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2nd SUNDAY OF ADVENT

  1. What is the season of Advent all about? Advent has a two-fold character – It is a season to prepare for Christmas when Christ’s first coming to us is remembered, and it is a season when that remembrance directs our minds and hearts to await Christ’s second coming at the end of time. Advent is a time of devout and joyful expectations. It is not a penitential season like Lent; however, the liturgy is more subdued. Advent is a time of waiting, waiting for the second coming of the Lord, waiting patiently as we strive to mature in discipleship.

  2. Advent seems to me to be a time to ask significant questions. Last Sunday, I made the suggestion that a good way to observe Advent might be to ask ourselves the question – What does Jesus Christ mean to me? Why do I freely choose to be his follower in the world of this time? After all, how in the world can we follow someone whom we do not love and trust? And how can we love and trust someone whom we do not know?

  3. The question – What does the Lord Jesus mean to me – is the title of a book published a while back. The writers who were invited to make contributions to this book were numbered among the young and the old, the cultured and those living more ordinary lives, the vast majority, like ourselves, facing many difficulties of one kind or another. Most of these were Christian believers, but some we might describe as wavering in the faith and others were outright non-believers. I can provide here only an inadequate sample of the replies. One said – “The Lord Jesus was and still is one of us – our God with us in human flesh – and that means a great deal”; “The Lord Jesus has taught me how to love”; “He is the perfect example of what it means to be truly human, the most human of men and indeed our friend”; “He is the one who commands by example as well as by words”; “I want to shout with joy because I too am a man, indeed, I am a sinner, but because of him I can be born again in God”; “I am infinitely grateful to my divine guide, my anchor, my truth, who is as relevant to me as he was to his first disciples.”

  4. Why did I suggest last week that we ask ourselves this important question about the Lord Jesus? I did so because of a very special reason, because the answer to this question can in turn help us to answer a series of other important questions, such as – Who am I? Where have I come from? Where am I heading? Why is there sin? Why is there evil? What is my destiny in history? The bishops at the Second Vatican Council suggest an answer to the question – Who is the Lord Jesus for me? This is what they had to say: “The fact is that only in the mystery of the incarnate Word is light shed on the mystery of man. Adam, the first man, pre-figured the man to come, Christ the Lord. Christ, who is the new Adam, by revealing the mystery of the Father and his love, also fully reveals man to man himself and makes his exalted vocation known to him. Christ is the image of the unseen God; he is the perfect man, who has restored to the children of Adam the likeness to God which was distorted at the very beginning by sin. Because he assumed human nature without in any way destroying it, human nature in us too has by that very fact been raised to a dignity that is sublime. By the Incarnation the Son of God united himself in some way with every human person. He worked with human hands, he thought with a human mind.... By being born of the Virgin Mary he made himself truly one of us, like us in all things but sin.”

  5. What is the point of this teaching? The bishops at the Second Vatican Council apply the category of mystery to us who are human. Does not each one of us from time to time think of ourselves as lost in the cosmos, that life makes no sense, that the human being is just an object of human investigation, and often times we feel most uncomfortable in the face of the big questions I have already mentioned? The key to the question of the mystery which is mankind is Christ the Lord. God our Father so loved the world that he sent us his only Son. Christ came into the world to reveal to us who we really are, and he did so by revealing to us, God and the Father’s love for each one of us. Jesus should mean everything to us for he has come into our history to reveal the majesty of God and the dignity of men and women everywhere made in the image of God. We’re not dealing here with some theory or some ideology. We are dealing with a fact in human history, the fact that by his incarnation the Son of God united himself with each one of us. He became man himself and lived an authentic human life, and in and from the difficulties that he encountered he became always and forever close to each one of us in the trials and suffering of our own lives. One final point. The Incarnation of God’s Son has emphasized the great dignity of the human person and the value of every human life. It also indicates the lengths to which the battle to save human dignity must go.

  6. Advent is like a journey, so listen to an ancient Christian writer: “It is with Christ that we journey, and we walk with our steps in his footprints: He it is who is our guide and the burning flame which illumines our paths: pioneer of salvation, He it is who draws us towards heaven, towards, the Father, and promises success to those who seek in faith. We shall one day be that which he is in glory, if by faithful imitation of his example, we become true Christians, other Christs.”