One of the reasons the Church offers us the season of Advent is to encourage us to enter into the power of repentance. That’s why the Second Sunday of Advent always brings us the imposing figure of John the Baptist.
He’s a wild character, and the last of the Old Testament prophets. The voice of prophecy had been silent in Israel for about four hundred years. John the Baptist spoke with such fire that people believed God had now broken his long silence. John doesn’t sugar-coat his words either. He calls for repentance. Repentance is simply 1) the recognition that we are loved by God, 2) that we have often failed to live up to that love, and 3) that we are in need his mercy. Repentance is basically giving God permission to work in our lives and in our Catholic faith as he sees fit.
There are two ways that we can do this: either passively or personally. When we live our faith passively, we’re like the Jewish leaders who came to be baptized by John in the Jordan. They knew all the prayers and rituals, and on the surface, they seemed to be perfect models of the Jewish faith. But John warned them that this wasn’t enough. Their religion was on the surface: it didn’t touch their hearts.
We are constantly tempted to make the same mistake. Little by little, we can become too self-satisfied just because we go to Mass, or pray the rosary, or teach or sing in the choir. But our faith is a lot more than this. To be Catholic is to be an active, dedicated, energetic follower of Jesus Christ, to have a personal friendship with him, to know him deeply and to love him passionately. When we live our faith passively, we’re like artificial plants: we look nice, but we can’t produce any fruit.
Today, Jesus reminds us, through his cousin John the Baptist, to live our faith more personally, so that our lives can be branches of the true vine, “producing good fruit.”
Our life is like a canoe…
God loves us too much to let us settle for spiritual mediocrity. Think of it this way: Our lives are like canoes. As we start our journey along the river of life, we fill up our canoe with as much stuff as we can. But God wants to give us the things that we can’t give ourselves, like wisdom, joy, patience and courage.
He has all these wonderful things he wants to put inside our canoe, but he can’t until we empty out some of our little plastic treasures. If our canoe is still half-filled with desires for comfort, pleasures, money and worldly success, with hidden sins and habits of self-indulgence, then there’s no room for God’s gifts.
To repent is to throw all our selfish stuff overboard, so that God can fill us with his stuff. But even if we don’t do it voluntarily, God won’t give up on us. He’ll send us a storm, and as we struggle to keep the canoe afloat, the storm itself will cast overboard our petty self-absorbed habits and desires.
Preparing for the surge of God’s grace
All of us are here today because we want to prepare our hearts to receive the surge of grace that God has in store for us at Christmas. Today the church is full, but we all know that on Christmas there will be three times as many people in this building. Every Mass will be standing room only even in our parish hall.
It’s good that so many people will be here for Mass on Christmas. But will they be ready to receive the surge of grace that Jesus is preparing for them? Will they have spent Advent repenting, reforming and preparingthe soilof their hearts to receive the new seeds of grace? Not if we don’t help them!
This Advent, each of us has a chance to help someone dear to us to prepare for the surge of grace that will happen this Christmas, by gently reminding them of what Christmas is all about: receiving Jesus once again in our hearts.