God’s Comfort and the Conversion Required to Receive It, Second Sunday of Advent (B), December 6, 2020

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Sacred Heart Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan
Second Sunday in Advent, Year B
December 6, 2020
Is 40:1-5.9-11, Ps 85, 2 Pet 3:8-14, Mk 1:1-8

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

The following text guided today’s homily: 

“Comfort, give comfort to my people,” God tells Isaiah today in the first reading. “Speak tenderly to Jerusalem. Proclaim to her that …her guilt is expiated. … Go up on to a high mountain [and] cry out at the top of your voice … ‘Here is your God! Here comes with power the Lord God. … Like a shepherd he feeds his flock; in his arms he gather the lambs, carrying them in his bosom and leading the ewes with care.”

The message of Advent is a message of consolation. God is coming with power to expiate our guilt. He’s coming as a Shepherd to feed us, to gather us into his arms, to go in search for us when we’re lost and carry us back on his shoulders. He’s coming ultimately to die for us as a Good Shepherd who lays down his life to save the lives of his sheep. But this action of God is not the only movement of Advent: we need to be ready for this coming of the Lord and go out to meet him. We need to be awake, alert and willing to receive his gift of expiation. We need to open ourselves to the consolation God came, still comes, and will come definitely into the world to bring.

The one sent to help us to get ready to receive this gift is St. John the Baptist. Every year on the second and third Sundays of Advent, the Church leads us on pilgrimage to the Jordan River, so that we might enroll anew in St. John the Baptist’s school, hear his message and put it into action in our life. John was chosen by God the Father from all eternity to get his people ready to receive His Son, who at the time John was preaching was already in a sense walking toward the Jordan River to inaugurate his public ministry. Advent literally means “coming toward” and St. John the Baptist has the mission to get us ready to go out to embrace the Lord who is coming to us in history in Bethlehem, in mystery especially through the Sacraments, and in majesty on the clouds of heaven. And the way John seeks to help us to get ready to embrace Jesus who is coming is through is deep, total, sincere conversion.

In the Second Reading today, St. Peter talks to us about patience. Normally, in Advent, we focus on patiently waiting in hope for the fulfillment of God’s presence. But the patience about which he speaks is God’s patience. “The Lord,” he says, “is patient with you, not wishing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance.” He does not delay his promise as some regard ‘delay,’ Peter says, as if he’s ready. He delays because we’re not yet ready. We have not yet come to repentance. That’s why the annual work of St. John the Baptist is so important.

St. Mark tells us that John the Baptist appeared in the desert “proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins,” and the people were responding in huge numbers. The whole Judean countryside and all the inhabitants of Jerusalem were going out to him and were being baptized “as they acknowledged their sins.” Dressed in camel’s hair, eating locusts and wild honey, he was proclaiming a message of repentance and reparation not just with his words but with his body language. St. Mark sees him as the fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecy from the first reading, “I am sending my messenger ahead of you to prepare your way. A voice of one crying out in the desert, ‘Prepare the way of the Lord and make straight his paths.’” John was not the one crying out in the desert, but the voice, the loudspeaker, the sound system, of the “one crying out in the desert.” The one crying out in the desert was the very person to whom John referred at the end of today’s Gospel, the “one mightier than I” who “is coming after me,” whose sandals he was not worthy to stoop and loosen, the one who would “baptize with the Holy Spirit.” That Word for whom John was the voice is Jesus himself. This is why it’s no surprise that John the Baptist’s words of repentance fore-echoed Jesus’ own first words, “Repent for the kingdom of God is at hand.” John was preparing the way for Jesus because he was announcing the need for conversion and for faith, which are the prerequisites for receiving Jesus’ salvation, for becoming Jesus’ disciples, for receiving the love and consolation he wants to give us.

John’s description of the process of conversion as “preparing the way of the Lord and making straight his paths” is very instructive. 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 the VIP could arrive without delay and without hassle. In order to embrace Jesus at his coming, we need to prepare a way by making our crooked paths straight, rough ways smooth, and even charting paths through the mountains of pride and the valleys of a shallow prayer life and spiritual minimalism. Building new roads isn’t easy, cheap or quick! It requires a lot of hard work. It involves far more than removing a little debris; it involves long days and long nights. That’s the hard work required to straighten out our paths. We won’t be able to receive the depth of God’s comfort, we won’t be able to embrace Jesus our Good Shepherd in a new life as he comes, unless we actually do this work.

When we talk about the conversion God sends John the Baptist to help us to make, I think back to one of the most powerful talks I’ve ever read. It was given 20 years ago this week by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the future Pope Benedict XVI, to a group of Catechists who had come to Rome to celebrate the Jubilee Year. In a homily about how we’re supposed to live and proclaim the Gospel today, the future Pope said that the first part of the message the Church needs to bring to the world is the message of John the Baptist, the message of Christ, namely, “to repent and believe.” And he described what that conversion really is all about: “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. So to convert means: not to live 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, and so look for the good, even if uncomfortable, not aiming at the judgment of the majority, of men, but at the justice of God. In other words, [it means] to look for a new style of life, a new life.” The whole process of conversion, he concluded, requires “the humility to entrust oneself to the love of [God], a love that becomes the measure and the criteria of my own life.” Notice what Cardinal Ratzinger is not saying. He’s not saying that the conversion that God wants of us is not just a minor course correction in our life, as if all God wants of us is to eliminate a bad like using foul language, or gossiping, or not praying every day. God is asking something much greater. He’s asking for us to adopt Christ’s way of living as our own. Conversion means to hear Jesus saying to us, “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life,” and resolving to follow him fully along that path.

One of the biggest challenges for the Church today is that so many Christians are trying to live like everyone else rather than as Christ does, than as the saints do. Instead of allowing our faith to be leaven that lifts the whole world up, we are permitting the toxins of the world enter our souls, our societies and even our homes and Churches. We take our categories not from God but from worldly gurus. The world doesn’t like conversion, so we downplay our need for it. The world doesn’t like the worship of God because it wants to worship the self and so it finds the Mass “boring” and rejects it because it doesn’t entertain them. The world doesn’t like the commitment of marriage, that God created marriage in the beginning as the union of one man and one woman, open to life, enduring until death, and so it tries to change what marriage is in various ways. The world doesn’t like the idea of a Church founded by God with a structure and a leader who speaks in Jesus’ name; the world prefers that the Church be “democratic” so that we, rather than God, determine what to believe and what’s right and what’s wrong. In short, despite professing that we believe in and love God, most people, including most Catholics, prefer to live by the standards of the world rather than by Jesus’ own way of life.

Today, out of love for us, God sends St. John the Baptist to us to call us to conversion. He tells us all of our need to turn away from our worldly standards, sins, and idols, to reach out for God’s mercy, and to begin truly believing in Jesus, trusting in what he taught, walking with him, basing our entire existence on him and spreading his words and lifestyle to others. That’s among the many reasons why the religious life is so important. To a world that places its treasure in mammon, that worships the golden calf and what money can buy, the consecrated by the vow of poverty proclaim that there’s a far more important wealth, the treasure of God’s kingdom. To a world that indulges in pleasure and runs away from the Cross, the consecrated by the vow of chastity make Christ’s unselfish love their own, imitating his laying down his life for God and others, showing us how to sacrifice ourselves for others’ good rather than sacrificing others for our gratification. To a world that tries to make itself God, that abuses freedom and worships a radical autonomy and total independence from God, religious through the vow of obedience show us that real freedom and real happiness come from saying to God, “Not my will, but yours be done,” and from imitating Jesus’ trusting obedience to the Father until death. But for that message to be given in all its radical beauty, religious must live as John the Baptist lived, truly converted lives, clinging to the poor, chaste and obedient long-awaited One.

John the Baptist, however, didn’t come just to proclaim a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins but to point out how sins would be forgiven. A short time after the scene in today’s Gospel, he saw that “more powerful one… whose sandals he was unworthy to loosen” coming to him at the Jordan. He exclaimed, “Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world” (Jn 1:29). John the Baptist didn’t have the ability to forgive sins in God’s name, only to call others to recognize their need for forgiveness. His baptism was just a sign but not one that could effect what it signified. Jesus, through his baptism into death and rising on the third day, not only made the waters of baptism sacramental but made it possible for us continuously to go to the Jordan and be restored to our baptismal graces through the Sacrament of Confession. Just like “people of the whole Judean countryside and all the inhabitants of Jerusalem” were going out to acknowledge their sins before John the Baptist, the Lord’s precursor, so this Advent we should all be forming lines outside the confessional to acknowledge their sins before the Lord’s minister. One of the reasons why those lines are sometimes short is because many are sadly afraid of God’s mercy. “It is curious,” Pope Francis said in 2014, “but so many times, we are afraid of consolation, of being consoled. In fact, we feel safer in sadness and desolation, … because in sadness, we feel almost like the protagonists. [We feel in control]. Instead, in consolation, the Holy Spirit is the protagonist, … it is He who consoles us, it is He who gives us the courage to come out of ourselves. It is He who brings us to the source of every true consolation, that is, the Father. And this is conversion.” He appealed to all of us, “Please, let yourself be consoled by the Lord! Let yourself be consoled by the Lord!”

That is why this message of the Baptist is such “Good News” and not bad news. God not only proclaims, “Comfort, O comfort my people,” but brings that consolation about. We’re sinners, yes, but God comes as our Good Shepherd to save us from those sins, if only we repent and go to him. It’s true that we’re not worthy to untie the straps of Jesus’ sandals. It’s true all the more that we’re not worthy to receive Him under our roof in Holy Communion. But the Lord wants to make us worthy by “saying the word” and “healing our souls” through the voice of his ministers. Our conversion and reconciliation is the way the Lord wants us to prepare to celebrate his birth in Bethlehem, because it will allow him to be truly reborn in us this Christmas. Our conversion and reconciliation is the best way for us to prepare for his coming at the end of time, because through sacramental absolution we make ourselves ready no matter what day or hour he comes. Our conversion and reconciliation is the best way for us to prepare to receive him worthily in the Eucharist, because through the Sacrament of Mercy God cleanses us so that we might be a fitting temple to receive and adore him. This is the comfort God wants to give us. This is the comfort he has sent John the Baptist to announce. This is the comfort that through his priests he wants each of us to have.

“On Jordan’s bank the Baptist’s cry announces that the Lord is nigh,” we Catholics sing across the English-speaking world on this Second Sunday of Advent. “Awake and hearken for he brings glad tidings from the King of Kings,” we continued. Those glad tidings, that comfort, constituted the beautiful second verse, which we pray each of us will hear on good soil and act on: “Then cleansed be every soul from sin, make straight the way of God within. Prepare we in our hearts a home, where such a mighty guest may come.” May each of us respond to God’s invitation this Advent to be consolingly cleansed from sin in Confession, to make straight God’s path to us, to prepare a home for Jesus and so get ready with Jesus at the end of time to enter the Home he has gone to prepare for us and take us if we respond to his consoling help fully to adopt his style of life and follow him who is the Way on the true, only and eternal path of happiness.

The readings for today’s Mass were: 

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