Homily for the week of December 5, 2010

Second Sunday of Advent, 2010

Isaiah 11:1-10

Psalm 72:1-2, 7-8, 12-13, 17

Romans 15:4-9

Matthew 3:1-12

In 1996 a small child fell into a gorilla exhibit at a zoo in Chicago. A mother gorilla with her baby on her back went and scooped up the child and took him to a safe place. She guarded the child until the zookeeper could come and take him out through a metal door at the back of the exhibit. Such scenes surprise us. Gorillas are wild animals, and so our enemies. We observe them in zoos, but we do not live with them.

Our first reading, however, gives us a very different vision of the world and its wild animals. Isaiah is the one who wrote this reading. Isaiah has a dream or a vision of what it might be like in a world that Jesus talked about so often. In this world the baby will play by the cobra's den. The wolf will be the guest of the lamb. The leopard and the kid will lie down. The calf will eat with the lion, the cow and the bear will be neighbors.

This sounds like a children's book where animals do simple things together. But the truth is that this is what we long for. We long for a world filled with God or goodness or peace. Isaiah gives us a picture of a heaven of universal peace and justice. Who would not want to go to a place where the wolf is a guest of the lamb; where a calf and a young lion browse together; where the cow and the bear are neighbors; where the baby plays in the cobras den? This scene is especially appealing when people at the time of Isaiah were at war with each other. But this paradise can be ours if we truly follow the advice of John the Baptist in our today's Gospel.

Isaiah advises us to be patient in trying to live out gifts of understanding, justice, faith and goodness. The Jewish people had been conquered by a lot of outsiders, but Isaiah is hopeful. He says: God will intervene, be patient. He offers a day when human suffering would be healed and evil would disappear. But the people would have to trust God, and have to wait.

By the time that Matthew comes along, he tells us that most of our waiting has ended. God will finally send a person by the name of Jesus. A preacher by the name of John the Baptist arrives. He lives in the desert. John is the son of Zechariah and Elizabeth and the cousin of Jesus. He was born much after a woman would normally have a child. John the Baptist dressed himself in camel hair, and ate locust and honey. He lived much of his life in the desert.

In all of our Bible readings there are references to the desert. It seems that whenever anyone had to make an important choice, they spent time in prayer in the desert. John the Baptist went to the desert in order to be closer to God. The Jews learned to depend on God while in the desert. He gave them manna and quail to nourish them in their hunger and from a rock came water to quench their thirst. In the desert, John the Baptist learned to depend on God, and through him the cry to repent and make straight the paths to God would again resound.

John was concerned that those who follow him have a good life. He tells people that they have to repent. Repent means that we are sorry for anything bad we have done. REPENT, FOR THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN IS AT HAND, he says. If we are to have a future, he says, we must reform our lives.

John's command to REPENT basically means this: Change our heart and our conscience about what is important in our life, and then change our life accordingly. We must be willing to turn our life around. Repent means we must shape up, reorganize, readjust, renew. We must repent, not because we are afraid of the loss of heaven and the pains of hell, but because that is the only way that we will recognize Jesus when he comes.

Just in case we missed the point of John's sermon, we can read a little further in our Gospel and come to the very first sermon that Jesus himself gave. WHAT DO YOU SUPPOSE JESUS PREACHED? The same point that John the Baptist gave. Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand, Jesus says.

There is much more that John and Jesus gave us in their sermons. But the message of this weekend in Advent is to Repent. To Repent is not one of our common expressions. To repent means to improve and renew our lives. But to repent is not easy.

For many of us to repent may mean to bring our actions back in line with those that Jesus taught us. Whenever we wonder what we should be doing, it would be great if we asked ourselves the question: WHAT WOULD JESUS DO IN THIS SITUATION? It is a reminder to do our best to live the values, ideals and virtues taught by Jesus. How would Jesus advise me to turn my life back to him? How do I witness at home, to my spouse, to my children, in my work, and in my parish? Do I understand that my example is powerful? I need to feel the urgency of fulfilling the mission that Christ has given me in my particular state in life. When I receive Holy Communion, I receive the food I need to help me in my mission.

None of us are prophets or preachers like John the Baptist. But each of us may seek to do as the Baptist demands. Through repentance we can rediscover the mercy of God. Through sorrow for our sinful ways, a sorrow that is eager to put right what we have disrupted, we can make straight the way of the Lord. The best way to judge ourselves is not by what rules we do or do not keep, but by how well we live out the gifts of the Holy Spirit already within us.

Often there are moments in our lives that seem like a desert, but it is in these moments that God brings us closer to him. We should not be afraid of experiencing dryness or difficulties in prayer because it is then when God helps us trust more in him. As we receive and send cards, as we buy gifts, as we put up Christmas decorations, let us remember whose birth it is Let each of these activities be used as a prayer to be thankful that we believe. It is only in this way that we will truly reform ourselves and prepare the way for the coming of Jesus.