Homily for 2d Sunday of Advent

Homily for the
2d Sunday of Advent

Dec. 5, 2021
Luke 3: 1-6
St. Joseph Church, New Rochelle, N.Y.

“John went thruout the whole region of the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins” (Luke 3: 3).

The Preaching of John the Baptist (Mattia Preti)

When an important dignitary comes to town—a president or a pope—the local government goes to great lengths to prepare:  repairing highways, decorating streets, repainting buildings—to make the visitor welcome and create a favorable impression.  In St. Luke’s Gospel, John the Baptist announces a divine infrastructure plan in advance of the coming of the Messiah:  “Prepare the way of the Lord” (3:4).  Roads will be straightened out and leveled, the potholes filled in.  And when the Lord appears, “all flesh shall see the salvation of God” (3:6).

This is no fantasy.  This is no myth, like the fantastic stories we read in Greek mythology.  What John the Baptist announces is real.  St. Luke drives this home by setting his account in a specific time that many of his readers would’ve remembered:  when Tiberias was emperor of Rome, when Pontius Pilate governed Judea, when Herod Antipas ruled Galilee, when Annas and Caiaphas were in charge of the temple at Jerusalem and led the priestly class there—all of them men we can read about in history books.  He places John in an identifiable place known to his readers and to countless pilgrims to the Holy Land, the Jordan River.

This is where the salvation of the world became known, its way announced in advance by John.  This is the salvation still being made known as we prepare for the celebration of the birth of Jesus the Messiah.  John wasn’t announcing his birth but his public appearance to Israel.  Before he appeared, and before we can welcome him personally later this month, John’s listeners and we have work to do:  clearing and repairing and leveling the roads.

The roadwork is, of course, a metaphor.  John “preached a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.”  Salvation will take the form of forgiveness; not political liberation from the taxes and other oppressions of Rome but spiritual liberation from Satan’s rule over our hearts and our eternal destiny.

We want to be happy.  We want the weight of guilt, anger, and spiritual filth lifted from us.  We want to be healthy and alive.  We want “the salvation of God.”

John baptizes the people who come to him—washing them clean symbolically with water in the river.  The cleansing, the forgiveness, depends upon repentance.  We’ll hear more of that next Sunday.  People have to be sorry for their wrongdoing and be willing to change their behavior, as John will specify next week to the wealthy, to tax collectors, and to soldiers.  Repentance opens up the road to forgiveness, happiness, and life.

St. Paul issues a similar call to us today in the 2d reading:  “This is my prayer:  that your love may increase ever more,” that you may “discern what is of value, so that you may be pure and blameless for the day of Christ” (Phil 1:9-10).

Advent is one of the times when parishioners are more likely to come to the sacrament of Penance, to confess their sins, to seek the spiritual cleansing of Christ.  Certainly, it’s even better to do that often—but only when our hearts are contrite, when we’re repentant.  That’s when the grace of Christ forgives us and gives us a fresh start—starts us out on a repaired and leveled road.  That’s when we can make Christ welcome, glad that he’s come into our history, and be favored by him.  That’s when he can, in the words of today’s Collect, admit us to his company, the company of God’s holy ones, forever cleansed, healed, and joyful at the banquet of eternal life.