Second Sunday of Advent (B), Conservations with Consequences Podcast, December 9, 2023

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Conversations with Consequences Podcast
Homily for the Second Sunday of Advent, B, Vigil
December 9, 2023

To listen to an audio recording of the brief homily, please click below:

The following text guided the homily: 

• This is Fr. Roger Landry and it’s a joy to have a chance to ponder with you the consequential conversation God wants to have with us this Sunday.
• Last week, on the first Sunday of Advent, we began a new year in the Church. Advent is a time of spiritual reawakening and renewal, a call to wake up and be on the watch, like a good doorman, always ready to open promptly to Jesus who never ceases to come to us. But to have this life-changing encounter with Jesus, we first have to confront and overcome the obstacles that might be in the way between the Lord and us, all the stuff that blocks the door. The biggest barrier of all is our sins and the way we hold on to them rather than allow the Lord Jesus to take them away.
• That’s why, on the Second Sunday of Advent each year, in order to help us make a totally fresh start, God sends us the same person he sent to get the people of Israel ready to encounter, embrace and follow his Son when Jesus finally revealed himself at the Jordan River. St. John the Baptist announces for us anew, in the desert, “Prepare the way of the Lord, make straight his paths.” And he tells us what’s involved in that road repair: “repentance for the forgiveness of sins.”
• In the ancient world, the dirt 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 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 with its heavy goods and people accompanying the VIP could arrive without delay or hassle. St. John the Baptist is telling us that to get ready for the Lord who is coming this Advent, we, too, need to prepare a road for him. We, too, need to make straight the paths.
• 2000 years ago, preparing such a path meant a great deal of work, making crooked paths straight, rough ways smooth, and even charting paths through the forests, mountains and valleys. For us, that pathway will not be traced on the ground, but interiorly. It will not be made in the wilderness, but in day-to-day life. It’s not something that will make our hands dirty, but our souls clean. St. John the Baptist indicated the necessary road repair quoting the prophet Isaiah: “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). He’s calling us to level the mountains of our pride and egocentrism, to fill in the valleys that come from a shallow prayer life and a minimalistic way of living our faith, and to straighten out whatever crooked, sinful paths we’ve been walking. This work won’t be accomplished principally by willpower and elbow grease, but by God’s power and supernatural grace. The way we receive this help of God to cleanse the path between Jesus and us of the worst obstacles of all is the Sacrament of Confession. This Advent we need to be as attentive to clearing the way for Christ through this Sacrament as highway workers are to removing dead deer from the high-speed lane.
• Yet to do so, we have to confront head-on one of the most insidious lies of the evil one in some parts of the Church today: that the Sacrament of Confession is an optional part of the Catholic faith. Various recent surveys, like those done by the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate of Georgetown or CARA, have shown that about 45 percent of American Catholics never go to the Sacrament of Reconciliation and another 30 percent go less than once a year, which is the minimum established by the Code of Canon Law and the Precepts of the Church. 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. The evil one, of course, has a keen 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. 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 Lamb of God John would point out who had come to take away the sins of the world, to cleanse us in his mercy and to bring good even out of the sins we have committed. Jesus would say later 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.” Pope Francis himself has said openly that he goes to confession at least every two weeks. I go to confession every week. Catholics who really want to grow in faith should seek to come to confession at least once a month. But good Catholics should minimally seek to make a very good confession at least every Advent and Lent.
• If we’re really going to live out the Advent summons the Church gives us, however, we cannot stop at merely making a good confession ourselves. We are also summoned to become like John the Baptist in helping others to prepare the way for the Lord as well, to become a voice of Jesus the Word crying out for all of us to make straight the paths for him to come. God is hoping that after our reconciliation we will become heralds of the Lamb, ambassadors for Christ, crying out in the desert and from the rooftops to clear the road of everything unfit for Jesus’ arrival. Jesus himself has taught us how important this work is to him. In Luke 15, where Jesus gives us the three parables of the Lost Sheep, the Lost Coin, and the Lost Sons, he tells us that “heaven rejoices more for one repentant sinner than for 99 who did not need to repent.” God’s greatest joy is forgiving. The way we can please God most is by coming to receive his forgiveness and bringing those we know — our friends and family members, fallen away Catholics, fellow parishioners and the vast majority of Catholics, including daily and Sunday Mass goers whom surveys indicate don’t regularly confess— to Jesus. He is the Lamb of God, who entered our world in his first coming to take away our sins, who remains in the world through priests acting in his person forgiving us 70 times 7 times, and who will return again at his Second Coming hoping to take those who have sought to follow him along the path of mercy to the eternal home he has gone to prepare.
• That’s why the most famous Catholic hymn English-speaking Catholics sing on the Second Sunday of Advent joyfully proclaims the Good News of God’s Mercy announced by Jesus’ precursor. The Church sings, “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 Lord Jesus is coming. In his name, John the Baptist is summoning us to make straight the path for his arrival and to help others clear their roads, too. This is at the heart of Advent and one of its greatest graces. As Christ comes for us, let us go out to meet him in his mercy. God bless you!

The Gospel on which this homily was based was: 

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