HOMILY FOR THE SECOND SUNDAY OF ADVENT (A)

Fr Billy Swan

Dear friends. We associate Advent and Christmas with candles, cribs, carols, shopping, Christmas trees, decorations, cards, parties, Nativity Plays, time off, family, dinners, gifts and travel home among many other things. All of these features of Christmas are good but the true meaning of Christmas has an explosive power that often passes us by. As we see in both the first reading and the Gospel for this Second Sunday of Advent, there is a new energy and power that changes us and the world around us. How so?

In the Gospel, we encounter the passionate figure of John the Baptist who pleads with the people to repent of their sins and to prepare for the coming of the Saviour. It was an unsettling message then as it is now. Although Lent is a time of greater penance than Advent, now is also a time of year to make a new beginning regarding our relationship with God. It is time for all of us to pray for a new baptism in the Spirit that will burn away any indifference, coldness and neglect of our faith in Christ who comes to us as our friend and Saviour. John’s words to the Pharisees seem harsh given the fact that they too came to him. But the severity of John’s words serves as a warning to avoid complacency by thinking ‘I’m OK as I am’ or not appreciating that I too need saving.

For many of us, our baptism is just a detail of our lives. It happened once and that’s the end of it. But being baptised in the Spirit is the constant prayer for the gift of the Holy Spirit to be stirred up in our lives so that we might live a more committed and authentic Christian life. We think here of how alive St Paul was with the Spirit of Jesus that he could say: ‘It is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me’ (Gal. 2:20). Advent is a time to come home to faith, to prayer, to the Church, to the Scriptures, to the Eucharist and to the Sacrament of Reconciliation. These are the moments when we are baptised with the Spirit and with fire.

Advent and Christmas are also times when faith causes a new social order. This is the spirit of the First Reading from Isaiah where the coming of the Messiah will lead to a new social order of harmony where before there was separation and hostility. ‘The wolf lying with the lamb’, the ‘panther with the kid’ and the ‘calf and the lion feeding together’ are ways that Isaiah describes this new order. But what part do we play in making this happen?

This evening in Rome, I met a man who was begging at the door of a Church. He was asking for money for food but instead of giving him money, we went to a bar across the street where I had a coffee and he had a sandwich, hot milk and cake. He told me his name, and that he came from Bulgaria and had two children back in Sofia. We spent about 15 minutes together and in that time, that first reading came to mind.

I never met him before and probably won’t meet him again. We live in different worlds. And yet, the meeting of our lives in those 15 mins was something wholesome, joyful and sacredly human. It was a coming together of human beings to share, to eat and be together. It was the spirit of that first reading and the spirit of Christmas when Christ brought together rich and poor, Jew and Gentile into a communion, a oneness and a unity that the world needs right now.

Advent and Christmas are anything but sentimental. The seasons invite us to change and grow. They invite us to be baptised in the Spirit, to leave our comfort zones and take risks to bridge divides that beg to be healed.