SECOND SUNDAY OF ADVENT – 9^th /10^th DECEMBER 2023

Dear Parishioners,

Today we have already reached the 2nd Sunday of Advent. There are Christmas lights in the streets, in many houses, and all the Christmas decorations in the shops remind us of this special time of the year. Some of us are thinking about and preparing get-togethers with family and friends. Some are already making the list of ingredients for that special meal that happens once a year. We are preparing ourselves for a big event that is going to happen.

Advent is preparation for the celebration of that big event, a supremely important event that happened once many years ago. Every year we gather together as a community and family to give thanks to God for making the impossible become possible. God tore the heavens and came down, as we heard last Sunday’s reading, and became a human being.

This Sunday we hear the prophet Isaiah calling us to prepare in the wilderness a way for the Lord, because He is coming, like a shepherd gathering and feeding his flock.

This invitation to ‘Prepare the way’ means that we have a part to play. We have a part to play in making possible that God continues to enter our realities, to continue guiding and feeding his flock.

At the same time to play our part, we need the encouragement that God is faithful and will never leave us, that he promises us a future of hope. This is the message of the second reading: “what we are waiting for is what he promised: new heavens and new earth, the place where righteousness will be at home.” What a beautiful concept! The new earth is where His justice will be at home. We can trust in God’s promises and at the same time we are invited to work with God that they may come true. How is God inviting me to ‘prepare a way,’ to work with God in and through my life? How are we building that “new earth”? Does his justice have place within me?

The Gospel presents us with John the Baptist as that messenger who prepare the people to receive Jesus. His life, his words were a preparation for the coming of Jesus among them. He opened a new path living what he believed. Our life, also, can be a preparation for others to receive Him, to open themselves to Him.

We walk together towards Christmas, this ‘big event,’ celebrating how God tore the heavens and came down – God made flesh, God made human being. May we prepare ourselves, in this Advent season, to make possible His coming to our life, to our community and families, and then to our world.

Have a blessed Advent season,

Anabel Gonzalez, FMVD