Homily
for the
2d
Sunday of Advent
Dec.
6, 2020
Mark
1: 1-8
2
Pet 3: 8-14
Holy
Name of Jesus, Valhalla, N.Y.
“The beginning of the
gospel of Jesus Christ the Son of God” (Mark 1: 1).
Last week we began a
new church year and switched our Sunday gospels from St. Luke to St. Mark. The passage from Mark that we read last
Sunday spoke of Jesus’ 2d coming, which is the 1st theme of the Advent season,
a theme present most vividly in today’s 2d reading.
(Despite all the
advertising we’re subjected to at this time, and all the music you hear on the
radio, Christmas is not here. We’re in a
season of preparation, a season of longing, for Christ’s coming—his 2d coming,
his coming in his saving ministry, and the commemoration of his 1st coming at
Bethlehem.)
It’s the “middle
coming” that claims our attention today, the coming of Jesus of Nazareth’s
public ministry, thru which he saves us from our sins and restores us to God.
St. Mark opens his
Gospel with an announcement of what he’s offering us: “the beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ
the Son of God.” That 1st noun,
“beginning,” echoes the 1st words of the entire Bible, the entire message of
God’s dealings with humanity: “In the
beginning God created the heavens and the earth” (Gen 1:1). Mark is telling us now of a new creation, of
God’s remaking of reality, thru his Son Jesus Christ.
Mark calls his
writing a “gospel,” a word that means “good news.” When he wrote it, possibly in the late 60s
A.D., it was a completely new literary form.
It’s the “good news” of Jesus Christ—a phrase which can be interpreted in
2 ways: the good news about Jesus
Christ, informing us about him and his message, as one might read a biography
of Theodore Roosevelt or Amelia Earhart; or the good news that Jesus Christ brings,
the good news coming from Jesus Christ, the content and the import of his
message that confronts us and makes us choose to hear it or not.
John announces the
one for whom we’re waiting: not a
delicate baby but “one mightier than I.
He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit” (1:7,8) rather than with
symbolic water. Being washed by the Holy
Spirit will be a genuine cleansing of our sins, and this will be effected by
the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ the Son of God. This divine work of redemption begins with
the coming of Christ in his public preaching and healing, which John announces
is at hand.
Redemption will be
completed on the day of the Lord’s re-appearing, of his return, a “day coming
like a thief” at nite, says St. Peter (2 Pet 3:10), when all of creation as we
know it will be dissolved (3:11) and “everything done on earth will be found
out” (3:10). Therefore, now is the
moment to listen to John the Baptist and prepare for the Lord’s final coming by
heeding the message of his 1st coming.
“Be eager,” St. Peter exhorts us, “to be found without spot or blemish
before him, at peace” (3:14).
Advent doesn’t have
the same penitential character that Lent does.
Nevertheless, it’s a season for repentance, for looking eagerly toward
the Lord, for preparing to receive him wholeheartedly—in the sacraments of
Reconciliation and the Eucharist, and at that sacred moment, entirely unknown
to us but absolutely certain to come, when he’ll call us forth to meet him,
filled with his Holy Spirit, so as to “gain admittance to the company” of Jesus
Christ the Son of God” (cf. Collect).
Art credit: St. Mary Church, Fredericksburg, Va.
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