Second Sunday of Advent (B), Conversations with Consequences Podcast, December 5, 2020

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Conversations with Consequences Podcast
Homily for the Second Sunday of Advent (B)
December 5, 2020

To listen to an audio recording of this short Sunday homily, please click below: 

The text that guided the homily is: 

• 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 get up, get excited and get moving toward 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. 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 Jesus when Jesus finally revealed himself at the Jordan River. St. John the Baptist announces for us anew, “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 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 amazing 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. We need to be as attentive clearing the way for Christ through this Sacrament as highway workers are to removing dead deer from the high-speed lane.
• We can focus on two witnesses who show us that straight path. On Tuesday, December 8, we will celebrate the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception of our Lady. Mary lived at the culmination of that first Advent, longing with her fellow Jews for the Messiah and then, after the Annunciation, welcoming that Messiah within her womb. She was prepared by God for that Mission through God’s keeping her free from all stain of sin from the first moment of her life in the womb of her mother St. Anne. She was the fulfillment of the prophetic proto-Gospel in the Book of Genesis when God told the serpent, “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; He will strike at your head, while you strike at his heel.” From the first moment of her existence, Mary had this enmity, this hatred, for the devil and for sin. Ever since Jesus gave her as our Mother on the Cross, she has been especially committed to helping us have a similar enmity toward sin. To live Advent well is to have enmity, like Mary, toward the devil, his evil works and empty promises. God kept her free from the clutches of sin by her Immaculate Conception; he severs the cord for us through baptism and then confession. That’s why John the Baptist is sent to us each Second Sunday of Advent to have a consequential, life-changing conversation with us.
• The second great figure I’ll mention is St. Joseph. On December 8, we will mark the 150^th anniversary of St. Joseph’s being declared patron of the universal Church by Pope Blessed Pius IX in 1870. Unlike the Blessed Mother, Joseph was not immaculately conceived, but nevertheless he cleared the way for the Messiah ultimately to arrive in the world, arranging for him to be born in a shelter however poor. And he provided for and protected him so that he could travel safely through his infancy and adolescence eventually to his public manifestations much later. St. Joseph is patron of the Church because he shows us how to welcome both Christ on his arrival as well as to love our Lady.
• Perhaps The most famous Catholic hymn for the Second Sunday of Advent is “On Jordan’s Bank,” in which we proclaim, “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!” Our Lady and St. Joseph show us how to make that home for the mightiest Guest of all. Let us ask their intercession so that we may heed the Baptist’s call, take off of us the shackles of sin through making the best confession of our life this week, run to meet Jesus, and run with him all the way up the path to the heavenly Jerusalem where John, Mary and Joseph rejoice and await us! God bless you.

The Gospel on which this homily was based was: 

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