2nd Sunday of Advent

Today we begin the 2^nd week of Advent. We hear in the Gospel of Matthew that John the Baptist preaches, “Prepare the way of the Lord, make straight his paths.” This second week is also dedicated to, “preparing ourselves to meet Jesus.”

We wait for Jesus to be born on Christmas, the day he enters into human history. We also await his glorious second coming which will usher in that new kingdom, one where there is no more pain or sorrow, but perfect happiness in God and in one another.

Yet, we still journey here and our preparation continues. The question that often comes up is, “How do I prepare?”

Well, we know how we prepare for the holidays. We save money so that we can go out and buy gifts for the one’s we love. This takes a lot of work, literally, by actually making an income and saving it prudently, and also by going out and shopping for gifts. That can drive a person mad. Then there is the preparation to prepare, for instance, “when will I go shopping, where will I go, and how long do I want to invest in that, etc.”

The Christian life should be no different. We need to put in time; we need to “save,” so that we will find the best gifts, the best discounts, etc. The principles are the same, what you put in is what you will get out. “Some seed produced 30, 60, or 100 fold.”

But getting back to the question of how we should prepare, the first and most important thing in any Christian life is “Truth.” Truth about self. Part of being in relationship with God, part of preparing to receive Him is that we look into ourselves first and be honest with ourselves.

This is very hard, because sometimes the Truth hurts. No one likes to look inside and see darkness of sin, weakness, foibles, addictions, and the whole gamut of vice.

John the Baptist yells out loud if not screams at us to, “Produce good fruit as evidence of your repentance.” Before we can produce good fruit we need to repent and repentance means looking deep within and dealing with what’s there. The problem is that with sin it sometimes becomes so engrained in us we think we are doing nothing wrong. But deep down inside we know there is a problem, but we build walls around it and we come up with all kinds of reasons to justify behavior even destructive behavior. All sin is addictive, or at least has the potential to become so.

Sinful behavior is not easy to deal with, for it demands honesty and then demands something even further, “Produce good fruit as evidence of your repentance.”

Am I preaching to the choir? We already come to Church, we haven’t done anything that bad, please father don’t talk about sins, cheer us up. I will, but before that we need to acknowledge something, and that something is that yes we are the choir, because we are all sinners. We are not all in the same place, but we all are looking for healing.

Advent you see is not simply the nice trees, and believe-you me, I love the decorations, the caroling, the food, the presents, but it is also more than that, it is a time of coming clean. Why wouldn’t we want to be made clean by the Lord? Again, I know it’s very hard, but the Lord desires it for us. We will only be as sick as our secrets.

Part of the preparation for Catholics is the sacrament of reconciliation. It is a place to be made clean. Once a person decides not to go to confession, that is already an admission of guilt, one in which the person deceives themselves in thinking they are not a sinner.

John the Baptist was accepted by some and rejected by others. Those who rejected him refused to look inside and deal with the darkness, and there they remained. There were others who accepted what he said and made it a reality in their lives, they decided to be washed that day but too also continue washing themselves in God’s love, and that takes hard work, first and foremost it requires Truth, and it requires it always, anything else is a lie and from the father of lies.

John the Baptist is speaking, yelling out to us, he is coming out from the desert and hollering, “Repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand . . . Prepare the way of the Lord . . . (and) produce good fruit as evidence of your repentance.” John is standing waiting for us by the water. Let us go to meet him, for we are children of Truth, we are Christians.

Fr. John