Sunday 10th December 2023 - Second Sunday of Advent

Isaiah 40:1-5,9-11/ Psalm 84(85)/ 2 Peter 3:8-14/ Mark 1:1-8

‘A voice cries in the wilderness: Prepare a way for the Lord, make his paths straight.’ A call to action spoken down the ages. In the Old Testament extract today the prophet is preparing the people of Israel for the coming of the Messiah, in the Gospel passage John, the last prophet, is preparing to point out Jesus as the promised Messiah and the message to us is to prepare ourselves and the world for the return of Jesus whenever that might be. This call to action is the task we take on as Christians. We live in a wilderness that increasingly, it seems, tries to blot out thoughts of the future, of death in this life and eternity in the next. There is a wave of complacency washing over what used to be lands of great Christian faith and now have become a secular wilderness. It is our job to keep the message of Jesus alive in this desert we find ourselves in. It is not easy, and although the message will be rejected by many we must not give up.

Jesus gave us his example of perseverance. Having been heralded by and baptised by John, Jesus proclaimed his kingdom of repentance and forgiveness to a disbelieving world. A world that rejected him and executed him for preaching love and reconciliation. It was through rejection and death that Jesus triumphed by his resurrection and that is the model for us. We must persevere in prayer, in evangelisation of ourselves and of others and we will achieve everlasting life with Jesus in the eternal banquet of heaven.

The second reading gives us the encouragement never to give up even if God seems to be delaying the renewal of creation. We live in a world governed by time; creation had a beginning, and it will have an end and we are somewhere on that timeline. God is not trapped within his own creation but exists outside of time. As the letter suggests a day to God can mean a thousand years and a thousand years like a day. It then gives us the wonderful idea that if God appears to be slow in fulfilling his promise it is because of his boundless patience with us wanting nobody to be lost. It ends reminding us yet again that the end will come as a surprise, like a thief, so we need to be always prepared.

God is gradually revealing his plan for salvation. The plan can be seen from the beginning in the first book of the Bible after the fall of humanity. Over time the plan is revealed in scripture until it becomes manifest in the person of Jesus who, although fully God, become fully human through being born as all humans are born. We now await the completion of our redemption when Jesus will return.

John the Baptist is of great importance, the last of the prophets, but he recognised that he was subordinate to the one he was preparing the world for. The Baptist was ready to give way to Jesus and slip quietly into the background leaving the way open to the Messiah he was proclaiming. We can learn much from John, in life we tend to see our achievements as our own, belonging to us. We can desire and rely too much on earthly ambition without realising or acknowledging that all we achieve is because of the gifts we have been given by God. These gifts and our individual calling should be used to herald Jesus, we should all be like John the Baptist, ready to defer to Jesus, to point him out to others and follow him ourselves. We must not be tempted to become self-reliant rather than totally dependent on Jesus and his gospel message.

In this time of Advent let us renew our mission and become the voice in the wilderness preparing the way for the Lord.

God Bless Brendan