December 6, 2021
Paulist Fr. Rich Andre preached this homily on 2nd Sunday of Advent (Year C) on December 5, 2021, at St. Austin Catholic Parish in Austin, TX. The homily is based on the day’s readings: Baruch 5:1-9; Psalm 126; Philippians 1:4-6, 8-11; and Luke 3:1-6.
Last year, I said, “This Advent is the Adventiest Advent I’ve ever Advented.” But this year, the mood feels oddly similar.
While the season of Advent is largely a time of comforting the afflicted, the Second Sunday of Advent is traditionally a day for afflicting the comfortable. We’re usually challenged to reflect on how we, as individuals and as a society, may be interfering with God’s promise to bring justice, especially justice to the poor and the underprivileged. The readings today are more consoling and less challenging than in some other years. And yet, the cry for justice and reform, and the need for righting wrongs, hovers just below the surface.
God offers us mercy and peace. Let us respond by preparing the way for the Lord’s kingdom of justice!
Back on the first Sunday of Advent, the Church invited us to look forward with joyful hope to when Christ returns at the end of time. On the fourth Sunday of Advent, we will look backwards 2,000 years to the hope promised by the events immediately preceding the birth of Jesus. But in these middle Sundays of Advent, we’re asked to consider our hopes in the here and the now.
Our readings today are brimming with hope. They are messages of restoration. Even after the Israelite aristocrats are released from their imprisonment in Babylon – as foretold by Baruch – they plead in our psalm, “Restore our fortunes, O Lord!” Paul writes of his confidence that “the one who began a good work in [the Philippians] will continue to complete it.” John the Baptist proclaims that soon, “all flesh” – presumably that’s all people and other sentient beings besides angels – “shall see the salvation of the Lord.”
At the end of two very challenging years, 2020 and 2021, from what do we want to be saved? To what do we desire to be restored?
Obviously, we all want to be saved from the Covid-19 pandemic. But do we really want to return to the world of 2019? Most of us want to be saved from a lot of things that were prevalent back then: hyper-partisanship in our politics, out-of-control consumerism, a dangerously warming planet. And let’s face it: most of us are less affected by government policies, retail volume, and sea levels than billions of other people around the world.
The aristocrats imprisoned in Babylon at the time of Baruch prayed for their nation to be restored, but they probably weren’t hoping to return to the impoverished kingdom they had known in their own lifetimes. They were probably pining instead for the peace, strength, and prosperity of the early years of the reign of King Solomon, 400 years earlier.
No matter where we sit on the political spectrum, we have to admit that in the United States, our politics are filled with vitriol and antagonism. We want to be saved from that, but how? Perhaps some of us want to roll the clock back to the time of our favorite previous presidential administration. Or maybe we feel that there is no time in the past where people of every ethnicity, race, orientation, and economic status in this nation could flourish.
During this pandemic, those of us who have kept our jobs have accelerated our consumption of things. The amount of online shopping that we’ve done – and all the shipping that requires – is simply astronomical. Despite what the economists say, I don’t think our salvation is going to come in an overnight shipment from FedEx or Amazon.
When we talk about the climate crisis, we talk a lot about restoring our carbon output to the levels of the year 1990. But back then, we were already experiencing some of the effects of climate change. Do we need to go back to before the industrial revolution, or can we restore the environment and still keep the best of the conveniences of electricity and transportation technology we enjoy today?
Luke’s original Greek says that John the Baptist preached a message of metanoia. We usually translate it as “repentance,” but the word metanoia means so much more. One translation is “change of mind,” and another is “beyond our minds.” Advent is a time of hope, of metanoia, and part of that hope is knowing that God can accomplish things beyond our imagination. And just imagine how much faster and smoother our restoration and salvation would occur if we changed our minds to cooperate with God’s plans!
People weren’t going out to the desert to see a reed swayed by the wind (ref. Luke 7:24). They were embracing John’s message: for God to restore the world, they each had to sign up to help “change the mind” of the world.
The stickers we wear today say, “Let us hope.” Where is our hope?
To push on the metaphor of today’s psalm, the tears we are currently sowing may yield a bountiful harvest for generations to come. The horrors of 2020 and 2021 have starkly revealed to us much of what needs to be done.
I could talk about any number of examples, but I’ll focus on the environment. Compared to 30 years ago, we have better technology to solve the problem, better understanding of climate phenomena, and a greater sense of urgency that we must address the issue NOW. As strange as it sounds, that gives me greater reason to hope. Restoring the environment will require sacrifices, sacrifices of the wealthiest corporation and individuals in the world, of course, but also sacrifices by the rest of us to collectively re-orient our priorities. The moment to make those sacrifices is NOW. Our voting, our advocacy, and our charitable giving can convince leaders of governments, manufacturers, and retailers worldwide to change their minds, to see environmental justice as part of God’s justice.
I can imagine Paul talking about the changes we need to make in government, in environmental policy, and in consumerism, as he wrote to his beloved Philippians. “This is my prayer: that your love may increase ever more and more in knowledge and every kind of perception, to discern what is of value, so that you may be pure and blameless for the day of Christ.”