SECOND SUNDAY OF ADVENT
8 DECEMBER 2024
When
Saint Paul writes to the Philippians, he is in prison. He has been stripped of everything. However, he continues to enjoy his
relationship with Jesus Christ.
Strengthened by this relationship, he writes to them with great
joy. He commends them for their
steadfast faith and prays that their “love may increase ever more and more in
knowledge and every kind of perception”.
Then he gives them advice. He
encourages them to discern what is of value, so that they may be pure and
blameless for the day of Christ.
The members
of the Church of Philippi understand what he is talking about when he tells
them to discern what is of value. It is
something they do on a daily basis when they shop at the market. In order to purchase what they want, they
must put their coins on a scale.
Counterfeit coins do not weigh as much as authentic coins. If the seller discerns if the coin is of
value, the purchase is complete. Saint
Paul encourages them to recognize their growing faith in Jesus Christ as
something of value. In discerning that
value, they need to do what he has done.
They need to strip themselves of anything that would diminish their deep
faith in Jesus Christ.
John the
Baptist has also stripped away all that would distract him from his
mission. As a son of the priest,
Zechariah, he could have surrounded himself with power and influence in the
temple. Instead, he stripped himself of
a privileged and comfortable life and went to the desert. There, he assumes his mission of pointing
away from himself and toward the coming of the Messiah. He insists on preparing the way of the
Lord. The verb “pare” is imbedded in our
word “prepare.” Anyone who cooks is
familiar with that word. We use a paring
knife to cut away whatever is not needed for cooking. We use a paring knife to peel off the apple’s
skin, and to cut away the core with its seeds.
Once the cook has done the job of paring, the apple can be put into a
recipe and cooked in the oven. John
calls invites his listeners to pare away their sins and be baptized in the
Jordan River as an external sign of their inner repentance. Having pared away whatever keeps them from recognizing
the Messiah, they can put their faith in him.
We are now
in the midst of what our culture calls the “holiday season”. These weeks between Thanksgiving and
Christmas have become a time of excess.
They are weeks of high-calorie snacking, office parties, and invitations
to “shop until you drop.” During this
time, retailers are counting on us to spend more money on things that people
probably do not need. For so many of us,
it is an exhausting and distracting time.
Both Paul
and John invite us to take the Season of Advent seriously. They invite us to back off and spend more
time in quiet prayer. They invite us to read
the books which Father Andrew has listed in the bulletin. They invite us to discern what is really of
value: our relationship with Jesus
Christ and our need to establish priorities.
What is it that we need to strip ourselves of, as Paul suggests, or cut
away, as John the Baptist insists. What
is keeping us from recognizing Jesus Christ as the center of our lives? Is it our busy schedules that keep us from
“wasting” time in quiet prayer? Is it a
possession that we think we cannot live without? Is it our attachment to stuff that we really
do not need? Is it our career that keeps
us away from our family and those who are dear to us?
Both Paul
and John challenge us to ask these key questions. Whatever we need to strip or cut away is
probably keeping us from a deeper faith and a reluctance to embrace a true
spirit of repentance. But if we have the
courage to respond to their call, then we can smooth the mountains that keep
Christ from being the center of our lives and fill in the valleys that
constantly distract us from a deeper faith.
The Lord is coming and he wants our preparation.
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