Homily for the
2d Sunday of Advent
Matt 3: 1-12
St. Francis Xavier,
Bronx
Dec. 4, 2022
Blessed Sacrament, New
Rochelle, N.Y.
“He will clear his
threshing floor and gather his wheat into his barn, but the chaff he will burn
with unquenchable fire” (Matt 3: 12)
In today’s gospel we meet St. John the Baptist, the forerunner or advance agent for Christ. We’re preparing to celebrate Christmas, remembering that Christ was born into our human history 2 millennia ago. John is preparing “Jerusalem, all Judea, and the whole region around the Jordan” (3:5), i.e., the people who lived in those places, for the appearance of Christ. Jesus has been living quietly, secretly as it were, in Nazareth for a quarter century following the Holy Family’s return from exile in Egypt (cf. Matt 2:19-23). Now his public appearance and his announcing of God’s presence among us is about to happen. John’s mission is to get people ready for that.
Readiness for the
coming of the kingdom of heaven, John proclaims, begins with repentance (3:2). One must admit one’s sinfulness and decide to
break away from it. There’s no room for
sin in God’s kingdom. Bp. Robert Barron
comments:
“Repent” … might be a dirty word to many
people today, but it cuts to the heart of every one of us, precisely because we
all know that our lives are not where they are supposed to be. We have all fallen short of the glory of God;
we have all fallen into patterns of self-absorption and addiction. So let us hear John’s word today: “Repent.”
It’s a command to turn around, to start to move in a new direction.[1]
The next step in getting ready for the
kingdom is to practice virtue. John
commands, “Produce good fruit as evidence of your repentance” (3:8). Saying, “I’m sorry” for my sins is
insufficient; it’s only a start on the journey into the kingdom of heaven. I must make an effort to change my behavior,
my manner of speaking, even my way of thinking.
Instead of gossip, I must speak well of others, or at the least, not
tell harmful tales about others or attribute bad motives to what they do. Instead of lying and fibbing, I must be
truthful. Instead of impure actions, I
must be chaste, restrained, respectful of others.
John points out that his baptisms in the
Jordan River are symbolic: “I’m
baptizing you with water, for repentance” (3:11), i.e., as an outward sign of
your interior sorrow for your sins and purpose of amendment; or perhaps as a
sign to stir up those motives in your hearts.
But John’s washings are only symbolic; they don’t effect what they
symbolize, a cleansing of the soul, as Christian Baptism does.
That’s because “the one who is coming
after” John “is mightier…. He will
baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire” (3:11). The power of the Holy Spirit given by the one
who will follow John—viz., Jesus—will cleanse your sins. The fire of the Spirit will purge your
soul. Repent, for he is at hand!
Then comes an ominous warning: “His winnowing fan is in his hand. He’ll clear his threshing floor and gather
his wheat into his barn, but the chaff he’ll burn with unquenchable fire”
(3:12). The baptism of fire by the
Mighty One who’s coming will result in an unending burning of the chaff
separated from the wheat that will be saved.
That’s an agricultural image that John’s audience would have understood
instantly. After wheat was harvested,
the stalks were laid out on a threshing floor and beaten until the heads of
grain were separated from the stalks.
Then the farmers would use winnowing fans, rake-like tools, and toss it
all into the air. The wind would blow
away the light-weight stalks and husks, while the heavier grain would fall back
to the floor, to be gathered up and eventually pounded into good flour for
baking bread.
One way of reading
this ominous-sounding verse is to take it as a promise of judgment between
righteous people—those who’ve repented of their sins—and evil people, who’ve
not repented. The wheat will be saved,
and the chaff will be condemned to everlasting hellfire. It’s similar to Jesus’ parable of the Last
Judgment in Matt 25, in which the Son of Man separates the faithful sheep from
the wicked goats.
Bp. Barron, however, in another writing,
offers an alternate reading of the verse:
So the Christ, John the Baptist is telling us, will shake us up, separating out what is good in us from what is wicked. The process, like that of dividing wheat from chaff, will be time-consuming and labor-intensive, but the end result will be the elimination of dross within our bodies and our souls.
The bishop then attributes this winnowing of our personal wickedness from our souls to the working of the Holy Spirit within us, burning out the evil.[2] In traditional Catholic theology, that’s called purgatory, in which we’re purged or cleansed of our sinfulness and made worthy of being gathered into the Lord’s barn, into the heavenly kingdom.Of course, the Lord also works to
cleanse us even in this life. Our sufferings
from illness, injury, disappointment, heartache, or anything else; our freely
chosen acts of penance; our reception of Christ’s grace in the
sacraments—these touch us with the fire of the Holy Spirit. When our sins afflict us and burden us, the
Holy Spirit comes to our rescue by connecting us to our Lord Jesus and, as
today’s Collect prayed, “gain[s] us admittance to his company,” to eternal life
among his friends in the kingdom of God.
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