SECOND SUNDAY OF ADVENT Year "A"

                                     SECOND SUNDAY OF ADVENT

Cycle “A”: Mt. 3, 1 – 12

“Repent, for the Kingdom of heaven is close at hand.” (Mt. 3,2)

The story is told about a businessman who proudly told Mark Twain, “Before I die, I want to make a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. I will climb Mt. Sinai and I will read aloud the Ten Commandments.” Mark Twain observed dryly, “I have a better idea. You could stay home in Boston and keep the Ten Commandments.”

It appears that many people do not buy into the idea of personal sin. We live out our lives in an era that has dry-cleaned sin away. Those who can afford it, prefer to go to a psychotherapist or psychologist when they have a weight on their conscience. The psychologist may rationalise guilt feelings away but cannot pronounce the words of absolution, “I absolve you from your sins in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” I cannot understand why people don’t want to hear those cleansing and consoling words. Even the pope, priests and bishops have to go for confession. And yet consider, when we repent, the forgiveness that we receive is absolute, leaving no space for guilt.

Sadly, nowadays, you do not want to feel guilty, because it will make you feel guilty. And if you send people on a guilt trip, so much the worse for you.

Today’s Gospel shows us John the Baptist coming in from the desert “proclaiming a baptism of repentance that led to forgiveness of sin.” And the Gospels tell us that people bought his message, repented of their sins, and were baptised. There must have been something particularly attractive about John that made people lay their faults and failings open to him. He was truly a man of God – that’s what they saw – and he provided a personal link with God since he conveyed God’s message.

 Today John the Baptist might well be out of a job, drawing unemployment insurance, if any. There is no insurance in the desert, only total and absolute dependence on God. John might even be locked up for disturbing the peace. As a matter of fact, he was locked up for rattling Herod’s composure and false dignity.

I sometimes worry that those who should know better - parents, teachers and myself, are depriving young people of education in morals. What sort of message are we sending the young people by our example and indulgent smiles ? What would John the Baptist have to say on this matter ? What would he have to say to each of us individually? To airbrush sin away is to reduce religion to sweet sauce. To bury sin with socio-economic buzzwords, or explain it away by blaming it on the environment or genes and chromosomes would be to sell Jesus Christ down the river. When Peter denied Jesus he did not blame it on his mother-in-law! A modern day psychiatrist would probably have traced his defection to faulty childhood toilet training. Mathew’s Gospel tells us quite simply: “Peter went out and began to weep bitterly.” Today, if he were caught weeping he would be slipped a fistful of Vallium and advised to go fishing. And how about Judas ?  He took personal responsibility for his betrayal of Jesus. He felt he did something so rotten that nobody would touch him with a bar of soap; so he handed himself the death sentence.

Neither should we blame our sins on the environment or genes and chromosomes. These things do have an influence, but the decisive choice to commit a sin or not remains with the person in situation.

Repentance challenges us to face those areas of sin and moral blindness within us that are not fully yet under God’s authority. The call of the Gospel is a personal invitation to growth in holiness and communion. What we know of God is but a shadow of what is to be known. Repentance allows Jesus to reign in every area of our lives. Sometimes we carry the burden of sin without even realising it. If you are tempted to do something and feel even a shade of reluctance, ask yourself, “If I do this, how will it affect my life in six months, two years, five years?” See yourself as a vital part of the world, interdependent and affected by the actions of every other person on the planet. Ask yourself, “Will this be good for me and for everyone?” Asking the right question is a step in the direction of the right answer. Advent is about readjusting the lenses, questioning our attitudes, allowing for the huge emotional displacements and rearrangements of ideas.  It’s about looking again at our familiar surroundings and seeing them with new eyes.

Listen again to John in today’s Gospel: as the Baptist walked on to the public scene, the first thing he said was not “Have a nice day”, but “Repent!”

PRAYER (Janet Morley):

God our deliverer, whose approaching birth still shakes the foundations of our world, may we so wait for your coming with eagerness and hope, that we embrace without terror the labour pangs of the new age.

Christ our victim, whose beauty was disfigured and whose body torn upon the cross, open wide your arms to embrace our tattered world, that we may not turn away our eyes but abandon ourselves to your mercy. Amen.