Homily: Second Sunday in Advent
December 8, 2024
My dear brothers and sisters, the liturgy of the Word of today continues to focus on the needed spiritual preparations for Christmas. The central call today is for us to make straight the path of the Lord, to fill every valley, to level every mountain, to make the crooked ways straight so that the king of glory may enter. St John the Baptist made this clarion call in a special way in the gospel reading of today. St John the Baptist we know is the last of the Old Testament prophets. Other Old Testament prophets prophesied about the coming of the Messiah, but John the Baptist not only prophesied about His coming, but he also pointed at the Messiah and showed Him to the world. It was he who told us; “this is the lamb of God; this is He who takes away the sins of the world.” He is a first-class credible witness we have to listen to.
If we look around in our society, from different angles, many persons are already firing the external preparations for Christmas with the top gear. We can see many beautiful and fantastic Christmas decorations surrounding many houses. In many homes, the Christmas trees that were forgotten in the basement have been brought up to the living room and decorated with Christmas lights. Some have already started exchanging Christmas presents. All these are wonderful, man is a composite being, our body and soul work together. These external preparations for Christmas can equally have much positive influence on our mind and on our soul.
The question, however, we need to ask ourselves is whether our preparations for Christmas begin and end only in the externals. Does our Christmas preparations revolve only around getting ready Santa Claus or Fr Christmas who would distribute candies to our kids. Does our understanding of Christmas celebrations revolve only around preparation of the best dishes, may be how to make the best of Christmas day with roasted turkey, mashed potatoes and choice wine, and then make ourselves happy and open our mouths like fish taken out of water. Brothers and sisters, our preparations for the coming Jesus can really never stop at these.
St. John the Baptist in the gospel reading of today takes us back to the drawing board where the preparations for the coming of Christ first began. In his days, there were many wealthy kings who had all it takes for worldly and external enjoyments and celebrations. A number of them were mentioned in the gospel: emperor Tiberius, Pontius Pilate, Herod, Philip, Lysanias, high priest Annas and Caiaphas. However, the word of God about the coming Messiah never came to all these people, instead the word of God located John the Baptist in the wilderness where he had nothing but where led an ascetic life. The crux of the message of John the Baptist to the world on the coming of Jesus is more spiritual, it centered on repentance and forgiveness of sin.
John the Baptist repeated the same call made by the Old Testament prophets about the coming of the Messiah as seen in the first reading of today: mountains are to be leveled, valleys are to be filled, crooked ways are to be made straight, for all flesh to be able to see the salvation of the Lord. What are these mountains? The different mountains of pride, hatred, anger, jealousy, lust, bad life in us. What are these valleys to be filled? The valley that exists between the faith we profess and the daily life that we live. How do we make crooked ways to be straight? By constant efforts to speak kindly, to act lovingly, to be sympathetic, to be slow to take offence, to be quick to make amends. Brothers as we decorate externally for Christmas, let us prepare internally too so that our souls will be good for Jesus. We will be having advent confessions too next Sunday by 2pm for sacramental reconciliation side of the preparations, one priest will be joining us.
