A Homily for the Second Sunday of Advent

+ The question posed by St John the Baptist and the response given by Our Blessed Lord in the Holy Gospel of this Mass form one of the most crucial exchanges in the Gospels. A faith-filled prophet asks, “Are you the ‘real deal’; in you do we finally have all that has been promised by God from of old?” And he is given the clear response: “Look and see for yourself: yes, I am He.”

St John the Baptist most probably sent his envoys to seek this confirmation in anticipation of a positive response, and not out of curiosity or of doubt. He was anticipating the coming of the Messiah and, as it turns out, rightly recognised His coming.
 
As I said, this exchange is crucial, for on the question of who Jesus of Nazareth is hangs a great deal—indeed, upon this question hangs everything: our eternal salvation or damnation, no less.
 
Our world, however, anesthetises us to the vital importance of whom He is through its pursuit of comfort and pleasure at all costs. Eternal salvation or damnation are not spoken of in polite company, often not even in ecclesiastical circles, because they inevitably disturb the pact we have (knowingly or not) made with the devil to leave us live our lives in peace. To break this truce, to refuse the sedatives proffered by almost all about us, and to speak of the Truth of Christ, of His Teachings, of what He requires of each of us in order that we may be saved, and to witness to that Truth by trying faithfully to live it, by persevering in carrying the cross in the different circumstances in which we find ourselves, is to upset, indeed it is to scandalise, our contemporaries. So much of modern life and political discourse is predicated on the assumption that worldly comfort and prosperity are the only values, and that without the prospect of them life is not worth continuing (or even being allowed to be born).
 
The Church’s Sacred Liturgy does not (and can never, without eviscerating her very nature) participate in this calculated deception. In this blessed season of Advent she proclaims the coming of He whose coming was foretold by the prophets, the Redeemer, by whose suffering and death the forgiveness of sins and eternal life made possible and which is to this day offered to all of mankind by His One True Church. In the place of finite worldly comfort and passing pleasure the Church is called by her very nature to announce to each of us the realities of sin and eternal death, of forgiveness and eternal life, according to our freely chosen acceptance or rejection of the Truth of Christ that she must faithfully teach until the end of time.
 
To the world, this is scandalous. It is worse than “politically incorrect”—it undermines everything on which modern society is based. It is radically subversive and refuses to accede to policies or legislation enacted by authorities which contradict the Truth of Christ, most particularly in respect of the sanctity of innocent human life from the moment of conception to natural death, of the God-given nature of human sexuality and marriage, of the reality that suffering has a purpose and a real value in God’s Providence, and that there are moral absolutes, that is, there are some things (acts) that are intrinsically evil and can never be justified.
 
Christ’s faithful can never ‘negotiate’ with the world on these matters, and when His Church strays down this path in pursuit of dialogue with the deaf, she has long since left Christ behind. No, by their very nature Christ, His Church, Her Sacred Liturgy and His faithful people all confound the world. We seek to cure and heal the deaf—nothing less!—not to tranquilise them with soothing platitudes and empty gestures.
 
“Blessed is he that shall not be scandalized in me,” Our Lord declares in the Gospel. “Blessed”, not “happy” in the worldly sense, but “blessed” in the sense of living in God’s grace and righteousness—that grace which sustains us in humble and faithful adherence to the Truth, in perseverance in conforming ourselves to its demands, and in supernatural hope amidst the temptations and injuries we suffer from the world, the flesh and the devil.
 
We do not need to look for another Saviour, nor for a panacea to obscure our very need for salvation. He has come in the Person of Our Blessed Lord Jesus Christ. What we do need is to purify our hearts, minds and souls so that we, too, can more clearly and efficaciously recognise His coming. This is our Advent duty, through the confession of our sins and the amendment of our lives where necessary; through the more fervent offering of ourselves in worship of our Saviour in the Sacred Liturgy, and through a renewed engagement daily to witness to the Truth Incarnate in the specific circumstances of our particular vocation. For the courage and humility so to do, we implore Almighty God before His altar this morning. +