Homily for the Second Sunday of Advent, Year B
Comfort, give comfort to my people,
says your God.
Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and proclaim to her
that her service is at an end,
her guilt is expiated;
indeed, she has received from the hand of the LORD
double for all her sins.Isaiah 40:1-2
The Lord does not delay his promise, as some regard “delay,”
but he is patient with you,
not wishing that any should perish
but that all should come to repentance.
But the day of the Lord will come like a thief,
and then the heavens will pass away with a mighty roar
and the elements will be dissolved by fire,
and the earth and everything done on it will be found out.Since everything is to be dissolved in this way,
what sort of persons ought you to be,
conducting yourselves in holiness and devotion,
waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God,
because of which the heavens will be dissolved in flames
and the elements melted by fire.
But according to his promise
we await new heavens and a new earth
in which righteousness dwells.
Therefore, beloved, since you await these things,
be eager to be found without spot or blemish before him, at peace.-2 Peter 3:8-14
The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ the Son of God.
As it is written in Isaiah the prophet:
Behold, I am sending my messenger ahead of you;
he will prepare your way.
A voice of one crying out in the desert:
“Prepare the way of the Lord,
make straight his paths.”
John the Baptist appeared in the desert
proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.
People of the whole Judean countryside
and all the inhabitants of Jerusalem
were going out to him
and were being baptized by him in the Jordan River
as they acknowledged their sins.
John was clothed in camel’s hair,
with a leather belt around his waist.
He fed on locusts and wild honey.
And this is what he proclaimed:
“One mightier than I is coming after me.
I am not worthy to stoop and loosen the thongs of his sandals.
I have baptized you with water;
he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.”-Mark 1:1-8
A holy Italian sister, a consecrated woman and foundress whom I had the good fortune to know once, told me that when she heard warnings of dire punishments from Our Lady in one of the current apparitions she wanted to say, “Madonna mia, lascia mi vivere!— “My dear Madonna, let me live!”
This lady had spent her life promoting devotion to Our Lady, and she was completely orthodox. If we examine the matter in our own hearts, we may find that we have a similar reaction. Who is more loving and reassuring than the Mother of God? And so it is distressing to hear her tell of coming chastisements.
Well, the readings of the beginning of Advent and the weeks at the end of the Church’s year are full of warnings about coming judgment. These warnings come from the prophets and from the prophet of prophets St. John the Baptist, and most of all, from Our Lord himself. And in our own times even Our Lady has come to warn and admonish us.
All of the readings for this second Sunday of Advent provide us with the key for understanding what could seem so harsh. “Comfort, give comfort to my people.”
“Speak tenderly to Jerusalem.” “He is patient with you, not wishing that anyone should perish.” “John appeared…proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.”
Yes, this old world will be destroyed by fire at the end, but the next instant is a “new heaven and a new earth where righteousness dwells.”
The Lord’s and the prophet’s and the apostle’s warnings are always accompanied by the promise of forgiveness and future happiness. As we have just seen they speak of comfort and of tender speech and forgiveness. At Fatima just a hundred years ago Our Lady told us, “My Immaculate Heart will be your refuge and the way that will lead you to God.”
Yet when we hear St. Peter tell us, “Since everything is to be dissolved in this way, what sort of persons ought you to be, conducting yourselves in holiness and devotion, waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God” we can feel more than a little pang. Yes, indeed, what sort of persons ought we to be, given the knowledge we have of the coming judgment and the end of this world?
Sometimes our lives can seem just a mass of imperfections and sins, great and small. What are we to do? The answer is simple. We must repent, not once, or twice, but daily. The Savior said that he came to call sinners, not the righteous to repentance. The prospect of punishment is only a warning of love, and the Lord always points to his Sacred Heart as our refuge and the source of unfailing mercy.
In these very trying times on so many fronts, we should rejoice that we know the way, and we do not need to be perplexed or discouraged by disorder, whether in ourselves or in the world around us. We have been warned, but we have also been unutterably loved, and if we turn to God daily and continually Our Lord and his Blessed Mother will “let us live.”