Roman Catholic Womenpriests: Homily for 2nd Sunday of Advent/Cycle C by Roberta Meehan

Homily for the 2nd Sunday of Advent – Cycle C – 06 December 2009

(This homily was prepared for presentation at the Ecumenical Worship Service at Banner Estrella Hospital in Phoenix, Arizona.)

Readings from the Common Lectionary

Alternate Readings Malachi 3:1-4 ,Baruch* 5:1-9Psalm126 Luke 1:68-79Philippians 1:3-11 Philippians 1:1-11, Luke 3:1-6 ,(Same)

(* Baruch in the Catholic and Episcopal traditions is called a Deuterocanonical text; in many – not all – Protestant traditions it is considered to be an Apocryphal book and is found in the Apocryphal sections of most Protestant Bibles.)

Today’s theme is Prepare and Rejoice! Here we are at the second Sunday of Advent and I must ask you if you are prepared and if you are rejoicing. How easy it is to forget that this is a season of rejoicing! After all, we are re-enacting the time that the chosen people waited for the Messiah. We forget the rejoicing part and we tend to think only of the waiting part. I think we forget we are not really waiting but that we are re-enacting the time of waiting. Jesus is here and we are preparing to celebrate his birthday!

This is a wonderful birthday party that we are getting ready for! And we are all invited! Our theme is Prepare and Rejoice! but if we look at our readings today, the rejoice part comes first! This is amazing! In our common way of thinking, we usually think that we have to prepare before we rejoice. But, that is not what we learn in today’s readings!

For the first reading, I looked at both the selection from Malachi and the section from Baruch. Both say approximately the same thing. You can check that for yourself. Baruch is a bit more dramatic and flamboyant, which is why I chose it for our reading. So, what does Baruch say? Let us look at a few select phrases. “Jerusalem, take off your robes of mourning and misery and put on the splendor of glory from God….for God is leading Israel in joy by the light of his glory, with his mercy and justice for company.” Does this not sound like an exciting reading? Does this not sound like a call for rejoicing? Does this not sound like we should be preparing with a sense of jubilation? After all, we have the glory of God to guide us! Now, let us look at that Psalm. The Antiphon is, “God has done great things for us; we are filled with joy.” Now, that sounds pretty exciting! And if we look at Psalm 126 (a Psalm that is almost unique in that it is complete within the liturgy – most Psalms are included only in part), we see several very interesting jubilation points. Here they are: “…our tongue with rejoicing,” “we are glad indeed.” “Those who sow in tears shall reap rejoicing.” “…they shall come back rejoicing.” Those are very happy exclamations! How can we not rejoice?

Let us look at our second reading from Philippians. This too is full of joy and excitement! Just to lift a few phrases, we hear, “I pray always with joy” and “that your love may increase ever more and more in knowledge of every kind of perception….” And that you may be “filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ for the glory and praise of God.” These are exciting phrases! These are statements that fill us with hope and joy! How can we think anything else? This is part of our REJOICE statement. We need to rejoice because we know the story, We know what will happen. We know that Jesus has come and that we are awaiting his birthday party! Are you ready for the birthday party???? So far we have talked about the rejoicing part of our theme. But, the theme is Rejoice and Prepare. Now let us look at the Gospel. Keep in mind that so far we have heard nothing except the Rejoice message.

Finally, here in the Gospel, the final reading of the liturgy, we hear something about preparing. Amazing! Look at that message from Luke. We are excited by the rejoice messages but now, suddenly, we have a PREPARE message. Isn’t this interesting? The PREPARE message is amazingly simple. Luke tells us that John went throughout the region proclaiming a baptism of repentance and he then quotes Isaiah’s profound statement of “Prepare the way of the Lord, make straight his paths….” The Gospel concludes by saying that “all flesh shall see the salvation of God.” What does all of this mean for us? Well, clearly we have to prepare for God in our lives. But, I think it is important for us to keep this in perspective. The last line of the Gospel tells us that all flesh will see the salvation of God. But, we have already seen it! We know the story.

We know what happened. Jesus came, he was crucified, and he rose from the dead. Jesus is our salvation. So, we know the end of the story. We have seen the salvation of God! In addition to our personal preparations, perhaps we need to concentrate on the other part of the day’s message – REJOICE. Do we spend so much time with pious preparations that we forget to rejoice? These are exciting readings! These readings are full of glorious and rejoicing words. That is where we need to be. After all, Christ is here. It is not that he is coming; he is here. During advent, we are simply re-enacting the time our ancestors waited for the Messiah. But, he is here and we need to rejoice as we prepare for this marvelous birthday party we are all invited to on December 25.

Roberta M. Meehan