Second Sunday in Advent – December 8, 2024
Baruch 5: 1-7; Philippians 1: 4-6,8-11; Luke 3: 1-6
We began a pilgrimage of hope last week with the commencement of the season of Advent. If the Word last week, commissioned us to the journey, this week the Word comes to explain to us what this journey is all about – it is a journey towards peace! A pilgrimage, a devout journey towards peace – that is what Advent is all about. Hence it becomes categorical that we clarify to ourselves what this peace we refer to is, how we arrive at it and when we would truly get there – may the Word speak to us!
Peace… what: Integrity. Let us begin with a question what this peace is. A phrase or a term we come across more than once in the first reading from Baruch is, the integrity of God that God wants to adorn us with. That is the peace that is denoted by the term “shalom”, which means wholeness, fullness, absence of insecurity or anguish, a serenity at heart which affects our whole being and our entire milieu. That can be given only by God and we know that.
How much the world and the humanity longs for peace today: wars everywhere, and violence in all corners, confusions within nations and coflicts at the borders… these are the scenarios that we are facing these days increasingly. Not just these, but even within communities, families and ourselves, there are so many instances of peacelessness and we long for peace. It seems to return, but for a flicker of a moment, and then we are back to the experiences of struggle and strife. The Lord says, I wish to give you peace; I want to make you shine with joy; I want to fill you with my spleandour. The peace that the Lord gives is integrity; and therefore it cannot be automatic. It has to be achieved…but how?
Peace… how: Invest. If we need to experience peace, we have to invest in it. Invest our desires and interests, invest our efforts, invest our energies and invest our whole life in it. If not, peace cannot be a possibility. No peace that is achieved from outside can be lasting. Peace has to arise from within, and that is why investing in it is inevitable.
The Lord who wants to give it to us, is ready to invest in us – we read in the first reading, in the words of Baruch, the Lord is ready to level everything up and straighten everything that we may have peace. It is the Lord’s initiative, as always. And we are required to respond – the message of John the Baptist comes in here – that we need to level things up and straighten everything out. It depends on how ready we are, to heed to the call given to us – as the second reading points – to be pure and blameless for the Lord. At times we are attached to our ways, our priorities and our ego that we are not ready to level or straighten anything. Peace has no possibility there. Advent is a time to level things, not just for the coming of the Lord, but also for us to get in touch with the Lord, to journey towards the Lord, towards peace.
Peace… when: In God’s time. When will this peace be possible? Peace is possible only when we are able to surrender ourselves to the Lord in everyway. The message of John the Baptist was that. Today we are presented with the figure of the Baptist, and next week we shall hear him speak to us. The very person of John is a message, a reminder, a call, a challenge – to become the people of God. Here is the place of hope, the hope that never disappoints.
The Lord shall never disappoint us, we need to endure. Endurance is not staying put; it is an active investment of the self and of the efforts! And in that active endurance, we shall be already levelling the ground, raising the fallen and empowering the weak. That is the Reign… that is the true peace, the integrity of the Lord that we long for, in the making. Let continue our journey with earnestness and endurance, a journey of hope towards peace!
Fr Antony Christy is a Salesian Priest from 2005 and has a Masters in Philosophy (specialisation in Religion) and a Masters in Theology (specialisation in Catechetics). He has a Doctorate in Theology with specialisation in Catechetics and youth ministry at Salesian Pontifical University, Rome. Walking with the young towards a World of Peace and dialogue is the passion that fires him.