ADVENT II [B]: Is 40:1-5, 9-11; 2 Pt 3:8-14; Mk 1:1-8

We are in the season of Advent, a time of waiting for the Lord who is coming to us. As much as we are waiting for him and placing our hope in him, we can imagine how much more God is waiting and hoping for each of us personally to come to him. It is the time when God comes to earth as a human person and chooses to live among us. It is the time when God shares his love with us as we should share our love with Him and among ourselves. Advent prepares us to welcome the arrival of the God who became man and who, by his example, showed how we should share his love with our neighbours.  The readings of today tell us about the concern of God for his people and, at the same time, admonish the people to prepare the way spiritually for the coming of the Lord. 

The vision of what can happen for those who live by God’s word is contained in the first reading of today.  Here, prophet Isaiah renews his appeal to trust in the Lord their God and invites the people to come home to the Promised Land.  The dominant theme contained in this passage is comfort to weary people. Years of exile in Babylon had weakened them spiritually.  The Prophet encourages them to rekindle the faded memories of their homeland and believe that God still has a plan for them and wants them to return. He speaks of the earlier call in which he had to pronounce a verdict against the people. Now he hears a voice calling him to say God prepares a highway for them in the desert. The way will be level, with no elevations or depressions to impede their progress as they make their way back to Israel.

The central figure in today’s Word of God is John the Baptist who begins with the appearance at the river Jordan with his role as a preacher and baptizer.  John’s message was present not only in his words but also in his whole life. The man was the message. He led a very austere life starting from the desert, dressed in rough clothes made of camel skin and had a poor man’s diet. There were no special clothes designers for him. He fed on locusts and wild honey and fasted as well.  John clearly presented himself as a man of God and the people admired and trusted him as a person of holiness and integrity. He gave them the message of the kingdom of God and baptized them. His essential message was one of repentance.   The word Repent here does not mean just being sorry for the past or the performance of penance. It is a call to change their ways, to have a change of heart.

John the Baptist emerges here as the immediate precursor of Jesus.  He was like the herald who would precede the king on a journey to announce to the inhabitants the arrival of the King and make smooth the ill-kept roads. He calls people to the wilderness and asks them to search for God away from their comfort and find Him.

  “Vladimir Ghika was a Romanian prince who became a Catholic priest and died a martyr in a Communist concentration camp in 1954. His words are particularly apt today as we begin our own Odyssey in a new wilderness: “He who does not seek God everywhere runs the risk of not finding him anywhere.” — The good news of this advice, as St. Bernard and other mystics remind us, is, “No one can seek you O Lord, who has not already found you.” Or as St. Gregory of Nyssa put it: “To find God one must search for Him without end.” Not only will we come to experience the truth of this timely paradox, but we will discover that God does indeed let Himself be sought and found in every historical era, even in those great axial ruptures in history such as ours. Our new spirituality will remind and reassure us that God is still Emmanuel, that is, still very much “with us” in the wilderness.”

The Church invites us to prepare for Christmas through this time of reflection and personal renewal in preparation for the coming of Jesus into our lives.  In the section of St. Peter’s Second Letter which we read today, Peter reminds us, on the one hand, of God’s great desire to come into our lives and, on the other, of our need to be prepared for that event when it happens. We want, and need, God’s help and comfort, but we are not always prepared to change our ways to enhance genuine conversion. For God to come to us, we also need to go to Him. 2 Chronicles 15:2 says, “The Lord is with you while you are with him. If you seek him, he will be found by you, but if you forsake him, he will forsake you. As Jesus says, seek, and you will find.

It was their stubborn pride and self-centeredness which blinded the eyes of the Jews and kept them from recognizing Jesus as their long-awaited Messiah. The same stubborn pride, the same exaggerated sense of our own dignity, blinds the intellects of many of us today who not only fail to accept Christ and his good tidings but also prevent others from accepting him. The mad rush for earthly possessions and pleasures, the casting-off of all the reasonable restraints and restrictions which are so necessary for the survival of human society, the rejection of all things spiritual in man’s make-up, the general incitement of the animal instincts in man – all these are signs of the rejection of Christ.

 Let us use these days of preparation for Christmas to ready ourselves for Christ’s daily coming and Second Coming, remembering that the Second Coming will occur for each one of us on the day of our death, or on the Day of the Lord, whichever comes first.