Second Sunday of Advent --- 2006Today one of the major players in the pre-Christmas liturgies is put before us. God did not, He could not, have his Son, his holy love, come on the scene without some announcement. There was an Announcer: "There was a man sent from God, whose name was John" (Jn: 1:6). Has there ever been a world leader who arrived with a more compelling advance man? I think not. Here was the man, dressed like a caveman, a belly not from candies and cookies but from the fulness of grasshoppers and honey. Out of the desert came this man. To hear his words was to listen to a heart afire; to be challenged by a voice that echoed like a two-edge sword. Even his message was compelling: "Someone is coming. Someone is coming. Someone is coming." Remember Stephen Schwartz’s Godspell? "Prepare ye the way of the Lord." Maybe that tune will bounce through your heads for the remainder of the evening.
This is the real purpose of Advent: PREPARATION, EXPECTATION, ANTICIPATION. From last weekend until Christmas morning.
The story of John, baptizing and announcing, is very much what we should experience in Advent. It is a time of delaying, resting in the seasoning of reflection, quiet and prayer ... even in the midst of a busy "got a lot to do" mentality that dominates the days of Advent.
John’s call, however, was different. It was not "Get you cards done, get the gifts bought, wrap your treasures." Rather, John called out a simple word: Repent! John was trying to instill in the hearts of his listeners that the One coming would bring about a change in everything. Even some thoughts about who God is will be upset in his preaching. Of especial importance for John was that God was caring more than ever about how they lived their lives.
John’s call to repentance was indeed a call to change our way of living, a true metanoia. Repentance is more than contrition. Rather it is the act of stretching beyond the boundaries of what we normally think or feel to a new way of thinking. A true change of heart. A brother priest has explained repentance as "an invitation to a complete change of perspective, a ‘forward-looking’ vision of hope.
From whenever God was, He created everything, everyone with an intention, even before it or they came to be. In the eternal mind of God we were intended by God to be what we are today. You, who might be reading these words on OLV Happenings, God intended for you to be what He has called you to be. We can live peacefully, joyfully in that realization and that intention or we can live in ways that call for repentance, for reconciliation with our creator God. We try to live each day with the hope that we are aligned with the God-intention that brought us into the world. Yet, aware of human weakness, we face our God seeking forgiveness, mindful of the redemptive gift of the Child of Christmas. That is our forward-looking vision of hope.
John had a major role in God’s plan for salvation. He was to be what we have come to know him to be. He was an announcer. He was something of a rebel ... challenging some of the established practices of Judaism to a new understanding of life and faith. Surely he could have lived differently. He accepted God’s call. He tried to live as God intended him to live.
Today, as we draw closer to the celebration of God’s gift to us, His redeeming gift of Jesus, our brother, we might take a few moments to reflect upon what we think it is that God intended for us. How was He using us to be His announcers in our reality? How do we announce the presence of God in the way we live?
That is the Lenten challenge for all of us. It is in a special way the challenge for the parishioners of our parish: How are you, a religious community in Washington, DC, how are you to announce the presence of God, His intention for Our Lady of Victory Parish?
Do you remember Ed McMahon? Johnny Carson’s announcer? "Heeeeeeeers Johnnnnnnnny." Everything you, as a parish, do for one another, for the community, especially for the marginalized in our society, is exactly the same: Your care for the poor, your openness to people of different faiths, to men and women of differing sexual orientations, to the people of different nationalities — all of this is your way of saying loudly and clearly and with genuine hope, Heeeeeeeers Jesus Christ, living among us today!
