Second Sunday of Advent
Cathedral of Mary Our Queen
December 3, 2022
Introduction
As we begin the Second Week of Advent, this beautiful season of hope, let us ask how well we are preparing to encounter Christ anew. Has our longing to encounter Christ increased – whether at Christmas, or at the end of our lives, or at the end of time, or just during a routine day? For me, the 1st week of Advent passed quickly and was filled with activities and challenges. So, I ask myself: Am I more ready this week than last week to welcome Christ? Perhaps it’s a question we should all ask ourselves.
As we go about our busy, preoccupied, and often stressful lives, today’s Scripture readings will help us to answer that question. They offer us wise and practical guidance in observing the Season of Advent by telling us who we are waiting for; where we can find him; and how we should wait for him: Who, Where, How – three words to guide our Advent preparations.
Who Are We Waiting For?
Who, then, are we waiting for? Are we waiting for a stranger like an Uber driver at the airport? Are we waiting for a relative or friend we haven’t seen for a long time? … Or are we preparing for a visit by “Someone Very Great”? Someone whose radiance lights up the darkness of our lives. Someone who will walk with us through life’s sorrows, doubts, and dilemmas. Someone who will suffer with us and touch the spiritual depth of our wounds. Someone who will awaken in us a distant memory, buried deep in our hearts, of what could have been, of what human life was really meant to be. Someone who restores our freedom to seek the infinity we’ve lost sight of. Someone Very Great, who will love us like no other.
No matter what situation we may find ourselves in this Advent, all of us are waiting for the same Person – we are waiting for Jesus. So too were the prophet Isaiah and John the Baptist, whom we met in the Scriptures. Both point to the One for whom we are watching and waiting. And how will we recognize him? We will recognize him because he assumed our humanity, and in the Sacraments of Baptism and Confirmation, poured into our humanity the same gifts of the Spirit that graced his humanity. We will recognize him because he came, as John the Baptist foretold, to baptize with the Holy Spirit and with fire – and it is only in the Holy Spirit that we confess Jesus as Lord … only in the Holy Spirit that we recognize the One who judged wisely, loved the poor, and obeyed his heavenly Father to the point of dying for our sins on the Cross … indeed, Someone Very Great! Even so, it is possible that we really haven’t met him. Maybe our relationship with him is distant. Or maybe we love him deeply. Yet we never reach a point when we do not need to seek out his saving love.
Where Do We Find Him?
But where do we find him? – this Son of God who dwells in “unapproachable light”. Are we destined to engage in a long, lonely, and frustrating search for an elusive God? Do we not hear voices all around us telling us that God is nowhere to be found, and that if he would be found, he is not a God we can trust or love? That is why we are here together as a community of faith, as a Church, as a people called out of darkness into the Lord’s own splendid light. We are here, not as the smug and the self-righteous, but as seekers who once heard the Lord say, “Where two or three are gathered together in my Name, there am I in their midst.”
Where, then, do we, as a community of faith, look for the Lord? Our search begins not with seeing but listening – listening for his voice in Scripture, listening to his voice echoed in the writings and witness of the saints. Each of us and all of us together must listen for the Lord’s word echoing in our depths, for his Heart, most assuredly, speaks to our hearts when they open. Like those first disciples whose hearts burned as Jesus opened the Scriptures for them, we will then recognize him in the Bread that is blessed, broken, and given – we will find him in the celebration of the Eucharist. For, the Lord comes to us, not as a mere idea, but in Person – in Word and Sacrament. We find Christ in the Church created from his wounded side, and if we would welcome Christ anew in Advent, we must also rediscover the Church and perhaps repair our relationship with it, for when we gather in his Name as a community of faith, he is in our midst.
We must look for Jesus in the Church, but where do we find him in ourselves? And here, it is John the Baptist who guides us. He went to the desert, the wilderness, to prepare for the coming of the Messiah. Now he calls us to look for Christ in the desert, the wilderness of our souls. Psalm 42 says, “My soul thirsts for the living God . . .” We are thirsty because our souls have become dry, parched, and barren. To experience our need for Jesus, we need to withdraw in the interior desert to pray. We need to confess our sins in the Sacrament of Reconciliation so that the waters of Baptism may once again irrigate our spiritual dryness, and to make us spiritually fruitful – witnesses in our right to the Savior we’ve found.
How Do We Look for Jesus?
Finally, how, that is, in what spirit, should we wait for Jesus? Both John the Baptist and St. Paul help us grapple with that question. The Baptist, in condemning the fake and showy repentance of the Pharisees tells us that we must wait for the Lord with complete sincerity of heart … for no ulterior motive other than to seek, find, and follow the Daystar from on high. St. Paul in his Letter to the Romans tells us that we are to unite as a Church in waiting for Jesus with hearts full of hope, an enduring hope, and that includes the endurance and patience it takes to be with one another in the Church. Paul writes: “May the God of endurance and encouragement grant you to think in harmony with one another” – welcoming one another as Christ has first welcomed and loved us.
Now we know – who, where, and how to prepare for the coming of the Lord. May the Spirit of God be upon us as we continue our Advent journey. And may God bless us and keep us always in his love.