Homily - 2nd Sunday of Advent - Sunday 10th December 2023

Homily

2nd Sunday of Advent

Sunday 10th December 2023

Christmas is drawing closer. 10 days have gone by since many started opening the Advent calendar, to reveal treats for children, counting down to Santa Claus coming. Where did it go wrong?

We are 15 days away from celebrating the Messiah’s humble arrival as a human child. Born of a Virgin, who in turn sacrificed much to accept her mission to be the mother of Our Lord Jesus Christ. God could have arrived fully grown, but he wanted to have all the same experiences as we do, by coming into the world as a vulnerable child, relying on his human mother, Mary, and adopted father, Joseph.

This experience allowed him to communicate with us humans, so as the adult Jesus, he could proclaim the Good News about the Kingdom of God, when his mission would begin some thirty years later, until his death on the cross outside Jerusalem. The human temple of God would be destroyed but raised again three days later. Jesus would on the day of his crucifixion, take on all the sins of the world as a living sacrifice. The one and only sacrifice that would be acceptable to God Our Father for the forgiveness of all our sins.

This second Sunday of Advent, we are reminded once more to prepare for Jesus’s arrival. Peter tells us that Our Lord is not slow getting here but is being patient, to give all a chance to be saved. None of his flock should be lost. So, although to the Lord a day is like a thousand years and a thousand years is like a day, it is not to make us suffer but to give us every opportunity to prepare for his Second Coming.

Isaiah prophesied about the voice in the wilderness calling to prepare a way for the Lord. Mark starts his Gospel, with a sense of urgency, not with details about Jesus’s birth and childhood, but with Jesus’s cousin John, known as the Baptist, the messenger going before him the prepare the way. Unfit to tie Jesus’s sandals, John proclaimed a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. He baptised with water but knew Jesus would baptise with the Holy Spirit.

So how should we prepare? Bishop of Saginaw, Kenneth Untener, suggested in his 2002 homily for his day, that we think of repentance as rethinking, to look deeply at our lives and how we have fallen away from our love of God. We need to see things differently, to help us to change our ways.

All of us, even Jesus, have been tempted. The Devil spends night and day observing us, watching our behaviour to see how he can tap into our blind spots and tempt us away from following God. Unlike Jesus, who never gave in to temptation, we act on how we are being tempted, even though we know it is wrong, and fall into sin. Sin is our consent, “a deliberate act of the human will” (Delany, 1912) to follow through to satisfy ourselves knowing we have done wrong and separated ourselves from God. Fallen from Grace.

In our reflection on these deliberate acts, we can see how to “reform our lives” (Untener, 2002) to be more like God, and become Holy. Bishop Untener (2002) suggests we think of sin as a “failure to live up to the gift of (God’s) own Spirit within us”. In the last two weeks before Christmas, he encourages us to acknowledge our sins, not vaguely, but to find a place where you can be alone and say out loud specifically how you have not lived up to the Holy Spirit within you.

In the counselling room, it is only by recognising where our lives have gone wrong, by speaking to another person, that we can gain new insights and begin to change our lives. Hearing oneself say the words out loud has a profound effect.

This could be your own preparation for going along to the Sacrament of Reconciliation. To confess to a priest, who is not there to judge you but simply to be a witness, as the agent of God, that Jesus is there with you, listening and forgiving you of any sins acted out after baptism (Trese, 2000).

Time is short and we must prepare.

Reference

Delany, J. F. (1912). Temptation. [Online]. The Catholic Encyclopedia.. Available at: http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/14504a.htm [Accessed 7 December 2023].

Loyola Press. (2023). Second Sunday of Advent, Cycle B. [Online]. Loyola Press. Available at: https://www.loyolapress.com/catholic-resources/liturgical-year/sunday-connection/second-sunday-of-ad [Accessed 7 December 2023].

Trese, L. (2000). The Sacrament of Reconciliation: Rising Again to New Life. [Online]. Beginning Catholic. Available at: https://www.beginningcatholic.com/sacrament-of-reconciliation [Accessed 7 December 2023].

Untener, K. E. (2002). 2nd Sunday of Advent Year B. [Online]. Visitation North Spirituality Center. Available at: http://www.visitationnorth.org/index.php/year-b-mark/28-second-sunday-of-advent-year-b [Accessed 7 December 2023].

Young Catholics. (2023). 2nd Sunday of Advent Year B. [Online]. Young Catholics. Available at: https://young-catholics.com/3060/2nd-sunday-of-advent-year-b/ [Accessed 7 December 2023].

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