SECOND SUNDAY OF THE YEAR - C

THE SECOND SUNDAY OF ADVENT – YEAR C (Baruk 5:1-9; Phil 1:4-6, 8-11; Luke 3:1-6) Theme: We are invited to be the sign of hope in and for the deserted world Reflection: Advent is a time to prepare our hearts to the coming of Jesus - Preparing the way is required: We enter into the second Sunday of Advent. Our preparation is speeded up. In fact, we have completed one week of preparation. We have been attending and embracing the moments in which the Lord is to come. This was the theme of last Sunday, the first Sunday of Advent. We need to open our eyes and see the reality around us so that we can be attentive to the presence of the Lord amidst us. We need to open our hearts and invite the Lord whom we have found through our faith so that He dwells in us and pitches his tent within us. This is the heart of the message of advent: to attend with hope and to embrace with love Jesus who is coming to us. In order to receive him into our life we need to prepare well our heart and our life. - Inviting the guest is the human concern: Jesus is at our door. He has come. He is knocking the door of our life. He wishes to enter in and to be with us. He desires to stay very closer to us. We call upon him: Come! Lord Jesus! We shout with loud voice: prepare the way for the Lord. We sing to him: Maranatha, come and reign our hearts. Is it enough? Our vocal invitation, our verbal call and our noisy singing are only external welcome. External invitation is not enough. We need to do something more. We need to listen to his knock. We need to open the door. We need to invite him personally accompanying him into the house. We take utmost care and we put lot of preparation when a guest comes to visit us. We make two-fold preparation. There is material preparation: we clean the house; we put beautiful carpets; we keep the house with neatness and colorfulness; the previous day itself we buy all that is necessary for providing good dinner; when the actual day comes we put on new vesting and wait for his arrival; and finally, enough any small noise on the door we eagerly open the door as though the guest has already arrived. There is also mental preparation: our mind will be little active and little anxious; little active because we love the guest who is coming and thus we want to give our best; little anxious because we do not want to see any inconvenience to take place; we get to mind all the memories of the past of the guest; our heart gets overwhelmed with the thought of the presence of the guest; when the actual moment of the guest’s arrival appears the heart beat gets doubled; lot of cheer on the face; eyes blow with the joy; and finally we cannot but embrace with lot of affection and love the guest. This is the preparation we make to invite a guest who come into our home just to make a visit. We do it because of our human concern and we make the visit a memorable one. - Holding tight the guest of our life is the Christian concern: Advent is the time where we wait for Jesus who comes as a guest. He comes not as a passing guest but as a guest of our life. He comes to stay with us. He comes to live with us. He comes to share his entire existence with us. He comes to make our existence a beautiful and happy one. How much care and concern we need to take? With lot of joy we may prepare our home materially as we do it for the Christmas, the Birth of the Eternal Guest. But the Guest who is coming does not want material preparation. He prefers for the psychological and spiritual preparation. What we need to do is not a casual preparation. We need to prepare our heart. Our heart is already occupied with lot of earthly concerns and passing passions. The dirt of the intentions are to be purified. The walls of heart has to be decorated with the beautiful words and kind deeds. The holes of falsity, untimely fear and useless worries have to be restored with the power of love and desire for the truth. This is the ultimate and highest form of preparation we can make to invite the guest. Words must be surpassed with the actions. Noise and sounds must be replaced by silence and reflection. Only then the knocking of the Eternal Guest is heard clearly. Only then His voice reaches to our heart. Finally, we jump with joy when He arrives because we have already prepared well a beautiful dwelling place for him in our life. He comes and remains with us. His stay transforms our life. We find an unending joy in his presence. The time of Advent is the time to prepare our life in this manner: interior beauty of the heart is the only place that Jesus finds as his appropriate and worthy dwelling. We need to strive for such preparation. The liturgy of the word, today, calls upon for this interior preparation. Readings: Advent is a time to acknowledge and fulfill our mission and vocation - Appearance of John the Baptist: The Gospel passage from Luke presents to us the figure and the personage name John. He appears as the Baptist because he calls the people into the reception of baptism. He starts cleansing the people from their sins if they truly repent and enter into the waters of Jordan. Even prior to this mission of baptizing people, John’s appearance is connected with various socio-political elements. Luke is very particular in bringing the connection between the appearance of the person and the political situation. He does this for two reasons: o God’s interventions in the history and in the space of time: God acts for his people. He desires to stay with them. He comes to them in order to bring them from their fallen state of sin and death to the risen state of glory and eternal bliss. God is so kind and loving that He personally relates himself to his people. His mercy for them makes him to enter into the rapport with them. This is not just a tale or a story in the air. This is a concrete and real intervention of God through various means: his prophets, his spokesmen, his kings and different forms of conversing with his people. At least, from the time of calling of Abraham and creating for himself a nation with which He calls all other nations into the close knit with him, this design and action of God appears as taking place in real history. Luke wants to indicate that God does not act anymore in the air; that his relationship with the people is no more a story of human creation and imagination; above all, he wants to stress upon the concrete action of God in the history of humanity and in time and space. Like all the personalities of the Old Testament, John the Baptist’s appearance also indicates that God acts through him in the particular time, in the particular place, under particular political dominion, and in the particular mode. It is for this purpose that Luke connects the person of John the Baptist with the narration of the political and social conditions of the time. The text makes this clear to us (Luke 3:1-2). It is in this political context that God sends His word through John the Baptist. Thus, God’s word is revealed not somewhere in the remote distances but in the very history of the humanity. o God’s invitation to the conversion and new life: The appearance of John the Baptist is in fact a call that God extends to all the people to return to Him. It is not the first time that God calls his people to change their life and come back to him. He does it often through various prophets. This is yet another instance in which God’s invitation arrives to the people. This instance and the presence of John is very particular because it is a proclamation, proclamation of God’s salvation that is going to appear very soon and in very near future. John is aware of his mission. His mission is only to prepare the way for the great day of salvation and calling the people to get ready to meet the day. The meeting of God’s redemptive design is possible only when they are alert and awake with the change of mind and purification of the heart. He calls for the penitence and the conversion for the forgiveness of sin by receiving a baptism (v.3). The repentance which is in Greek denoted as metanoia means to change not only moral attitude but also and above all, to change the mentality. Change of thinking, change of expressing and change of behaving. John faithfully accomplishes his mission of predicating the good news of salvation. - Every man will see the salvation of God (v.6): John is the personage that the Church provides us for this week to reflect and also to learn to be mindful of our personal mission that God has endowed us with. The last phrase of the Gospel is the destiny of every missionary appeal. God offers salvation to all and all have the possibility of participating in this salvation. Luke wishes to give a particular message by bringing the words of prophet Isaiah through the mouth of John the Baptist: that God will that all men are saved. Here the message of God takes its wide range and extend to all the corners of the earth. God’s love and his restoration embrace every human being. The salvation of God goes beyond the confines of social, political, cultural and religious aspects. This will take place in the advent of God’s Son who will offer his life for the world as the testimony of God’s ultimate love for humanity. The message of John thus takes new shape (breaking the barriers) and gives new hope (salvation for all). Conclusion: Sign of hope for the passage from the waiting of desert to the finding of well-springs - John is a sign of hope in the desert: The appearance and the proclamation of John in the desert is a living sign of hope for the people of Israel. John could have very well stayed amidst the people and given the message of conversion to the people. It would have been more easier and convenient. But his presence is not in the centre of people nor his predication in the streets of the villages. His mission has its realization in the desert. Why this accent on the desert? There is enough significance. The desert indicates the condition of the people of Israel. Their life is like a desert. They are in desperation. They are without joy. They are without any guide and prophets. They became abandoned. For more than five hundred years they are without God’s prophet who can sustain them. In this condition, John appears as God’s merciful providence to them. God speaks to them again through him. God promises them the nearness of their salvation. The presence of John in the desert signifies that God is entering and embracing their condition to change it and to vest it with the garments of joy. Therefore, John’s presence is a sign of hope for them that their deserted life will be transformed into the life of salvation. - The world is like a desert: On one hand, may be, it is growing rapidly with the technological and scientific researches and as the result man is mastering the world. On the other hand, the danger also exists along with the growth. Man is ignoring and neglecting the presence and power of God who is the author of every life, as a result he becomes selfish, egoistic, consumerist, and finally loses his soul and spiritual life. As he moves closer to the economic, political, social and personal status, he moves away from the manifestation of faith and preservation of the soul. Jesus admonishes: if a man gains whole world and loses his soul, what would be the profit he makes. The world is in reality without true joy. It has become mechanic. System rules it and machines dominate it. Man and his physical, psychological and spiritual world remains unconcerned. There is lot of mental stress and power struggle. Man is working hard and hard and working without any rest. Finally, his work and his living do not balance. At the end of the day, he finds himself at loss. Family is disturbed with the problems of egoistic imbalances: brokenness in the affection and sentiment. Social is affected with the problems of predominance and selfish growth: false prestige takes the upper hand. Mental life is suppressed with the struggle between right to live and scarcity of the possibility to life: loss of peace and tranquility. Spiritual life is at stake with the incoherence between the testimony of the word and the testimony of life: creature questions the creator. Such is the condition of the world and of the man who lives in it. What could be the possible sign of hope for this world? - We are to be the sign of salvation in the deserted world: Today, we are called to be that hope. Our presence in the world to be a sign of salvation and a good news of joy to the world around us. It is possible only when recognize our Christian vocation. Our vocation is to receive the grace from the Lord, live and testimony it with word and deed, and finally to spread the inner joy to the fellow being in and around us. Our presence should give a hope that the Lord is visiting his people. Our predication should lead the people to the springs of authentic and true human life. Our life should be a sign post which guides those who are in utter depression and total loss of life to the feet of the cross. Only there, and there alone, they can drink the waters of renewed life and the blood of salvation. Therefore, advent is the time in which we need to be the testimony of God’s presence and his constant visit to each and every person. We need to do it first of with the interior and personal growth in faith. Then we need to live a coherent life between what we say and what we do. Only then our proclamation will have some effect on the lives of those whom we meet. We need to prepare ourselves to be the way for the coming of the Lord so that all will see His salvation in us and through us.