4th Sunday of Advent, December 18th, 2011

2 Samuel 7:1-5,8b-12,14a,16; Romans 16:25-27; Luke 1:26-28

David. Paul. Mary.

Each of those names elicits awe and respect in us. Comparing ourselves to them makes us feel humble.

However, that feeling should not make us feel that we are less important than them in the eyes of God. Hopefully, whenever we try to compare ourselves to them feeling of gratitude and much better understanding of ourselves and of our potential fills our hearts. For David, Paul and Mary stand for us as convincing examples that we, too, can be participants in God’s plan for the world.

David, Paul and Mary were not much different from us. Just each one of them simply rose to the occasion when God requested of them to put their trust in Him and to follow His will.

Each one of us is capable to do exactly the same.

          David came from a family of shepherds, the family of Jesse. He was the youngest among many brothers – so young that when the prophet Samuel came, seeking God’s chosen from among the Jesse’s sons, David was too young to be invited to the meeting. He was left tending sheep and had to be sent for as an afterthought.

          Paul was a student of the Law from a well-to-do family who learned to be a tent maker is order to support himself while studying. Like many college students of our day, the more learning opened his mind, the more he was filled with zeal for getting into the world to change it. However; it took him some time and many terrible mistakes before he got it right how to do it.

          When we meet Mary in today’s gospel, she is a young girl of age 13 or 14. The age of today’s eighth-grader or a high school freshman. Mary lives very ordinary life and according to her culture’s customs she is engaged to a man chosen by her family.

          These are individuals, not much different from us, whose beginnings are echoed in our own beginnings and lives. From their families, families like our own family, they inherited a gift of faith. They tried to live their lives using that gift wisely. Than one day they were asked by God in much more explicit way to totally put their trust in Him and to follow His will. Probably at the time David, Paul and Mary did not fully realize of the importance of the decisions they were making and how much that would change their lives. But because they accepted God’s invitation, everything else what followed afterwards changed them and the world for ever.

          Perhaps sometimes we feel that what we do does not make a huge difference in God’s plan for the world. That our lives are not so important to anyone or even to God. We just try to live from day to day taking care of our children, sometimes of our parents, going to work and trying to catch up on our sleep.

However, the lives of David, Paul and Mary offer us quite different perspective. God counted on them to participate in His plan to save the world and offered them an opportunity to do so. God also counts on us to participate in His plan for the world and offers us an opportunity to do so.

          Perhaps a question which each one of us needs to ask ourselves in this Advent season is:

What is the opportunity which God offers us? Which God offers me?

2nd Sunday of Advent, December 4, 2012

Isaiah 40:1-5,9-11; 2 Peter 3:8-14; Mark 1:1-8

         

          Today’s gospel reading contains the first eight verses of the gospel according to St. Mark. Unlike the gospel according to St. John, this gospel does not treat us to an elaborate and theologically rich prologue. And unlike the gospels according to Matthew and Luke, it is stone silent about the birth and infancy of Jesus.

          Instead, it starts abruptly at the banks of the Jordan River, near the edge of the desert. A preacher named John dwells there. Gathered around him, awaiting his baptism, is a crowd of pilgrims from all over Palestine. From John's gospel we know that Peter is a part of that crowd, along with some fellow fishermen from Galilee. Present also, although Mark does not tell us yet, is a carpenter from Nazareth named Jesus.

          John offers to everyone a baptism, which is not just a ceremonial bath. John calls it a baptism of repentance. The baptism that demands more than just regret for the past sins. It demands from those experiencing it a stern effort not to repeat their past sins again. This baptism is a public statement of an internal change which has already occurred in those receiving it.

What John looks for in those who seek his baptism are signs of such conversion, a genuine resolve to change. That means abandoning long festering pagan attitudes, launching an all-out assault on old habits of selfishness, sensuality, pride, and greed. John calls his listeners to an internal change for only this might prepare the way of the Lord. Only this might prepare John’s listeners for the Messiah they have been waiting for, and for His gospel. John's baptism is only confirmation of that readiness.

This second Sunday of Advent presents us with this fundamental question: Are we ready to accept the Messiah John is talking about and this Messiah' gospel?

          The first sentence of Saint Mark gospel, as we have heard it today,  simply says: "The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ the Son of God." Joseph Ratzinger, known to many of us now as pope Benedict XVI shares with us in his book , Jesus of Nazareth, that Mark deliberately designates Jesus' message with the Greek term evangelion, which is translated for us into English as the terms gospel or good news.

          "Term evangelion, Ratzinger says, was a part of the Roman emperors' vocabulary in Jesus' times, as they understood themselves as lords, saviors, and redeemers of the world. The messages issued by the emperor were called in Latin evangelium, regardless of whether or not their content was particularly cheerful and pleasant. The idea was that what comes from the emperor is a saving message, that it is not just a piece of news, but a change of the world for the better. (Ratzinger, Joseph (2007-05-15). Jesus of Nazareth (pp. 46-47). Image. Kindle Edition

          When the Evangelists adopt this word, and it thereby becomes the generic name for their writings, what they mean to tell us is this: What the emperors, who pretend to be gods, illegitimately claim, really occurs here—a message endowed with plenary authority, a message that is not just talk, but reality. In the vocabulary of contemporary linguistic theory, Ratzinger stresses, we would say that the evangelium, the Gospel, is not just informative speech, but performative speech—not just the imparting of information, but action, efficacious power that enters into the world to save and transform.

          Mark speaks of the “Gospel of God,” the point being that it is not the emperors who can save the world, but God. And it is here that God’s word, which is at once word and deed, appears; it is here that what the emperors merely assert, but cannot actually perform, truly takes place. For here it is the real Lord of the world—the living God—who goes into action (I would add in the incarnation of Jesus). The core content of the Gospel (of Christ) is this: The Kingdom of God is at hand. A milestone is set up in the flow of time; something new takes place. And an answer to this gift is demanded of man (us): conversion and faith."

Once again, this second Sunday of Advent presents us with this fundamental question: Are we ready to accept the Messiah John is talking about and this Messiah' gospel?

Or have we come short in our preparations by still listening to evangelion of our contemporary emperors who can't save the world, just to name a few: such as consumerism, materialism, science, sensuality, selfishness, pride, or greed?

Are there any signs in our words and behavior that would indicate our genuine conversion and faith, our readiness to be a part of God's kingdom Jesus is bringing about?