The Catholic Calendar
and Daily Meditation

Sunday, December 4, 2011


Second Sunday of Advent



Scripture from today's Liturgy of the Word:
http://new.usccb.org/bible/readings/120411.cfm


Isaiah 40:1-5, 9-11
Psalm 85:9-10-11-12, 13-14
2 Peter 3:8-14
Mark 1:1-8


A reflection on today's Scripture:

On this Second Sunday of Advent, John the Baptist takes center stage.

It's in the Gospel about this wild man in camel skin who ate wild honey and locusts. What a sight he must have been! Thousands of people flocked to the desert to see this strange creature and to hear his message: PREPARE YE THE WAY OF THE LORD! It was very much like the prophecy of Second Isaiah that we hear in today's first reading. Those words came from God hundreds of years before, announcing an end to the Babylonian captivity: "Make straight in the wasteland a highway for our God! Every valley shall be filled in, every mountain and hill shall be made low. Then the glory of the Lord will be revealed."

Now it is a message for the Jews of John's time to look again at a carpenter of humble appearance in their midst named Jesus who was already making a stir in the synagogues of Galilee and Judea. They must repent of their sins and be baptized.

Like many older people, I noticed a few years ago that my eyesight was a little cloudy. Of course, it was from cataracts. After my ophthalmologist removed them, I could suddenly see more clearly than I had in many years. It was like a miracle. Advent is a time for us to remove the spiritual cataracts that keep us from seeing clearly.

How and what we see influences so powerfully how we judge people and events in our world. Look how wrong the people of John's time were in how they judged. Even though the Jews rushed out to the desert to see this odd, fascinating figure they referred to as John the Baptizer, how many were just curious to see the spectacle? True, a number took to heart his warnings to repent of their sins. They even let this strange man baptize them in the Jordan. But how many others just laughed at the show and forgot about him the following week? We need, all of us, to see as God sees!

How can we make this Advent a time for new vision and understand the stupendous truth of God coming to earth as a little child? Even though there will be thousands of glittering Christmas lights all around us, how can I get excited at another breakthrough into our dark world of the dazzling light of Jesus, my Lord and Messiah? It takes deep reflection to appreciate the reality of history. What humility it took for God to come as an ordinary poor man! For thirty whole years, no one noticed Him except a few poor shepherds and some foreign scholars we call the "wise men." The Lord expects much more from us.

Advent is a dangerous season if we see it merely with the eyes of an increasingly unreligious society. Advent is a time to prepare to really see the coming of the Messiah as both historical event and as present miracle. I must work every day at improving my spiritual vision through reading and prayer, so that a kind of miracle can happen to me personally. This Second Sunday is an important one, for it calls forth from all of us new efforts at heeding the voice of John the Baptizer. John preached a message of repentance for spiritual blindness. He proclaimed the coming of Light into darkness, a Light by which, through works of Love and Justice, we could build a highway toward eventual Peace. Advent is a time for patience, penance, and renewal of heart.

::: Msgr. Paul Whitmore | email: pwhitmore29(at)yahoo(dot)com