the last member of his flock. It is love, and this is conversion: a grace of God. Begin to walk, because it is he who moves you to walk, and you will see how he will arrive. Pray, walk, and you will always take a step forward.
Shortcomings in Our Life
10 December 2017 | Saint Peter’s Square
2nd Sunday of Advent B
Last Sunday we began Advent with the call to be vigilant; today, the Second Sunday of this season of preparation for Christmas, the liturgy indicates to us its proper content: it is a time to recognize the shortcomings in our life, to smooth out the roughness of pride and to make room for Jesus who comes.
The Prophet Isaiah addresses the people, proclaiming the end of the Exile in Babylon and the return to Jerusalem. He prophesies: “A voice cries: ‘In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord… Every valley shall be lifted up’” (40:3-4). The valleys to be lifted up represent all the shortcomings of our behaviour before God, all our sins of omission. One shortcoming in our life could be the fact that we do not pray or that we pray little. Advent is thus a favourable time to pray with greater intensity, to reserve to the spiritual life the important place it deserves. Another shortcoming could be a lack of charity for our neighbour, above all toward people most in need of help, not only material, but also spiritual. We are called to be more attentive, closer, to the needs of others. Like John the Baptist, in this way we can open the ways of hope in the desert of the barren hearts of many people.
“Every mountain and hill shall be made low” (cf. v. 4), Isaiah again exhorts. The mountains and hills that must be made low are pride, arrogance, insolence. Where there is pride, where there is insolence, where there is arrogance, the Lord cannot enter because that heart is full of pride, of insolence, of arrogance. For this reason, we must allay this pride. We must take on attitudes of meekness and humility, without reproach, to listen, to speak with meekness and thus to prepare for the coming of our Saviour, He who is meek and humble of heart (cf. Mt 11:29). Then we are asked to eliminate all obstacles that we set against our union with the Lord: “the uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places a plain. And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed” — says Isaiah — “and all flesh shall see it together” (40:4-5). These actions, however, must be performed with joy, because they are designed in preparation for the coming of Jesus. At home, when we await the visit of a dear person, we prepare everything with care and gladness. In the same way, we want to prepare ourselves for the coming of the Lord: to await him each day attentively, so as to be filled by his grace when he comes.
SOURCE: The Holy See Archive at the Vatican Website © Libreria Editrice Vaticana
God-with-us
7 December 2008 | Saint Peter’s Square
2nd Sunday of Advent B
For a week we have been experiencing the liturgical Season of Advent: a season of openness to the future of God, a time of preparation for holy Christmas when he, the Lord, who is the absolute innovation, came to dwell among this fallen humanity to renew it from within. A message full of hope resounds in the liturgy of Advent, inviting us to raise our gaze to the ultimate horizon but at the same time to recognize the signs of the God-with-us in the present. On this Second Sunday of Advent the Word of God acquires the moving tones of the so-called “Second Isaiah”, who announced to the Israelites, tried by decades of bitter exile in Babylon, liberation at last: “Comfort, comfort my people”, the Prophet says in God’s name. “Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and cry to her that her warfare is ended” (Is 40: 1-2). This is what the Lord wishes to do in Advent: to speak to the heart of his people and through it to the whole of humanity, to proclaim salvation. Today too the Church raises her voice: “Make straight in the desert a highway for our God” (Is 40: 3). For the peoples worn out by poverty and hunger, for the hosts of refugees and for all who are suffering grave and systematic violations of their rights, the Church stations herself as a sentinel on the lofty mountain of faith and proclaims: “Behold your God! Behold, the Lord God comes with might” (Is 40: 10).
This prophetic announcement is fulfilled in Jesus Christ, who with his preaching and, later, with his death and Resurrection, brought the ancient promises to fulfilment, revealing an even deeper and more universal perspective. He inaugurated an exodus that was no longer solely earthly, in history, hence temporary, but rather radical and definitive: the transition from the kingdom of evil to the Kingdom of God, from the dominion of sin and death to that of love and life. Therefore, human hope goes beyond the legitimate expectations of social and political liberation because what Jesus began is a new humanity that comes “from God” but, at the same, time germinates on our earth, to the extent that it lets itself be fertilized by the Lord’s Spirit. Thus it is a question of fully entering the logic of faith: believing in God, in his plan of salvation, and at the same time, striving to build his Kingdom. Justice and peace are in fact gifts of God, but require men and women to be the “good ground” ready to receive the good seed of his Word.
The first fruits of this new humanity is Jesus, Son of God and Son of Mary. She, the Virgin Mother, is the “way” that God prepared for himself in order to come into the world. With all her humility, Mary walks at the head of the new Israel in its exodus from all exile, from all oppression, from all moral and material slavery, toward the “new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells” (2 Pt 3: 13). Let us entrust to her maternal intercession the expectation of peace and salvation of the people of our time.