2nd Sunday Advent C


See Commentary on (Luke 3:1-6) in Luke 3:1-20


Homily 1 - 2006

Baruch, the not-so-well known Hebrew prophet (whom we heard in today’s First Reading) had a strong sense that things would be different.

The people suffered because their leaders were so painfully inadequate – not unlike some in our own world today.  Both priests and kings, religious and secular leaders, unwilling to trust God and God’s ways, were leading the nation into unnecessary suffering and eventual destruction.

Baruch connected peace with integrity, honour with devotedness.

Along with Isaiah, whom Luke quoted in the Gospel reading, Baruch was saturated with God’s vision for his world. They both had a sense of what life could be like if genuine concern for the common-good of all replaced the self-interest and national interest of the powerful and the rich; and if a sense of the inviolable dignity of every person replaced violence and the culture of death.

For that to happen, people’s eyes needed to be opened – to see that many familiar and unquestioned ways of doing things were not necessarily the only ways, or the best ways. People needed to be educated, their consciences formed, and their sense of mutual responsibility sharpened and activated.

The need is universal, as important now as then.

Six centuries after Baruch and Isaiah, John the Baptist appeared on the scene. Luke summed up his striking entry onto the stage in today’s Gospel:

The Word of God came to John, son of Zachariah, in the wilderness... and he went through the whole Jordan district proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.

Simply, people needed conversion.

John believed that the power of sin could be broken, not in some distant never-never, but immediately, by one who would follow in his footsteps.

But people first needed to share his pain, and his distress at the way things were. Then they needed to become aware of their own often unconscious sharing in the destructive networks, relationships and customary ways of doing things that destroyed their own human dignity as they undermined the dignity of others. And thirdly, they needed to find the motivating power and the energy to do things differently: they needed to share John’s hope for change and his confident sense of God.

John sensed that God was moving... God – the source of being, the creator of the universe, the life-force of all that lives – was moving. Indeed, unknown to John, God had stepped into the flow of human history in order to engage with it from within. God had taken human flesh and blood, and become incarnate in Jesus.

I get so frustrated at the way people often trivialise Christmas, replacing the awe-inspiring mystery of incarnation with Santa Claus, and Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer.

Prepare a way for the Lord, make his paths straight. That is not an invitation to nostalgia. It is a call to radical conversion and active commitment.

God’s Kingdom is possible. But we do not get captured by that realisation in the midst of noise, frantic movement or distraction..

During the coming days, it is important that we try to construct some quiet time in the midst of all the noise; some stillness in the midst of the frantic movement; some peace in the midst of the endless distraction.


Homily 2- 2009

Did you notice how Luke creates the context for the public ministry of Jesus? He names the powerful figures of the political world in which Jesus moved: the Roman Emperor Tiberias, and the local tyrant/kings Herod and Philip and others. Their violence, oppression and lack of respect for human life and values were legendary, despite their propaganda to the contrary. Not all that different from our own time!

He also named the power brokers in the religious sphere: the Jewish high-priests Annas and Caiaphas

He then introduced a prophetic, somewhat eccentric, figure – John, dressed up like the famous prophet Elijah, working out in the wild, on the edges of the social structure, and, like Elijah before him, calling for a radical rethink, a radical change – political and religious, from a situation he simply identified as sinful.

Though today’s Gospel doesn’t yet mention the fact, Jesus went down from Nazareth to align himself with John’s movement, and to work with him for some time.

Eventually, Jesus separated from John. It seems that, while they shared the sense of the need for radical social and religious change, John’s approach was primarily moralistic, and coloured by a preference for an interventionist, violent God.

Jesus’ call for change went deeper than morality, and was coloured by a sense of God as gracious, merciful, certainly on for justice, and not a God on anyone’s side, (particularly not the powerful or even the virtuous), but a God who was passionately concerned for the human dignity of every person – whom he saw as precious to God, whom God loved, forgave and ultimately trusted. That was the vision to which Jesus called whoever would listen. He called it Good News, the Gospel.

The Second Reading today challenges me. Paul was writing to the faith community in Philippi. Paul shared a wonderful sense of the vision of Jesus – of a world in need of radical change – but a change based on Jesus’ sense of God as wonderfully loving, gracious, patient, and caring for every human person – Gentile or Jew, servant or free, woman or man.

Like Jesus, he saw his vision as Good News, and he was passionate about spreading it … as he congratulated and rejoiced in the disciples at Philippi: You have helped to spread the Good News. But, with Paul locked up in prison, miles away from them, how were they to apply the Good News of God and of the human person to their current political, social and religious situation? as he put it: to recognise what is best?

I suppose we could keep asking ourselves the same question in our current political, social and religious world. The issue of climate change is very much in debate at the moment. How do we recognise what is best?

It is important to listen to Paul’s response: My prayer is that your love for each other may increase more and more.. Why? He goes on: my prayer is that your love… never stop improving your knowledge and deepening your perception .. so that you can always recognise what is best. For Paul, the necessary condition to improve your knowledge and to deepen your perception in order to recognise what is best is to love.

My prayer is that your love for each other may increase more and more so that ..

As I reflect on what is happening in parliament and in the media, etc., as I reflect on my own approach often in the past, (and, when I’m not on my guard, in the present), love often doesn’t enter into the equation; or, what says the same thing, mutual respect or appreciation for others.

Too easily, we seem to delight in debate, to win the argument [but not consensus], to seek reasons to justify conclusions we have already reached (for God knows what real reasons), or to ridicule those we disagree with. To me, there can be too little evidence of listening to each other, and of searching together to get as close as possible to the truth of things. Our need to prove ourselves right and the other wrong often serves only to strengthen our sense of self-righteousness.

In Jesus’ mind, and in Paul’s mind, that attitude is what needs to change. We need to bring to bear on the situations we confront our sense of the gracious, inclusive God, and our love and respect for others who might differ from us.

If we are to recognise what is best, to improve our knowledge, to deepen our perception, we need to seek together in love.


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 wildernessThe 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?


 Homily 4 - 2015

Today’s Gospel presents us with John, out in the bush, what the Gospel calls the wilderness, somewhere along the Jordan valley. His get-up was quite unusual, so any passers-by going on pilgrimage to the Temple, would have easily noticed him. He was urging people to “Prepare a way for the Lord...” The Church seems to think that it might help us if we, too, at this time of Advent, were to do precisely that.

“Prepare a way for the Lord”. How? What does that involve? John, at least, does not think that, whatever it is, it comes easily. It would require repentance, radical conversion. Conversion does not mean ‘more of the same, only better’. It means ‘Be different’. 

Jesus took up the same point. He preached repentance/conversion, too, as a preliminary to everything else he would have to say. And it was not long before it became obvious what he meant. In his Sermon on the Mount, for example, he urged us to ‘love our enemies’. Without thinking, we say, “How wonderful!” But we can’t, can we? Enemies are enemies. 

I believe that St Paul was on to something in today’s Second Reading, “My prayer is that your love for each other may increase more and more, and never stop improving your knowledge and deepening your perception.” Somehow he connected growth in love with ‘knowledge’ and ‘perception’, with how we know and how we perceive.

As far as my enemies go, I cannot stop them seeing me as the enemy. If they want to hurt me, oppose me, kill me, I cannot stop them. But can I begin to regard them differently? Honestly? Well, that is where I think repentance/conversion begins – learning to see.

I remember when I first went to the seminary many long years ago. One of the men in my year had been a professional artist. One afternoon we were walking together, and in the distance was a fence. He asked me, “If you were to paint this scene, what colour would you paint that fence?” I replied, “White”, because I had seen it numerous times before and knew it was white. He said, “Look again! Look carefully! From where we are standing, in this afternoon light, does it really look white?” I looked carefully, and realized that it had a marked purple tone. I had imposed my own preconceived certainties and did not see it as it truly was at that moment.

It is hard for us to see all that is simply as it is, without imposing our filters. In our Western world, after three centuries of scientific enlightenment, we are instinctively experts in analyzing, differentiating, seeing things clearly in black or white, either/or, this or that, friend or enemy, right or wrong, like/don’t like. It is called dual thinking – and has proved to be quite useful. Science is based on such logical distinctions; computers depend on it.

But it misses much of the richness and complexity of reality. Logic is not wisdom. Interestingly, the truly great breakthroughs in science, medicine, mathematics, astronomy, etc., owe more to creative imagination, even to mistakes, than to logic alone. There is another way of perceiving, of reaching out to the real, to the whole, that has much more to do with ‘both/and’ than with ‘either/or’. 

God sees us as we are – the whole us – without filters. God knows that every cry of anger, of hatred and violence, is the cry of pain. As well as seeing our guilt, God sees the pain, the depths, from where all our reactions proceed. And God’s first response is not judgment but compassion and an irresistible desire to save.

Over time, with persistent practice, we can learn to see ourselves as God sees us. We can begin to imagine the possibility of holding together ‘guilt/forgiveness’, even to succeed in genuinely loving. Wonderfully, as we notice it happening in ourselves, we find it extending gradually to others – “A baptism of repentance/conversion for the forgiveness of sins” – our sins and others’ sins.


Homily 5 - 2018

George Bush Snr. died during the week. It was he who, nearly thirty years ago, along with Margaret Thatcher and a number of other national leaders, including our own Prime Minister, declared war against Saddam Hussein, contrary to the judgment of the United Nations. That war was the 1991 Gulf War. What influence the war had on the prolific spread of aggressive Muslim extremism since then is anyone’s guess. Among those passionately opposed to the War was Pope John Paul II.

That is past. God’s ever-ready forgiveness handles the past quite adequately. The present and the future are God’s concerns. God wants to save us from ourselves and from each other. Simply put, God wants us to stop sinning. Sin involves much more than the personal relationship of sinner and God. It is a choice against truth and value. Sin directly affects other persons, as well as the integrity and dignity of the sinner. Becoming free of sin is a prerequisite for anything approaching peace in ourselves and in the world. Sin is an attitude, a careless or hostile attitude. It is a power alive within us. It usually involves a degree of blindness and ignorance. We are so used to it that we do not even see it as sin at all – we take it for granted. The removal of sin requires a stance always open to deeper conversion.

In this context of on-going conversion, I find Paul’s prayer for his Philippian friends, as we heard in today’s Second Reading, wonderfully relevant. He wrote, “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”.

Paul was no longer with the Philippians. He wanted them to be able to discern for themselves, “to recognise what is best”, to know what to do and what to refrain from doing – an indispensable moral skill that our world leaders and politicians, as well as everyone in general, so sorely need if they are not to destroy us and our world. He wanted them to develop their personal consciences.

In order to act conscientiously, people need to be open to a profound attitudinal change. Paul saw that people’s ability always to recognise what is best, that is, to reach conclusions conscientiously, depended crucially on “their love for each other increasing more and more”. If we are honest, that is asking for a seismic change of attitude. Yet that choice deliberately to love is where peace within us and in our world necessarily begins. Most people, ourselves included, are simply not interested in other people, even instinctively wary of them – perhaps even mildly [or majorly] hostile, seeing them as potential threats to our comfort zones. To even want to love people, to be interested in what is best for them, requires truly genuine conversion. To actually love them all – everyone – requires perseverance and practice and even down-to-earth wisdom. It means being different from the crowd.

Yet, the human dignity of others is the same human dignity that God has given to us – no less, no more. We need somehow to train ourselves to think spontaneously, “How will my choice affect people?”

There is a lot more, of course, involved in forming a mature conscience, in discerning how to act responsibly and, as Paul put it, “recognising what is best” than simply deciding to act from love. Paul prayed that his Philippian friends also “improve their knowledge and deepen their perception” – and those two factors, theoretical knowledge and practical perception, call for further care and further skill. The practical perception, I believe, is the fruit of contemplation. Yet the deliberate choice to love everyone remains the indispensable starting point.

Let us listen again to Paul pulling it all together once more, “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”.


 Homily 6 - 2021

The word “integrity” invariably seems to attract my attention. And it occurs three times in today’s First Reading written by the prophet Baruch. So I am triply attracted. Integrity speaks to me of an easy simplicity, a purity of heart [as Jesus mentioned in the Beatitudes], ‘true to ourselves’, no hidden agendas, pure authenticity.

Baruch was working at an utterly depressing time for the Hebrew People. Their city Jerusalem had been destroyed, their temple with it, and they had been herded into humiliating captivity in distant Babylon. Yet Baruch’s sense of God was such that he could look to the future, leave room for God, and hope not only for liberation but even for a glorious future for his fellow slaves. He encouraged them to “wrap the cloak of the integrity of God around” themselves, because some time in the future God would guide the people back home “with [God’s] integrity for escort”. Jerusalem [the name means “home of peace”], would be rebuilt — and God would give it a purposeful new name: “Peace through Integrity”.

Integrity” is what our world so sorely needs at the moment, what our country needs, what our politicians need. Nations seem to be losing even the meaning of the word “truth”. Truth is coming to mean whatever people want it to mean. As truth disappears, common vision, political unity, cooperation, even civility, run the danger of disappearing with it.

Since political leaders are drawn from the general population, if we want leaders of integrity, the population in general need to be people of integrity. The population, in its turn, is made up of you and me. Any hope for a “Home of Peace—Peace through Integrity” involves us. It perhaps may need to start with us disciples of Jesus.

God, who was intent on making Jerusalem a “Home of Peace — Peace with Integrity”, is the God who later sent his Son, Jesus, among us. Jesus came with an almost impossible mission entrusted to him by his Father to save the world from itself. I say ‘almost impossible’ because Jesus’ respect for human dignity was such that he necessarily respected human freedom. Our free cooperation with Jesus is essential if we want our confused world ever to experience salvation.

Jesus’ practical message to us boiled down essentially to, “Love your enemy”. What on earth could he have meant by “love”? Where do we start?

In today’s Second Reading, Paul wrote, “My prayer is that your love for each other may increase more and more”, that that love “may never stop improving your knowledge and deepening your perception”, and then transform you so thoroughly that “you can always recognise what is best”.

The “knowledge” that allows any possibility of genuine integrity, of “deeper perception”, is self-knowledge: an inner knowledge, not of things but of our personal feelings, the energies stirring constantly within us, our often hidden motivations driving our rationalisations. And such self-knowledge can be the fruit of time spent ruminating on Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount and on many of his parables, especially when reinforced by meditation or quiet prayer.