Year C

2ND SUNDAY
OF ADVENT

► Readings, Reflections & Prayers

Scripture readings: Association for Catholic Priests
– www.associationofcatholicpriests.ie
Reflections and Prayers by Fr Jack Finnegan SDB

1st Reading – Baruch 5:1-9

The Lord says this:
Take off the garment of your sorrow and affliction, O Jerusalem,
and put on forever the beauty of the glory from God.
Put on the robe of the righteousness that comes from God;
put on your head the diadem of the glory of the Everlasting;
for God will show your splendor everywhere under heaven.
For God will give you evermore the name,
“Righteous Peace, Godly Glory.”

Arise, O Jerusalem, stand upon the height;
look toward the east,
and see your children gathered from west and east
at the word of the Holy One,
rejoicing that God has remembered them.
For they went out from you on foot,
led away by their enemies;
but God will bring them back to you,
carried in glory, as on a royal throne.
For God has ordered that every high mountain
and the everlasting hills be made low
and the valleys filled up, to make level ground,
so that Israel may walk safely in the glory of God.
The woods and every fragrant tree
have shaded Israel at God’s command.
For God will lead Israel with joy,
in the light of his glory,
with the mercy and righteousness that come from him.

Reflection

Today’s first reading is a song of mercy and grace, a delightful poem of consolation: exile is not permanent. The robe of mourning will be replaced by the splendour of glory! Our reading comes from the part of Baruch called the Psalm of Jerusalem where the prophet proclaims the glorious miracle of return. Echoing Isaiah 40, which is quoted in the gospel, Baruch calls on us to arise, stand upon the heights, and look joyfully toward the east. He challenges us to take off our robe of mourning and misery; and put on the splendour of glory from God forever! Are we preparing a way to our hearts? Are we ready to respond to the light of God’s glory? Are we ready to celebrate God’s awesome mercy?

Prayer

LORD, Adonai, help us prepare a way for your mercy and grace. Fill us with the grace of true wisdom and understanding today. Give us the courage to shake off our misery and shed our robes of mourning! Clothe us in the robes of your glory, your radiant glory alive with compassion and mercy! Help us to walk in company with you, to walk in your loving ways of forgiveness and kindness. Help us to be bearers of your justice and love, agents of your consolation. Let us be your aroma in the world, glad bearers of your merciful love. Teach us to look to the east, our heads held high. Teach us to be way-makers, people touched by grace to serve your mercy and glory in the world! Now and forever. Amen!

Psalm 126:1-6

When the Lord delivered Zion from bondage,
it seemed like a dream.
Then was our mouth filled with laughter,
on our lips there were songs. (R./)

The heathens themselves said:
‘What marvels the Lord worked for them!’
What marvels the Lord worked for us!
Indeed we were glad. (R./)

Deliver us, O Lord, from our bondage
as streams in dry land.
Those who are sowing in tears
will sing when they reap. (R./)

They go out, they go out, full of tears
carrying seed for the sowing:
they come back, they come back, full of song,
carrying their sheaves. (R./)

Reflection

Our psalm also celebrates the return from Babylonian captivity and echoes Jeremiah’s song: The LORD has done great things for us; indeed we are glad. The poet celebrates a time of mercy and joy, a time of laughter, rejoicing and gladness because of what God has done for his people. Can you hear the later echoes of Mary’s Magnificat? Once again hope and trust are the key: hope for authentic change and hope for freedom and justice in the land. Advent reminds us of the brokenness of the world. The lesson for us is that grateful prayer for God’s mercy is part of every genuine response to difficult times, part of our identity as Christians. Are you ready to pray hope-filled, grateful prayer in difficult times? Are you ready to look joyfully towards the east, to God’s mercy seat? Reach out and feel the depth of divine glory and compassion running through creation. Imagine tears giving way to gladness! Imagine springs welling up in the desert and seeds sown in sorrow reaped in joy! Imagine God’s awesome mercy touching broken lives as dreams come true!

Prayer

LORD, Adonai, you have truly done great things for us! We rejoice and are glad! Let your merciful grace flow freely in us, bubbling up like springs in dry land. Turn our tears into laughter! Let our hearts brim over with gratitude! Let our lips murmur songs of gratitude and joy! How wonderful you are! Worthy of all praise! Make us a people of hope, a merciful people who look towards the east! Fill us with a new awareness of your middle coming. Make us lovingly attentive to the many ways you come into our lives, the many ways you touch us with mercy and fill us with joy. Remind us that true joy comes from deep within. Now and forever. Amen.

2nd Reading: Philippians 1:4-6, 8-11

I thank my God every time I remember you, constantly praying with joy in every one of my prayers for all of you, because of your sharing in the gospel from the first day until now. I am confident of this, that the one who began a good work among you will bring it to completion by the day of Jesus Christ.

For God is my witness, how I long for all of you with the compassion of Christ Jesus. And this is my prayer, that your love may overflow more and more with knowledge and full insight to help you to determine what is best, so that in the day of Christ you may be pure and blameless, having produced the harvest of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ for the glory and praise of God.

Reflection

The second reading is taken from Paul’s prayer for the faith community in Philippi. Paul is grateful for his relationship with the Church there, and the passage between verses 3-11 is often called Paul’s Thanksgiving. He prays into their past, present and future. He prays with real affection that they remain faithful to the gospel until the Day of Christ Jesus. He prays that their love increase and multiply. He prays that they grow in deep wisdom and understanding, and live lives to the glory and the praise of God. Can we pray like that for each other? Can we open our hearts to God’s mercy and let our lives ring out with love and praise?

Prayer

Lord Jesus, fan into flame the gifts you have given us. Touch our hearts that our love may increase. Surround us with new gifts of sensitivity and true understanding. Encircle us with the wisdom to know what is truly of value as we await your second coming. Thank you for being with us in your living word. Thank you for coming to us in the Eucharist. Thank you for your radiant presence in the sacraments and in all the wonders of creation. Thank you for your mercy and compassion. Remind me again that you are not finished with me yet! Amen.

Gospel Reading: Luke 3:1-6

In the fifteenth year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod was ruler of Galilee, and his brother Philip ruler of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias ruler of Abilene, during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the desert.

He went into all the region around the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins, as it is written in the book of the words of the prophet Isaiah,

“The voice of one crying out in the desert:
“Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.
Every valley shall be filled,
and every mountain and hill shall be made low,
and the crooked shall be made straight,
and the rough ways made smooth;
and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.’”

A voice cries in the wilderness:
Prepare a way for the Lord,
make his paths straight.
Every valley will be filled in,
every mountain and hill be laid low,
winding ways will be straightened
and rough roads made smooth.
And all mankind shall see the salvation of God.

Reflection

Every Advent, on the second and third Sundays, we focus our attention on John the Baptist, the prophet of God’s mercy. For Luke, the Baptist brings to an end the story of the Old Testament prophets and in so doing prepares the way for Jesus. The Prophets had insisted that God would come again. That is why John cries out in the words of Isaiah 40:3: 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. For every Christian Jesus represents what Israel was waiting for with expectant hearts. We should not be surprised, then, that for Luke, what Jesus does and says has universal implications: his reach is cosmic. Are we ready to let him touch all peoples and the whole of creation through the ethical and spiritual quality of our own daily lives? Will I open my life to Jesus’s compassion? Will I walk with and help the weak, the destitute, the sick and the hopeless? Am I open to being an advent person in real terms? Have I learnt with Martin Luther King Jr not to mouth pious irrelevancies and sanctimonious trivialities while people suffer? A radical Advent life is one that understands that doing justice for the poor is proper worship of God. Am I ready to light my second purple candle, bright sign of my preparation for the Lord’s coming? Will I make room in my life for the-God-who-comes this week? Will I serve God’s interests or my own? What do I conceal behind the mask of piety?

Prayer

Lord Jesus, in the days of Tiberius and Pontius Pilate, of Herod, of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John the Baptist, the last of the prophets. Speak your living word of mercy into our hearts today. Speak your prophetic word in our land. Fan your gospel of compassion and understanding into new fire in the depths of our lives. Call us to come to you with hearts and lives renewed. Let new seeds of wise prayer and reflection flourish within us. Let new lights shine. Help us witness to mercy in your name to the four winds of the world as we prepare for your Coming. Help us abandon masks of false piety. Help us understand that doing justice for the poor is proper worship of your awesome glory. Help us recognize when we favour our own interests over yours. Keep reminding us that true repentance is not an exclusively individual affair, something to be done in the secrecy of my heart. Keep reminding me that it always has social and cosmic implications. Teach us the secret of hearing and doing. Now and forever. Amen.

► Lectio Divina

To help us to prepare for the coming of Christ, the Gospel puts before us the figure of John the Baptist, and recalls his mission and his message. It does so in great detail, inserting his activity in a precise period of human history. The precursor of Jesus is a real person, well known to his contemporaries.  His words resound today, as they did then, to call us to turn again to God and to look forward to the salvation he offers. God has taken seriously his decision to come into our world, by becoming one of us. He wanted his coming to be announced beforehand and he wants us to wait for him actively.  May the memory of the precursor’s mission today, while we are awaiting the coming of our Lord, inspire us to be the voice that proclaims his coming in the desert of today’s world!

I. Read: understand what the text is saying, focussing on how it says it

Our brief text, which speaks of the mission of John the Baptist, is made up of two distinct parts: the historical context (Lk 3, 1-2) and the description of the activity of John the Baptist (Lk 3,3-6).

Although he tells the story of the birth and infancy of Jesus (and of John the Baptist), it is appropriate that Luke should begin his Gospel by introducing the Baptist, “the voice of one crying in the wilderness” and indicating his place in the history of the time. This presentation is not just by chance. Before he describes the role of Jesus in the history of the human race, the evangelist begins, not with the precursor of the Messiah, but with the Word of God, at a particular point in time and in a specific geographic area. A precise identification of the place and circumstances could easily give us the wrong idea. What is important is not historical accuracy but the decision taken by God.  The word of God “came to John in the wilderness.”  Before a voice could proclaim loudly the Saviour who was to come, God must first speak. The Baptist owes his mission and his message to the Word of God that came to him in the desert. The Word converted him into a voice that proclaimed salvation.

Made prophet by the Word he received, the Baptist was able to act as such, preaching a baptism of conversion to God. The Son of the Word did nothing other than fulfil the Word. The quote from the prophecy of Isaiah describes well the activity of John the Baptist, and explains the purpose of his “baptism of conversion”. John dedicated himself to preparing for the arrival of the one who was to come. His message was concerned, not so much with communicating the salvation that was near at hand, but with the necessity of preparing for its coming. The urgent need to make straight the paths and fill in the valleys was not born in the hearts of those who had need of salvation, but from the one who was coming and was already on the way. It is not those who feel bad, or think they are bad, who see the need for conversion, but those who know that salvation is on the way.  God our Saviour will let himself be seen and found by those who prepare for his coming.

II. Meditate:  apply what the text says to life

Luke is careful to insert the figure and the preaching of John the Baptist in human history.  In this way he manages to highlight the universal significance of the work of the Precursor of Jesus. The world is witness and recipient of his proclamation, in which the promise of forgiveness is preceded by a call to conversion. Anyone who today opens the way for the Lord to come, will soon receive salvation. His coming is completely gratuitous. The Lord does not come because people are waiting for him, or because they deserve him, but because he loves us. However, the fact that his coming is gratuitous does not mean that it does not have to be prepared for. Listening to the voice crying in the wilderness today involves waiting expectantly for our Saviour and acknowledging the urgency of our need for conversion to God. There is no hope without conversion. It is not possible to desire the higher goods unless we first turn away from evil. Anyone who is looking forward to the Lord’s coming must lament his absence and live already according to his will. The absence of the one who is to come is reason for us to live as he would want us to live.

Maybe we are envious of the people of John the Baptist’s time who were able to see him close at hand and hear him preaching about the nearness of God. They were invited by him to prepare the way of Lord with urgency. Nowadays, in fact, we find almost no one around us to remind us of the Lord. Not only do we feel the absence of God, but we don’t even have people of strong faith to remind us that the Lord is coming. We still need precursors of God who will proclaim his coming.  When we do not pay enough heed to the fact that we have left God, we need to remember that God comes only to people who are waiting for him. And those who are waiting for him have an obligation to prepare the way for him. He will not visit us if we do not repair the road he has to travel to reach us.

We cannot but envy the people who hear the voice of one crying in the wilderness, who have found a precursor of the God who is coming. And yet, no one is denied this voice. God sends his precursor, for he is determined to draw near to each one of us. Precisely because God wants to meet each one of us, he continues to send persons and events, which, if we take them seriously, will help us to become aware of his absence in our lives. This is our personal wilderness. Our problem is not that we have never heard the good news that God wants to come to us and is already on the way. Our problem is, rather, that we do not really believe that he is no longer with us, and we do not want to admit that in our hearts we have lost sight of God.

We are unable to believe that he will come again, because we do not want to admit that, once again, we have lost him. We do not accept the people who tell us to prepare for his coming. And because we have no intention of preparing for his coming, we do not hear the voice that tells us he is on the way. The voice of the Precursor has always cried out in the wilderness. It is because we do not hear the voices that are crying out in our own day, that it is impossible for us to met God anew. It is a pity, a real pity, that God remains absent from our lives simply because we do not feel his absence, and we are not even preparing the road he wants to take to come to us. We live without God only because we do not prepare a way for him to come into our hearts and our lives.

If we don’t want to run that risk, let’s begin by listening to the people who speak to us about God. Let’s try to pay more attention to the people who help us to understand that we still have a God, that this world is not paradise, that our family is not the home we long for, and that there is still a lot of evil in our hearts. All this will not be in vain if it helps us to acknowledge God’s absence and to discover how much we need him in our world, in our families and in our hearts. We ought to appreciate anyone who makes us realize that we are living in the absence of God more than in his presence. It could be anyone, friend or stranger; or anything, a sudden illness or an unexpected joy, an unexplained tragedy or a welcome success, a word from someone else or the voice of our own conscience. God can make use of anyone or anything to tell us he is near. All we have to do is to feel him a bit nearer or desire him a bit more, in order to hear the voice of the precursor assigned to us.

God still sends someone to go before him and foretell his coming, but he does not always find people waiting. We put too many obstacles in his way. We are too preoccupied with our own problems, maybe even the problems we have with God, and we overlook the problems God has in trying to come to us.  And yet, only those who prepare the way will see the salvation of God. God is coming to be close to us. We do not need to give him reasons to come, or beg him to hasten. All we have to do is to make straight the paths and fill in the valleys. We search for him because we miss him so much, and we prepare for his coming. Now is the time to think about what separates us from God, and try to see what is the first thing we must renounce, in order to make sure we do not renounce God. We must not put God in the position where he has to renounce us! Let us not lose this opportunity of meeting God, just because we do not hear the voices that tell us he is coming. It would be the height of foolishness to miss out on meeting God simply because we were not expecting him.

We can live in patient expectation if we decide to listen to the people who speak to us about God. We can also become messengers of God, if we hope in him and prepare the way for him. May we never lose the joy of knowing that he is near!  May hope ever increase in us, and may we do all we can to share that joy and hope with others! The best way of preparing for God’s coming is to convince the people around us to prepare the way of the Lord with us. If we share the work and share our hopes, the effort will be less painful and the time of waiting will seem shorter. God cannot fail to let himself be found by people who live their lives proclaiming his coming to others. He will not refuse to come to those who have opened the way for others. The first to find God will be the one who becomes a path for him to come to others.

Today’s world and today’s Church are in need of men and women who will be precursors of God, believers who are so sure of his coming that they devote themselves to proclaiming it.  Because there is no one proclaiming his coming, we don’t bother to prepare the way.  It is because God is not expected that he is not recognised when he comes. Only those who expect him, and really prepare for his coming, will see him. Only the servant who is waiting will meet his Lord face to face. Let us not celebrate yet another Advent and allow it to go by without making an impact on our lives. If we do not rediscover our hope in God, and become a reason of hope for others, then this opportunity will pass unnoticed.  Among the many noises and voices, let us seek the voice that speaks of the coming of God. May the voice of God resound in our lives! Then we will celebrate this year’s Advent as it should be celebrated.