2nd Sunday Advent C - Homily 3

Homily 3 - 2012

John apparently seems to have been a hermit figure poking around somewhere out in the barren wilderness region of Judea. 

Then, at some time, as today's Gospel put it, the word of God came to him out there in the wilderness.  The word came to him.  I wonder what that means.  Might it have been it a growing insight? or a sudden flash of inspiration?  Whatever it was, it changed him, and galvanized him into action.  He went down to the river bordering the eastern edge of the wilderness, and began to proclaim to pilgrims passing through on their way up to Jerusalem what the Gospel summed up as: a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. 

Forgiveness of sins happens as people open up to the boundless goodness of the graciously forgiving God – but it doesn't stop there.  That contact with the boundless goodness of God has the power radically to transform the lives of those who truly accept it. 

That transformation is a work of cooperation.  The Gospel calls that human cooperation in that empowered transformation repentance.  Repentance involves a whole other way of looking at life, of relating to God and to people, that in turn lead to a whole other way of experiencing life. 

In our world today, there are so many opportunities for entertainment, so many invitations to have a good time, and to enjoy ourselves.  There are so many things we can buy to make life easier, or to save us time.  But I wonder if, in the process, our world runs the danger of becoming a spiritual wilderness - a barren world that too easily serves to drain us of our very humanity. 

For all the hype, the entertainment, the frenetic buying, the extravagant giving and receiving of the next few weeks, when it is all over, will people be happier, wiser, or more peace-filled than they were before?

God is totally committed to saving us from ourselves and from each other – totally committed to helping us grow to become more deeply human, wiser and peace filled – to turn the wilderness of so much of modern life into luscious garden, to let the desert blossom and burst forth in stunning life and beauty.  

But we must cooperate.  So, we must be open to change.  The past doesn't matter.  God's forgiveness takes care of that. What matter are today and tomorrow.

If repentance – change – on our part involves a whole other way of seeing life and of relating to God, to each other and to the created world of which God has made us the stewards, where do we start? What do we do? 

How do we prepare the way of the Lord into our personal lives, and, through us, into our world? What does it involve? The answers to that, and the priorities we need to set, will be different for each of us. 

Something that Paul wrote in today's Second Reading might be quite relevant.  I find it quite intriguing.  I'll read it again: My prayer is that your love for each other may increase more and more, and never stop improving your knowledge and deepening your perception so that you can always recognise what is best. 

What each of us needs is precisely to be able to recognise what is best in our own sometimes complex, and certainly ever-changing, situations – to improve our knowledge and deepen our perception – to "kind of" intuit, to have an unerring instinct to "home in" on what is best. 

What intrigues me in what Paul wrote was that he saw the key to that outcome to be our love for each other.  Loving each other, obviously, is always a work in progress.  Yet it still remains the basic starting point.  It really does challenge me that the launching pad of discernment, and the key to formation of conscience, is our determined choice to love each other. 

Where might that lead us in our basic approach to asylum seekers and to victims of clerical sexual abuse?