Today is the second Sunday of Advent. Advent is the first and shortest of our liturgical seasons and in my opinion, it is the most beautiful. Sadly though, in our culture today, Advent doesn’t exist. Christmas starts sometime in mid-November when the radio stations decide to start playing Christmas music and it goes until December 25th ending with dessert after the Christmas dinner. This version of Christmas is about giving and generosity and goodwill towards others. While these, of course, are good things they are now what this time of year is truly and fully about. Christmas does not start until midnight Mass on Christmas Eve.
Prior to that is the anticipatory and penitential season of Advent. Avent comes from the Latin “ad venio” which means to come to. During this time we are to prepare a worthy dwelling place for the Lord. This has 2 dimensions to it. First, we must prepare ourselves to worthily be able to receive the Lord in Holy Communion and secondly prepare our lives for our Lord’s second coming and final judgment. Advent is the perfect time for us to prayerfully reflect on our lives and our relationship with the Lord. We should ask ourselves, is there something in my life that is keeping me from deepening my relationship with Christ? Is there something that is keeping from loving others? Are their sinful habits that I need to change? If there are, now is the time to cleanse our soul and seek the Lord’s mercy and forgiveness in the sacrament of confession. We will be having an Advent penance service here in the Church on Wednesday evening. When we wait in anticipation to celebrate Christmas, and use these four weeks as the Church intends us to, we will be better able to appreciate the awesomeness that we will celebrate on Christmas. That God, the one who created the entire universe and each and every one of us out of Love, so humbled himself that he came down the earth and was born in a manger in Bethlehem.
When we have a proper sense of the season that we are celebrating, we can really see what St Matthew is trying to communicate to us in the Gospel reading this morning. My friends St John the Baptist is the perfect example for us of what this holy season of Advent is about. He is preparing the way of the Lord. He is preparing others to be able to receive Christ. This is what we are all called to do. We are to spread the good news of Jesus Christ to all people, including our families, friends, and neighbors. We need to be more like John the Baptist, and no I do not mean that we should eat bugs and wear camel hair shirts. We should, however, declare the coming of the Lord in all that we do. And again we need to do this personally, our own relationship with the Lord, as well as our relationships with others.
John the Baptist quotes the prophet Isaiah “Prepare the way of the Lord, make straight his paths.” In these days and weeks leading up to Christmas, let us keep this command in mind. We are preparing to commemorate the first coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, a baby boy who was born of the Virgin Mary. It is a beautiful story, but we also know that it does end there. We know why God came down to earth to walk our walk and talk our talk. He did so that we may be saved and can spend all eternity with Him who loves us. We know that Christ’s coming in the incarnation at Christmas will not be the only time he comes to earth. We proclaim every Sunday that we believe “He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead and his kingdom will have no end.”
So my friends as we journey throughout this beautiful advent season, let us keep this belief in mind. Let us make straight our paths and prepare ourselves for the coming of the Lord. For we know that as St John the Baptist tells us today, that we must repent, for the Kingdom of God is at hand.
Hound of the Lord 