Second Sunday of Advent
St. Mary's Cathedral, Sydney
Baruch 5:1-9; Phil 1:4-6, 8-11; Lk 3:1-6
+ Cardinal George Pell, Archbishop of Sydney
6 Dec 2009
All three readings today take up the Advent theme, which began on last Sunday. We need to be preparing, in Paul's words, for the Day of Christ by working to become pure and blameless.
We prepare for examinations by studying, we prepare for a driving test by tuition and practice and we should be using our preparation for Christmas as a trial run for when we meet the Lord at the moment of judgement.
This line of reasoning is open to many objections. Doesn't it run counter to the happiness and excitement of a new birth which we celebrate at Christmas? Isn't such a conjunction of thoughts the connection an older person might make, with more years behind him than lie in front of him? Once upon a time we were urged not to talk in public about politics or religion and certainly today the secular swingers, the new pagans don't want sickness and old age mentioned; and certainly not dying. It is okay to plan an active, happy retirement but it is disconcerting if an older person claims to be preparing for a good death.
The basic point of Advent preparations for Christmas is to remind us of the enormous advantages we have because God has visited us by sending His Son among us, to teach us, to live with us and suffer like us, as He redeemed us. But an important by-product of Advent is that we are reminded of our present responsibilities, our duty not to drive Christ out of our hearts by sin and hatred and of the ultimately important fact that we shall meet Christ in death even before Christ returns in glory on the last day.
Both the Old Testament writer Baruch and St. Luke in his gospel as he quotes the Old Testament prophet Isaiah are working hard with their language to impress on their readers the enormous importance of the coming of God.
Jerusalem will be restored and faithful Jews will return from every corner of the world to celebrate the triumph. Jerusalem will be cloaked with integrity, which is necessary for the Godly triumph, dressed in beauty with a crown of glory. Their motto forever will be "peace through integrity and honour through devotedness".
We are now used to the marvels that our engineers have been able to accomplish for decades. Sydney is a city of skyscrapers; we have the Sydney Harbour Bridge and the elegant Anzac Bridge. If we drive north on the M3 we can see how the engineers have cut through the mountains and built fantastic bridges across the valleys and the occasional river like the Hawkesbury. Such is the technological expertise available today they don't generally have to fill the valleys to avoid the hills which exhausted the horses, camels and those travelling by foot in ancient times. Such is the power of our cars, trucks and trains that they can easily surmount even steep inclines.
So it was from a different level of technological expertise that the Book of Baruch, whose earlier sections date from the sixth century B.C., spoke of God flattening the high mountains and the everlasting hills and filling the valleys to ground level. In those days all this was beyond their capacity except in a few limited situations, where slave labour substituted for modern machinery.
The passage from Isaiah which Luke quotes probably predates Baruch, as it runs a series of similar images. But in Isaiah's case it is a voice crying in the wilderness, which announces the good news. Then as now many were too busy to listen, even when they were sympathetic to the idea generally and of course a goodly percentage would have rejected as ridiculous any suggestion that all mankind would see the salvation of God.
In the lighting of the second candle, the Bethlehem candle, during the blessing of the Advent wreath, we find explicit references to the three comings of Christ: at the first Christmas, when we welcome Christ into our hearts and when Christ returns at the end of time.
Advent is certainly a time for confession, for the Sacrament of reconciliation so we welcome Christ personally by our repentance. We now know the percentage coming to Sunday Mass has declined, but we often leave unremarked the greater decline in the numbers frequenting the sacrament of penance. This decline is a serious loss.
It is good for us to confess our sins; an indication of our sincerity to open our hearts to God's healing grace. It is also good to unburden ourselves of our guilt regularly and not just once in a blue moon.
John the Baptist called his listeners to repentance and the forgiveness of sins. Let us pray that this will be an essential part of our preparation for Christmas.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen
