Pure and Blameless for the Day of Christ, Second Sunday of Advent (C), December 9, 2018

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Chapel of the Consecrated Women of Regnum Christi, Cumming, GA
Second Sunday of Advent, Year C
December 9, 2018
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 today’s homily:

Going to the Jordan

On the second Sunday of Advent each year, the Church leads us on pilgrimage to the Jordan River, so that we might enroll in the school of St. John the Baptist, hear his message and put it into action in our lives. At first glance, it seems like a strange choice to meet him at the Jordan, 30 years after Christ’s birth, millennia before his Second Coming. But the reason why the Church always visits John at the Jordan is because he was the one chosen by God the Father from all eternity to get his people ready to receive His Son, who was already walking toward the Jordan River to inaugurate his public ministry. Advent, as you know, literally means “coming toward,” and in it we ourselves are called to prepare for God’s coming toward us — in history, mystery and majesty, as we say: in the past, 2000 years ago in Bethlehem; in the future, with power and great glory on the clouds of heaven; and in the present, in his Word, in the Eucharist, and in grace. The preparatory work announced by John is the way we’re called to get ourselves ready to receive the Lord who is coming. What is that work?

When we meet him at the Jordan, John blares, “I am the voice of One crying out in the desert.” He didn’t say, “I am one crying out in the desert,” but rather, “I am the voice of one crying out in the desert.” John is the voice, the loudspeaker, the spokesperson; who is the “one crying out?” It’s the word, Christ Jesus himself. John’s message is God’s message, which John was screaming at the top of his powerful lungs. The message was 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 and without hassle. John the Baptist is telling us that to get ready for the Lord whom we are constantly bidding — maranatha, O Come Divine Messiah, O Come, O Come Emmanuel — to come this Advent, we, too, need to prepare a way for him. We, too, need to make straight the paths. In the ancient world, preparing such a path meant a great deal of manual work, making crooked paths straight, rough ways smooth, and even charting paths through the mountains and valleys. For us, that pathway will not be traced on the ground, but in of our hearts. It will not be made in the wilderness, but in our life. The work is not something that will make our hands dirty, but our souls clean. What John the Baptist is calling us to is conversion.

To preach conversion is the mission of the Baptist, which is why we encounter him every Advent, because in Advent this message must be preached and conversion must be practiced. The reason is because Jesus has come into the world to save us from our sins and from what our sins lead to, death. The very name, Jesus, means “God saves.” In order for us to appreciate our Savior and what he did for us, we have to realize that we are sinners who need Him to save us from our sins. That’s why John the Baptist’s message is such a gift.  His whole vocation, his whole mission, was to deliver that message. Before he was even conceived, the Archangel Gabriel 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, “Repent, for the Kingdom of heaven has come near” (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.

What conversion means

The Lord is coming for us in Advent, but for him to reach his destination, we have to convert. “To make straight the paths of the Lord” means to clear the path of sin, which is the major obstacle for the Lord to come into our lives. Quoting the prophet Isaiah (Is 40:4), John the Baptist says, “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 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. We have to straighten out whatever crooked paths we’ve been walking: if we’ve been involved in some secret sins or sinful behaviors, the Lord calls us through John the Baptist to end it; if we’ve been involved in some dishonest practices, we’re called to straighten 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. And this is not just our work, but God’s, as Baruch tells us in the first reading: “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 Advent — which is a gift of the Lord to us, and (who knows?) may be our last — will succeed or fail on the basis of how well we convert and clear our lives of sin so that the Lord may come to us.

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. The Jordan river 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 today. He points us to a new exodus — from death to life, from sin to sanctity — and states very clearly that the path from the desert into the new promised land is conversion and the forgiveness of sins.

First, conversion. During the Jubilee of the Year 2000, the future Pope Benedict gave a homily to catechists from around the world assembling in Rome. He focused on how the first message the Church must proclaim to the world and live is this message of John the Baptist that we hear at the beginning of every new liturgical year, the message to “repent and believe.” He commented very powerfully on what conversion really is: “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 not merely judge according to the current opinions. Thereby, to convert means: not to live a all the others live, not do what all do, not feel justified in dubious, ambiguous, evil actions just because others do the same; begin to see one’s life through the eyes of God; thereby 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.”

One of the biggest challenges for the Church in the United States is so many Christians are trying to live like everyone else does rather than as Christ does, as the saints do. Rather than allow our faith to be leaven that lifts the whole world up, the toxins of the world enter our hearts, our homes and even our Churches We take our categories not from God but from worldly gurus. The venerable Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen, who died 39 years ago today and for whose beatification we pray, used to say that once upon a time only Catholics believed in the Immaculate Conception. “Now everyone believes he’s immaculately conceived!” The world doesn’t like conversion, so we downplay our need for it, pretending that we’re not sinners or, if we are, pretending as if we don’t need God’s forgiveness, or even if we recognize that we do need his mercy, pretending that we don’t need to receive it in the way he himself established.

Today, St. John the Baptist, tells us all of our need to turn away from our worldly standards, from all of our sins, from all of our idols, reach out for God’s mercy, and begin truly believing in Jesus, walking with Jesus, and not just believing all that he taught, but beginning to base our entire existence on it and to spread those words to others. Conversion, as the future Pope Benedict said, means to rethink and question our own way of life, to make the commitment not to live as the crowds live but as Christ and his saints live, not to feel justified simply because we can point to a poll that everyone else is living that way, but to begin to see our whole life through the eyes of God and make the love of God and others for real the measure and the criteria of our life. This is a message each of us is called to ponder and act upon in a more profound way.

Forgiveness of sins

The second aspect is the forgiveness of sins. John the Baptist’s 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 today, dressed in camel hair and his leather belt, he would say to us, “Behold the One of whom I was speaking! Behold the Lamb of God, who comes to take away your sins and the sins of the world” and his hands would point to us both to the baptismal font where our need for forgiveness is met by God’s merciful power 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. We’re much better off than John the Baptist’s first listeners. Just as for them to make straight the paths, the level the mountains, to fill in the valleys, rebuild the bridges, and straighten the roads in earthly life was infinitely more complicated then than it is now, with dump trucks, back hows, bulldozers, the army corps of engineers and so much more, so spiritually it’s so much easier. We don’t have to repair roads with our bare hands, with buckets of dirt, primitive handtools and, if we’re lucky, a few oxen; God provides the heavy equipment. It’s in the sacrament of penance that he himself goes in, with all the power of heaven, to do all the heavy lifting. One of the most important things we need to do during Advent is make a really thorough confession, where we examine for the peaks that need to be flattened, the deep holes that need to be filled, the serpentine ways that need to be straightened and then come to the Lord for mercy, seeking to make one of the best confessions of our life.

Letting God complete his work

In the epistle, St. Paul prays for the Christians that the work of conversion and forgiveness of sins continue so that we can live the new style of life that is the fully Christian one. He prays that “the one who began a good work in you will continue to complete it until the day of Christ Jesus.” The advent of that day is coming and the time for the work of turning away from sin and turning toward and with Christ is at hand. St. Paul specifies what the “good work” to be completed for which he’s praying actually means: “This is my prayer: that your love may increase more and more, … so that you may be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ.” God wants us to be pure and blameless, filled with his righteousness, or as we heard yesterday on the Immaculate Conception, “holy and immaculate before him.” This is what Baruch means, too, when God through him tells us that he wants us to “put on the splendor of glory from God” and be “wrapped in the cloak of justice from God.”

That is why this message of the conversion from the Baptist each Advent is such “Good News, because it’s an expression of God’s love giving us a second chance, or a third chance, or a seventy times seventh chance. It’s an announcement that the King is coming and wants to meet us, but he doesn’t want to ambush us by visiting us when our spiritual house is a disaster area deserving of FEMA funds. Through the work of the Baptist and the Church, he announces he’s coming and he gives us the chance to clean our house to welcome fittingly such a guest. The call to conversion is a proclamation that no matter what we’ve done, God’s forgiveness is greater than all our filth, his mercy is greater than any and every human misery. We’re sinners, yes, but God comes to save us from those sins. Heaven rejoices more for one repentant sinner, Jesus tells us, than for 99 who never needed to repent, and insofar as the only one who never needed to repent is the Immaculate Mother of God and she pleased God immeasurably by her constant fiat, we begin to see just how central conversion and forgiveness through the Sacrament God established are to God’s whole plans. That is why we can cry out today repeatedly, “The Lord has done great things for us; we are filled with joy,” because the Lord is continued to do his good and great work of conforming us to him by means of the mercy through which he fills us with his joy.  Conversion and coming to receive God’s mercy is the best way for us to prepare for his coming in the past in Bethlehem. Conversion and coming to receive God’s mercy is 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. Conversion and coming to receive God’s mercy is 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.

We finish with the words of the beautiful hymn that so many Catholic parishes sing on this day. They summarize the entire message that Jesus crying out in the wilderness gives us each Second Sunday of Advent through John the Baptist, his forerunner, and indicate to us whom we’re about to receive:

On Jordan’s bank the Baptist’s cry
Announces that the Lord is nigh.
Awake and hearken for he brings
Glad tidings from the King of Kings.

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.

The readings for today’s Mass were: