2nd Sunday of Advent

 

“The Lord has done great things for us

We are filled with joy” (Psalm 125)

By directing our attention away from ourselves to focus instead on what God has done and is doing in the Church and in each of our lives, today’s Mass readings provide a wonderful message of hope:

 It is the Holy One who ‘remembers’ us and comes to us in the wilderness of our lives and  makes us ‘jubilant’ as He came of old to the Israelites in their exile and as he came to John in the wilderness.  So it is in the wilderness of our lives - with it pain and heart break, its anxieties and preoccupations - that we hear the Word of the Lord inviting us to repent of our sinful and all too human outlook and to prepare  a way for His coming. 

 In the first reading the prophet Baruch invites us to take off the “dress of sorrow and distress” – whatever enslaves us -  and “put on the beauty of the glory of God and to wrap the cloak of the integrity of God around us.”  For us Christians we know that the 'cloak of integrity' is nothing other than our being “in Christ” through our Baptism. In Christ Jesus we are all “sons of God through faith - when we were baptised we were clothed with Christ” (Gal 3:26,27) who has become “our wisdom, our virtue, our holiness and our freedom” (1Cor 1:30).  Each of us can say “it is not I who live, but Christ who lives in me.”(Gal 2:10).

 In the second reading St Paul suggests that it is our mutual love for each other which helps us become “pure and blameless for the Day of the Lord when we reach the perfect goodness which Jesus Christ produces in us for the glory and praise of God.”   It is not so much a matter of our own effort – rather it is all the work of God within us – our part is to believe and trust that His power is at work in our lives and can achieve more than we can ever ask for or imagine but we need to give Him a free hand.

I often reflect on how disappointed I’ll be when I meet the Lord face to face and come to realise that not only has He been walking at my side but has been the very source of life and all too  often I do not recognise Him.  Advent is a time to renew our attentiveness to His abiding presence in our lives, to hear Him say: “behold I stand at the door and knock” waiting for our response to open and invite Him in.

 As we journey through this advent of 2012 we pray that God may guide us as He guided Israel “in joy by the light of His glory with His mercy and integrity for escort.” (Bar 5:9) and may the valleys of our hearts be filled and the mountains laid low and the winding ways be straightened and the rough roads made smooth so that through us the salvation of our God may become more manifest to a broken and thirsting world.  (cf Lk 3)

Wilderness Experience - 1st Sunday of Lent

Today's Gospel (Luke 4:1-13) introduces us to the great mystery of Jesus, Son of God, spending 40 days in the wilderness - fasting and praying and being tempted by Satan. St Luke tells us that Jesus is filled with the Spirit and is led by the Spirit through this wilderness experience.

All of us experience in our own lives, in one way or another, the wilderness and bewilderment.

The following is a quote from Pope Benedict's homily on Ash Wednesday when he, according to custom, celebrated the Eucharist in the Dominican Basilica of Santa Sabina:

.........To go into the desert and to stay there a long time, alone, meant to be willingly exposed to the assaults of the enemy, the tempter who made Adam fall and through whose envy death entered the world (cf Wisdom 2:24); it meant engaging in open battle with him, defying him with no other weapons than limitless confidence in the omnipotent love of the Father. Your love suffices me, my food is to do your will (cf John 4:34): This conviction dwelt in the mind and heart of Jesus during that "Lent" of his. It was not an act of pride, a titanic enterprise, but a decision of humility, consistent with the Incarnation and the Baptism in the Jordan, in the same line of obedience to the merciful love of the Father, who "so loved the world that he gave his only Son" (John 3:16).

The Lord did all this for us. He did it to save us and, at the same time, to show us the way to follow him. Salvation, in fact, is a gift, it is God's grace, but to have effect in my existence it requires my consent, an acceptance demonstrated in deeds, that is, in the will to live like Jesus, to walk after him...........He, as always, has preceded us and has already conquered in the battle against the spirit of evil. This is the meaning of Lent, liturgical time that every year invites us to renew the choice to follow Christ on the path of humility to participate in his victory over sin and death.

Understood in this perspective also is the penitential sign of the ashes, which are imposed on the head of those who begin with good will the Lenten journey. It is essentially a gesture of humility, which means: I recognize myself for what I am, a frail creature, made of earth and destined to the earth, but also made in the image of God and destined to him. Dust, yes, but loved, moulded by love, animated by his vital breath, capable of recognising his voice and of responding to him; free and, because of this, also capable of disobeying him, yielding to the temptation of pride and self-sufficiency. This is sin, the mortal sickness that soon entered to contaminate the blessed earth that is the human being. Created in the image of the Holy and Righteous One, man lost his own innocence and he can now return to be righteous only thanks to the righteousness of God, the righteousness of love that -- as St. Paul writes -- was manifested "through faith in Jesus Christ" (Romans 3:22).