Second Sunday of Advent

Second Sunday of Advent

Some of the words that keep returning during Advent: Arise! Come! Prepare! Repent! Rejoice! They return like a refrain evoking a sense of urgency, longing, active waiting. For me, they give the ‘flavour’ of Advent.

In our Eucharistic celebrations we don’t use the antiphons for the day these days as we usually sing a hymn. However, the antiphons for both the Eucharist and the Divine Office are worth looking at as they capture the sense of the celebration. Today’s entrance antiphon is, People of Zion, the Lord will come to save all nations, and your hearts will exult to hear his majestic voice; and the communion antiphon – Rise up, Jerusalem, stand on the heights, and see the joy that is coming to you from God. They give exultant voice to the scripture readings for today.

Repentance For The Forgiveness Of Sins

John the Baptist calls us to repentance for the forgiveness of sins and the text is reinforced with Isaiah’s call to listen to the voice in the wilderness – prepare the way for the Lord.

So often we think of repentance as a hard, painful, dare I say grim act and it is such a big word that perhaps we think that only big sinners need do it. The truth is, we all need repentance – for things we have done and things we have not done. We all need a change of heart to allow ourselves to mature and leave behind those acts and attitudes that give us false security and false ego strengths.

Repentance is very different from our contemporary idea of ‘guilt feelings’. Guilt may be appropriate or inappropriate, for example I may feel a vague sense of guilt because I tramp garden through the house because when I was a child my parents told me to wipe my feet before I came into the house. As I am the only person who cleans my house, that is rather childish and I need to deal with it. However, if I were living with others whose living space was littered with my garden-encrusted shoes, I would need to look at my lack of care for other people’s comfort and change my ways, that is, repent and perhaps look at deeper issues of lack of responsibility and care for others. A bit like what we are doing to our environment, really. Genuine repentance breaks the cycle of self-absorption and opens us to change and communion.

In genuine repentance for our misdeeds there will be pain and even at times, tears for the harm we have caused to ourselves and others. However, to stop there is not Christian. Repentance and forgiveness go hand in hand. Therefore while we will suffer when we recognise the harm and pain we have caused, that suffering is at its very heart, a deep sense of joy, hope and renewal.

God’s Integrity; God’s Salvation.

John the Baptist calls his hearers to repentance for forgiveness and it is this act that makes the pathways straight for God to come rushing in. It is as the communion antiphon proclaims - Rise up… and see the joy that is coming to you from God. It is as if God is always waiting for us to clear the rubble from the pathway. God so loves our freedom that God will not force – inspire, urge, hover but never compel.

Yet, it is God’s gift. If we cry out ‘Come’ to God, it is God who also cries out to us ‘Come’ because God’s desire is for us - People of Zion, the Lord will come to save all nations, and your hearts will exult to hear his majestic voice. God’s desire and longing is to save us, draw us and delight us.

The first reading from Baruch 5:1-9 today asks, shouts, proclaims, excitedly urges us to: take off your dress of sorrow and distress, put on the beauty of the glory of God for ever, wrap the cloak of the integrity of God around you……since God means to show your splendour to every nation under heaven….. This is God’s will and longing for us.

Grandiose? Intemperate metaphor? Well, only look around, it hasn’t happened yet? No, it is we who cannot see; we who underrate our own dignity and God’s abounding longing for us.

A New Name

In the Scriptures when someone is given a new name, it signifies a new reality for that person. Names have profound significance. So, now God calls Jerusalem ‘Peace through integrity, and honour through devotedness’. God’s integrity and devotedness or our integrity and devotedness? Who knows? Probably both as one without the other is incomplete. And there’s the rub – the beauty and the glory that God has bestowed on us asks us to live our lives with the same integrity and devotedness as God lives for us.

Is it hard? Too right it is, at times it will be anything from mildly uncomfortable (e.g. what we buy and where we shop) to giving up all we think we hold dear (security, reputation, a pet perception).

Is it joyful? Too right it is, after all, the new name is ‘Peace through integrity, and honour through devotedness’

So, I wish for you that you arise, come, prepare, repent and rejoice!