Building And Traveling The Royal Road of Conversion, Forgiveness and Holiness, Second Sunday of Advent (C), December 8, 2024

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan
Second Sunday of Advent, Year C
December 8, 2024
Bar 5:1-9, Ps 126, Phil 1:1:4-6.8-11, Lk 3:1-6

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below:

The following text guided the homily: 

• College years are a period of intense growth: intellectually, for sure; physically, still for most; relationally, in terms of friendships that can last a lifetime. It’s also meant to be a time for great spiritual growth and character formation, with the formation of virtuous habits that can help us grow in the likeness of God, experience the joy that God wants to give us, and help us to become the type of persons that can lift everyone up around us. St. Paul in today’s second reading shared aloud a prayer for the growth of the new Christians in the Greek city of Philippi and presented quite clearly the criteria for what would be positive growth. It has a particular Advent significance as we prepare in this season not just to meet Christ in history in Bethlehem or in mystery in the Sacraments but in majesty at the end of time or the end of our life, whichever comes first. The apostle prayed that “the one who began a good work in you will continue to complete it until the day of Christ Jesus.”
• God began a great work in us in creating us in the womb and infusing our soul, advanced it in baptism, and has been seeking to advance that work of holiness ever since, through the sacraments we’ve received, the lessons our parents have taught us, the religious education we’ve received at home and in our parishes, even the many opportunities for growth in our prayer life, in communal life, in knowing and sharing our faith, and in various opportunities for charity here at Columbia through the offerings of Columbia Catholic Ministry and the Merton Institute. A version of St. Paul’s prayer is said pretty much at every stage as a seminarian advances toward the priesthood and as a religious makes his or her first vows, renews vows and makes final or solemn vows: “May God who has begun this good work in you bring it to completion.” St. Paul makes quite clear what God wants to perfect in us. He states, “This is my prayer: that your love may increase ever more and more in knowledge and every kind of perception, to discern what is of value, so that you may be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ.” True growth will be seen in increased love for God and for others, in knowledge of God, and in discerning what is of lasting value versus what is vain. But it will be seen most when we grow to become “pure and blameless,” and “filled with the fruit of righteousness [or holiness] that comes from Jesus Christ.” At the beginning of this new liturgical year, the Church has us precise our focus. Just as a vine can either produce juicy sweet grapes or wild and bitter ones, so human beings can grow in good or bad directions, and the Church, echoing St. Paul’s prayer for the Philippians, wants to help us grow to produce fruit that will last, growing in love, knowledge, prayerful discernment, purity and holiness.
• That’s why the Church each year on the second Sunday of Advent each year leads us on pilgrimage to the Jordan River, so that we might enroll in the school of St. John the Baptist, hear his message summoning us to purity and blamelessness through baptism and the forgiveness of sins, and act on that summons. John’s message is urgent and clear: “Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.” In the ancient world, the roads were a mess. Every time there was a battle, the roads would be attacked and bridges destroyed, to try to stop the advance of the enemy. The weather took its toll as well, leading to all types of serious potholes and other obstacles. Any time a dignitary would be coming, they would have either to fix the roads or build new ones so that the rolling caravan accompanying him could arrive without delay or hassle. John the Baptist is telling us that to get ready to meet the Lord who is coming for us we, too, need to prepare a way for him. We, too, need to make straight the paths. Quoting the prophet Isaiah (Is 40:4), John blares, “Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways made smooth” (Lk 3:5). We have to call those topographical formations by their proper spiritual names. We have to make low the mountains of our pride and egocentrism. We have to fill in the valleys that come from a shallow prayer life, a minimalistic way of living our faith, a superficial way of living friendship with God and others. We have to straighten out whatever crooked paths we’ve been walking: if we’ve been involved in some secret sinful behaviors, the Lord calls us through John the Baptist to end them; if we’ve been engaged in some dishonest practices, we’re called to stop them out and do restitution; if we’ve been harboring grudges or hatred, or failing to reconcile with others, now’s the time to clear away all the debris; and if we’ve been pushing God off the side of the road, if we’ve been saying to Him that we don’t really have the time for him, now’s the time to get our priorities straight.
• To preach conversion through the forgiveness of sins is the mission of the Baptist, which is why we encounter him every Advent. His whole vocation, his whole mission, his whole life as the Lord’s precursor, was to deliver that message. Before he was conceived, the Archangel Gabriel had said to his dad, Zechariah, “He will turn the hearts of many of the people of Israel to the Lord their God. With the spirit and power of Elijah, he will go before the Lord, to turn … the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous, to make ready a people prepared for the Lord” (Lk 1:16-17). Nine months later at his birth, Zechariah exclaimed, “You, my child, will be called the prophet of the Most High; for you will go before the Lord to prepare his ways, to give his people knowledge of salvation by the forgiveness of their sins” (Lk 1:76-77). When the Baptist arrived at the Jordan, he fulfilled those prophecies, “proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of their sins,” as we read in today’s Gospel.  His first words at the Jordan were “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near” (Mt 3:2). Those were the identical words that Jesus himself would use to inaugurate his public ministry a little later, after his forty-day retreat in the desert (Mt 4:17). Thus, John was indeed the voice of Jesus crying out in the desert for “repentance” through the forgiveness of our sins. That voice and that word continue to echo live today, summoning us to be “pure and blameless for the day of Christ.” There’s a reason why John the Baptist preached at the Jordan River. It was more than just a source of water where he could baptize. It was the place that represented the border between the desert — where the Jews wandered aimlessly for 38 years after centuries of slavery in Egypt— and the Promised Land. By preaching his message there, John was inviting the Jews of his day to come out of the bondage of slavery, to leave their faults and wandering, sinful lives behind, and enter into the promised land full of God’s blessings. The Baptist preaches the same thing to us perpetually. He points us to a new exodus —from sin to sanctity, from death to life — and states very clearly that the path from the desert into the new promised land is conversion and the forgiveness of sins.
• And this is not just our work, but God’s, as Baruch tells us in the first reading. Baruch, the secretary of the Prophet Jeremiah (Jer 36:4), was writing for the Jews exiled in Babylon words of consolation that they would return from the place to which their sins had led them. Speaking to Jerusalem as if it were a person, he urged, “Look to the east and see your children gathered … at the word of the Holy One, rejoicing that they are remembered by God. Led away on foot by their enemies they left you; but God will bring them back to you, borne aloft in glory as on royal thrones. For God has commanded that every lofty mountain be made low, and that the age-old depths and gorges be filled to level ground that Israel may advance secure in the glory of God.” This points to how God himself was going to clear the path for his children, that he was going to treat them as royal dignitaries and build a highway for them to come home. We might think that making straight the paths is primarily our work of straightening things out for Jesus to come to us, but Baruch helps us to see it’s primarily God’s work making possible our being able to run to him, to return to his holy city, his dwelling place. That’s why in the Psalm today, we repeat, “The Lord has done great things for us; we are filled with joy!,” as we exclaim that the Lord has brought back the captives of Zion, restored what we lost through sin, turned our tears into joy, and converted the seeds we’ve planted into sheaves. The great Advent road-repair project is first and foremost a great work of divine mercy by which God wants to bring us from exile back home, he wants to turn our sadness to rejoicing, our sterility to fruitfulness, and our shame to glory.
• What’s the conversion to which God is calling us? Sometimes we can think about conversion as a minor course correction in our life, the elimination of one or a few bad habits and the work to build up one or few good ones. We can imagine it involves just filling in a couple of potholes or patching a couple of cracks, but, for the most part, keeping the same roads. But often, indeed for many of us, it involves building entirely new roads. This was made clear by the future Pope Benedict in an unforgettable Advent homily he preached during the Great Jubilee of the Year 2000 to catechists from around the world assembled in Rome. He said: “The fundamental content of the Old Testament is summarized in the message by John the Baptist: metanoete — Convert! There is no access to Jesus without the Baptist; there is no possibility of reaching Jesus without answering the call of the precursor. Rather, Jesus took up the message of John in the synthesis of His own preaching [repent and believe]. The Greek word for converting means: to rethink – to question one’s own and common way of living; to allow God to enter into the criteria of one’s life; to judge not merely according to the current opinions. Therefore, to convert means: not to live not as all the others live, not to do what all do, not to feel justified in dubious, ambiguous, evil actions just because others do the same; it means to begin to see one’s life through the eyes of God; thus looking for the good, even if uncomfortable; not aiming at the judgment of the majority, of men, but on the justice of God – in other words: to look for a new style of life, a new life.” For most, to convert means not just repairing a road but building a new one. It means living a new life. It means living differently.
• One of the biggest challenges for the Church in our country is that so many Christians try to live like everyone else does rather than as Christ does, and as the saints do. Rather than allow our faith to be leaven that lifts the whole world up, we permit the contaminants of the world to enter our hearts, our homes and even our Churches. We take our categories not from God, not from God’s holy ones, but from worldly gurus. We find comfort in the polls of what everyone else is thinking, saying or doing, even when such behavior is explicitly contrary to the Gospel. Rather than growing to be more like Christ, rather than increasing in love, in prayerful discernment, in purity and blamelessness, we become indistinguishable from the crowds, and some of us even gradually corrupt. Today, St. John the Baptist, and St. Paul, and ultimately Jesus, are calling us to turn away from our worldly standards, sins and idols, to turn toward Christ, and to begin to turn with him full-time. That’s what conversion means.
• But John calls us to more than conversion. His mission was not merely to announce the need for repentance, but to point out how sins would be forgiven. He told the people, “One more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the thong of his sandals” (Mk 1:7). A short time later, he saw that “more powerful one” coming to him at the Jordan and exclaimed, “Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world” (Jn 1:29). If John were physically present here tonight, dressed in his designer camel hair and leather belt, consuming his gourmet locusts and honey, his hands would point to us first to the baptismal font where our need for forgiveness is met by God’s merciful power — as it will be for many of our OCIA candidates next Sunday night — and then to Christ’s presence in the confessional through his priests, where the Lamb of God takes away our sins, the sins for which he paid such a precious price on Calvary.
• Many Catholics do not have sufficient appreciation for what Christ wants to do for us in the Sacrament of Confession. He comes with his bulldozers, backhoes, and heavy equipment to be able to make straight the path for us to come back fully into his graces, but sometimes we don’t give him the chance. One of the most insidious lies of the evil one in some parts of the Church today is to convince us that the Sacrament of Confession is an optional part of the Catholic faith. It’s in fact part of canon law, a precept of the Church, and a condition to being a Catholic in good standing in the Church, that we would make a good confession at least once a year. But throughout the generations, most Catholics would make a good confession at least twice a year, one during Advent, at the beginning of a new liturgical year and in preparation for Christmas, and a second time in Lent, so that that they would be able worthily to receive Jesus’ risen Body and Blood in Holy Communion at Easter. Various recent surveys, however, have shown that about 45 percent of Catholics never go to the Sacrament of Reconciliation and another 30 percent go less than annually. 38 percent of daily Mass goers, 73 percent of Sunday Mass goers, and 94 percent of irregular Mass going Catholics either never receive the Sacrament or receive it less than once a year (CARA). The evil one has a vested interest in keeping us from the Sacrament of Penance because he wants us to live and die in our sins and absolutely not be forgiven of them. He does not want us to be pure and blameless, filled with the righteousness that comes from Jesus. Far more than trying to get us to commit specific sins, he really desires us to become hardened sinners through not repenting and coming to the Lord who wants to cleanse us in his mercy and to bring good even out of the sins we have committed. Jesus said clearly in the Gospel that only the sick need a doctor, that only sinners need a savior, and the devil wants to get us to buy the lie that we really don’t need Jesus to save us from our sins.
• Pope Francis has worked very hard to oppose this diabolical lie. I’ll never forget his first Sunday as Pope. I was in Rome doing color-commentary for the papal conclave for EWTN television. He said, “God never tires of forgiving us. It’s we who tire of asking for forgiveness.” And he prayed: “May we never tire of asking for what God never tires to give.” He himself has said openly that goes to confession at least every two weeks. Catholics who really are trying to grow in their faith to come to confession at least a month. St. John Paul II was once asked the most important thing by young people what was the most important thing they could do to grow in faith, and he surprised them by saying, “Go frequently to confession!” The reason is not only so that we can remain in the grace of the Lord — remain in communion with him and receive his life — but also so that we can grow massively in self-knowledge and know where we need God’s help most. When we make a good examination of conscience, he said, we begin to see the ways we’re regularly tempted, and that dramatically changes our prayer, as we learn how to go to the Lord and ask his help, for example, to put him first, be patient with our friends, respectful with our parents, charitable to those in need, chaste online and in our relationships, forgiving to those who have hurt us, and so on. One of my most important commitments to you over these last two and a half years has been in making the Sacrament of Confession available. Each semester I have heard about 140 hours of confessions. I’ve had the privilege, as every priest confessor does, to see the good work that God is trying to bring to completion in his people, as they go from confession to conversion, humbly allow him even to bring good out of their sins. This week I’ll be hearing confessions as I normally do every day from 11-12, but on Tuesday, the first day of the study period, I will be hearing confessions from 9 in the morning through 5:30 pm, with the only break to celebrate Mass at 12:10. My hope is to make God’s mercy as accessible and easy as possible for you to receive. Please put me to work! In case any of you might be afraid to come for any reason, please know that in the Confessional here, you can go either anonymously or face-to-face, whichever you prefer. In today’s newsletter, but also in the racks back by the Confessional, I have put in an Examination of Conscience pamphlet that I prepared with the help of the student board members of Columbia Catholic Ministry to help you prepare well. It has in it a “How to Go to Confession” sheet in case it’s been a long time since your last Confession and you need a refresher of how to go without having to worry about how. I also put in the newsletter a Frequently Asked Questions Sheet about the Sacrament of Penance in case you sometimes ask why we need to go to a priest for Confession, what’s the difference between mortal and venial sins, and the rest. Please give it a read, not only so that you can grow in your knowledge and love of what Jesus wishes to give you in this Sacrament but so that you can be an ever more effective ambassador for Christ in bringing others to receive his mercy, too. I’d urge you to remember what Jesus says to us in the Gospel, that Heaven rejoices more for one repentant sinner than for 99 who never needed to repent. This week you can make God and all the angels and saints erupt in joy by coming to receive God’s mercy, and by bringing others to receive it, too. That is the way we make straight the paths. That is the way we become pure, blameless and righteous. That is one of the most important ways by which we grow as Christians and as human beings, as God little by little brings to completion the good work he’s coming. Indeed, the Church today helps us to realize that conversion and coming to receive God’s mercy is the best way for us to prepare for his coming in the past in Bethlehem, the best way for us to prepare for his coming at the end of time or at the end of “our time,” whichever comes first, and the best way for us to prepare to receive him in the sacraments and prayer, especially in the Holy Eucharist, as we have the awesome privilege to be about to do. Today the whole Church continues the work of St. John the Baptist, saying, “Prepare the way of the Lord, make straight the paths.” That’s our homework for this week. Let’s get to it and then we will be able to experience personally what we proclaimed in tonight’s Psalm: the Lord has done, and continues to do, great things for us. We are filled with joy!

The readings for today’s Mass were:

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