A Homily for the Second Sunday of Advent

+ “Blessed is he who is not scandalised by Me.” These words of Our Lord offer us a deep challenge. Each generation and each culture has its own particular reasons for being scandalised by Him. His contemporaries in Palestine were scandalised that Our Lord was restoring the Promised Land to the glory, the riches, it held under Solomon. Yet He was trying to give them far greater riches. The Pharisees were scandalised that He came to call sinners onto repentance. That He had authority over the Law and did not scruple over its minute, unsubstantial, details. Unlike the Pharisees, He knows that law is an aid to justice rather than its definition. The Greeks, the philosophers, were scandalised that God should be made man under such impoverished conditions – that He should subject Himself to such a death as the Cross. Even that God should concern Himself with man in any meaningful sense.

Perhaps the most far-reaching cause of scandal that is offered by Our Lord, is that He demands of us a real conversion from our sinful ways. And He not only makes the demand but shows what it is to be perfectly without sin; in spite of having suffered all of our temptations – a demand, furthermore, which reaches our very heart, for He knows our every disposition and intention.

​This is the deepest scandal created in the world of our day. First, we must acknowledge the reality of sin in a world which would do away with all truth. Then, we must judge ourselves in all those matters in which we have fallen short of the moral law, of our proper vocation. We must finally, make amends for our sin and strive, under the protection of Divine Grace, to sin no more. How often do we hear these words on the lips of Our Lord – “sin no more”? -  words that accompany a substantial number of the cures He wondrously effects.

Our Lord can be a scandal for us in more matters than merely that of demanding a true and interior conversion. He is God and demands that the message of His Salvation be carried to every corner of the globe. In our age the greatest obstacle against Christ is the scandal caused by His exclusivity. He demands that no foreign god be worshiped beside Him - but not only that He be worshiped, but that all people do so. Religion cannot be a private affair. It is not something which can be taken or left according to peoples’ interest. This is a great scandal to secular society. It involves the recognition not only that there is Truth, but that Truth is a Person Who has revealed Himself.

How often do we hear of the Church reduced to “one church” or worse “one religion among many?” Religion is the virtue by which we worship God. It is nothing else. There can be no true worship of God outside the Church, guarded by the continuity of Sacred Tradition. Our life of prayer, most especially the Liturgy, is the primary worship of God, yet it forms us towards many other acts. Each act of charity gives glory to God. But to be true charity there must be a recognition that what we are doing is ordered towards God, that our neighbour to whom the act is more immediately directed should be led to give thanks to God for the gift. If man becomes our focus in prayer, we cannot give to man the charity which leads to life everlasting.

Another aspect of recognising the exclusivity of God’s right to worship, which is to be made in truth, is that we cannot accept compromise in talking with other systems of belief. Whilst it is right to point to where they have good and true ideas, indeed these can be helpful towards bringing them to a full understanding of the Truth, we cannot overlook the fundamental realities that separate them from the Church. God has given us a manner to come to Him, namely the Sacraments of the Church, which cannot be dispensed. They are the channels of grace given to man that he might be justified in Christ Jesus.

In the most Blessed Sacrament of the Altar, we have not only the grace, but the very Author of grace who makes Himself available to us. There can be no greater gift. Yet innumerable people in history have been scandalised by this miracle in two manners - that the bread and wine should be changed to the Body and Blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ; and that we should eat the living flesh of Our Lord and God. From the very first time Our Lord announced this reality people have turned away from Him in scandal (cf. John 6:66). Without the gift of Revelation there would be no manner in which we could establish such a reality. Being the continuation of the Sacrificial Victim on the Cross, it can only be considered as folly by all human wisdom; yet a folly which is of far greater wisdom than any man could reach (cf. I Cor 1:20-25).

Let us then renew our faith in the reality of Our Lord here present on the Altar, but let us also reexamine the purity of life that the Victim demands of us in making Himself available to us in such a manner. There is no greater treasure than can be given to us than this, and He gives it to us, not that it may hidden in the ground, but to bear abundant fruit. This fruit should not be limited to ourselves but can only find itself overflowing to be shared with the others around us. For the confession of Christ can never be private. The Truth, no matter how much it scandalises those around us, can never be hidden. +