2nd Sunday of Advent + Year B ‘11

Last summer Lucia and I spent about 10 weeks in Hungary and Romania. As much as we love the people there and the work of the new evangelization it is hard to be there. To me their language is incomprehensible. We miss our family, our friends and our parish . . . While there we are aliens, foreigners.

Today’s Reading from the Prophet Isaiah was addressed to the Judean exiles living in Babylon as foreigners. But these scriptures were also written down for our instruction (1 Cor 10:11), they speak to us as well. You see, since Adam and Eve were exiled from paradise, much of human experience is fraught with alienation and rejection, fractured relationships and broken hearts. We are strangers and outcasts, it seems, even to ourselves. Burdened by sin, guilt and shame, we look for comfort in all the wrong places. And so the cycle continues and sin, guilt and shame increase.

Despite the pitiable condition of humanity the prophet climbs a high mountain and shouts at the top of his voice:
Here is your God! He comes with power. Like a shepherd he feeds his flock; in his arms He gathers the lambs, carrying them in his bosom.
This season of Advent is a season to hope, a season of comfort. But some of you might say the LORD is not coming, I don’t see His power, I don’t feel His arms, and I’m not close to His bosom . . .
In the Reading from 2 Peter it is explained that what might look like a delay is really God’s patience. The LORD does not want you to perish, but rather that all should come to repentance! Go deeper this Advent. Press on! The LORD is coming!

Today the prophet Isaiah is crying out, our patron saint John the Baptist is crying out, Make a straight way! Not in the Judean or Saharan desert, not in the Gobi or Mojave desert. They’re crying out in the wasteland that is the human heart: straighten up, rectify your lives! Level that mountain of pride, fill in that valley of bitterness with compassion and mercy. Let that hard rugged land soften and become a heart of flesh.

People were being baptized by him as they acknowledged their sins. How much more should sins be acknowledged before the One who baptizes you with the Holy Spirit. Blessed John Paul the Great, in his Apostolic Exhortation Reconciliation and Penance, said there can be no conversion without the acknowledgment of one’s own sin. Acknowledging sin and receiving the LORD’S forgiveness in the Sacrament is what breaks the cycle of sin, guilt and shame.

This Monday evening at 7pm is our Advent Penance service. Let’s fill the Church this year. Let’s walk again on the road of conversion by acknowledging our own sin and receiving forgiveness from the LORD.
I hope to see all of you Monday night.

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