topleft05.jpg (18208 bytes)HOMILY
Second Sunday in Advent (B)
08 December 02


 

As I drove around yesterday running some errands, I counted dozens of cars bearing Christmas trees.  Some were tied down to the roof of the car; others were jammed into the trunk.  And, then, there was one SUV that had a two‑foot tall tree anchored to its roof and lit with those little Italian light bulbs.  I'm not sure why they're called "Italian" light bulbs; for all I know, they might be Polish or Chinese light bulbs.  But, people were toting their Christmas trees home so that they could be set up and decorated for the Christmas holidays.

Forget shopping at King of Prussia Mall.  KWY said the Route 202 interchange was a disaster.  So, I went to Kohls in Blue Bell instead.  It was hard enough to find a parking space and, once inside, the store's aisles resembled what reminded me my little brother's ant colony.  People were scurrying about pushing carts stuffed with a bonanza of merchandize just waiting to be wrapped and, then, placed beneath the tree.  I actually had to be careful as I maneuvered through the aisles because people weren't watching where they were walking; they were just plowing ahead to the next department.

From the look of things, lots of people are getting ready for Christmas and preparing to celebrate the Lord's coming.

As I looked about at people in Kohls , I noted many of them¾especially the adults¾were deadly serious about their preparations.  They weren't, for the most part, cheerful or smiling.  No, they were more anxious and in a hurry.  Their pursed lips and furrowed brows indicated that they were tense, perhaps because they had so many things to do and so little time to do them in.  There were other people, too¾especially the kids¾who were equally as serious as were the adults.  But, in contrast, the faces of these people were filled with excitement, happiness, expectation, and wonder.  As they would peruse all of the merchandise surrounding them, it was easy to see that there was so much they wanted.  But, there was also a look of sadness, I think having to do with the amount of time they would have to wait until they could feast their eyes upon the "cornucopia of unbridled avarice" they envisioned awaiting them on Christmas morning.  "Oh the pain!" their faces seemed to communicate.

Contrasting these experiences with the words of John the Baptist in today's gospel, we have a sobering reminder that all of these preparations¾as important as they are¾are really misdirected because they have very little or nothing to do with preparing for the advent of the Lord.  Listen carefully to what John the Baptist says: "Prepare the way of the Lord...make straight his ways."  In contrast to all of the hustle and bustle characterizing the weeks and days between Thanksgiving and Christmas Day, preparing for the advent of the Lord is a different kind of very hard work, namely, spiritual work.  This work has nothing to do with our hands or our feet.  Instead, this work has to do with our minds and our hearts.

Advent is the time we prepare for the Lord's coming into our lives.  This preparation involves the very hard spiritual work of looking at ourselves, of surveying the wreckage we've made of things, of examining the wasteland we have created, and of uprooting the vestiges of evil and sin from our heart.  We do this work in order to prepare ourselves so that, when the Lord comes, we can give Him the best gift of all, namely, the gift of a pure heart.

Today's first reading from the prophet Isaiah provides words of hope and solace as God tells the prophet: "Comfort, give comfort to my people."  In the midst of all of the hustle and bustle, as we survey the "busyness" associated with the holidays, isn't it just a bit of comfort what we truly desire?  At the end of a long day of making preparations for Christmas, don't we all say, "Comfort, Lord, just give me some comfort!"

But, that is not what John the Baptist is preaching about.

The Baptist is quoting Isaiah the prophet who God instructed to prophesy those words after decades of pain and destruction and only after overwhelming and devastation had visited the Israelite people.  Until the Israelites could see the wasteland they had created by wandering away from God could they, in turn, appreciate the fact that the only true and abiding comfort they really needed was to be found in God alone.

Instead, the Israelites stubbornly had refused to recognize this need and chose instead to blind themselves by seeking comfort in the false allure of ambition, power, greed, and domination.  They had turned their backs on the One who had created, sustained, and sanctified them.  They had hardened their hearts against the One in whom they would find their true identity.  The Israelites were God's people; they weren't free to do whatever they pleased and whenever they pleased.  No, in all that they did, the Israelites were to make straight the way of the Lord, to be the beacon of light on the hill shining in the darkness.  Through their freely willed choices, the Israelites had chosen to live in the dark valleys as exiles.

Now, for forty years, the Israelites were paying the price for their choices.  They were living subject not to God's authority in the Promised Land but subject to the power of their Babylonian oppressors in a foreign land.  And, after forty years of refusing to recognize their exile as the consequence of their freely-willed choices, the Israelites were teetering on the verge of doubt and despair.  Not blaming themselves for allowing their country to fall into their enemy's hands, the Israelites were blaming God.  And, rather than admitting that they had abandoned God, the Israelites were blaming God for abandoning them.

The experience of the Israelites is not some obscure artifact or history buried deep in the sands of the Ancient Near East.  No, their infidelity and captivity to the consequences of their freely-willed choices is just as true for us today as it was for them in biblical times.  All of us, human beings that we are¾or as Nietzsche wrote, "human, all too human"¾make some very poor decisions through which we forsake our identity as God's beloved.  But, like the Israelites, it will not be until we recognize that we have chosen the wasteland by wandering away from God that we, in turn, can appreciate the fact that the only true and abiding comfort we really need is found in God alone.  Perhaps some of us have realized our complicity with evil and, after many years, feel resigned to our captivity.  And, maybe there are others of us, like the Israelites, who after decades of captivity to the consequences of sin are now teetering on the verge of doubt and despair, blaming God for abandoning us rather than admitting that we abandoned God.

In Hebrew, the word "comfort" means "courage."  Giving comfort does not mean "being comfortable."  No, it means acting courageously by facing the consequences of the choices that we have made and the captivity into which we've enslaved ourselves.  Giving comfort does not mean looking at and blaming others for the wreckage of our lives.  No, giving comfort means taking an honest and sober look at ourselves and making straight the way of the Lord.

"Courage, give courage to my people," says the Lord.  The comfort that we seek, just as the ancient Israelites did, the comfort we hope and long for, comes not from the fleeing and momentary pleasure that Christmas gifts provide.  No, this comfort comes as we have the courage to enter the wasteland we've created through our freely-willed choices, to realize the overwhelming disasters we have wrought and, then, to make straight the pathway of the Lord.  Advent is the time for this arduous spiritual work so that, when the Lord comes, we can give Him the gift of a pure heart.

 

 

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