A Cycle -2ndSunday of Advent 25

Is.10:1-10

 The promised Mesiah would reconcile the people to God and bring about a future full of hope.  Yet, today’s world is full of violence, division, distrust, and despair.  What has belief and hope brought us? It seems society has always experienced wars, division, distrust, corruption, and violence. 

Isiah’s prophecy we heard today talks about impossible things happening because the promise Messiah is coming. He proclaimed the wolf will be the guest of the lamb, and the leopard will lay down next to the kid. The young lion will browse with a child leading him. We all know the instinctive nature of a wolf, a leopard and a lion will be to kill and devoir other animals weaker than themselves.    

Christ came to change us and to reconcile us to God.  Why do we remain uncertain about God’s mercy, His forgiveness. Why have we failed to appropriate the grace of the cross and allowed that grace to fill us with peace?  Perhaps it is because we have not allowed the transforming power of Christ’s death and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit to penetrate our hearts. 

John the Baptist in today’s gospel shows us how easy it is for us to live lives of righteousness without engaging our hearts. We have become todays Pharisees. We have practiced a visible righteousness trusting in our ability to adhere to rituals, laws, and acceptable practices. 

John challenged such righteousness by demanding “provide proof of repentance.” Proof by what we have become not what we do.  Evidence by producing good fruit.  We can produce evidence of good fruit by charitable works of mercy or by attendance at daily mass.  Service to the poor, or attendance at a bible study, prayer services, spiritual exercises are in our minds evidence of good fruit.

Does all our external works serve as proof of where our hearts are or do they satisfy a need to cover up our failure to believe what we can become by giving God our hearts.

John called the Pharisees a “brood of vipers” and Christ called them whitewashed sepulchers.  All they did was to cover up their lack of trust in God’s promise to change us.  Advent is more than a time of waiting for the coming of Christ for He has come already.  It is time for us to examine ourselves and ponder how we have responded to His invitation to give Him our hearts and submit to the transforming action of the Holy Spirit.

Giving Christ our hearts and trusting in His promises is not natural for us to do. Like the lion, the wolf, and the leopard our nature is to be in control. Trust in God demands we give up control of our long held concepts of holiness. It demands that we, in the hardest moments of our lives, draw our strength from Him and overcome the temptation to believe He does not care.

Each week within our community of faith, we have deaths, people diagnosed with cancer, miscarriages, divorces, broken families, financial struggles, debilitating diseases, house fires.  At those moments it is easy to believe God does not care.  We want an easy predictable faith but instead we face challenges to our faith.  Believing in God’s goodness demands we know God’s desire is for us to experience His comfort, strength, and power to sustain us despite what our instincts tell us. 

One of God’s promises is for us to experience peace at a times.  “My peace I give you, in the world there will be turmoil but in Me peace.” 

We need to do more than believe in Christ; we need to do more than practice our faith. We must live it and often our greatest witness will be when we are amid a storm.  Keep your eyes on Jesus and allow Him to guide you to a deeper faith in things unseen yet believed. Advent gives you time to do more than prepare it gives you a time to surrender and to embrace Christ and to trust in His promises.