Homily @ Advent: Be Consoling

 

Year B / Advent / Week 2 / Sunday

Readings: Isaiah 40.1-5, 9-11 / Psalm 85. 9-10, 11-12, 13-14 (R/v 8) / 2 Peter 3.8-14 / Mark 1.1-8

“Console my people, console them.” 

Sisters and brothers, these are God’s words that we hear in the First Reading. His words are to assure His people: He will come to comfort and console His own. At Christmas we celebrate how God made His words come alive and true once before in history, and how He still does for us daily – in Jesus’ coming to be amongst us, to love and forgive us, to save us.

But who is God asking to console his people? Who is to bring His comfort to them?

While it is right and good that Advent prayer focuses us on the Lord’s coming, today we are being challenged to focus on who it is to bring the Lord’s consolation and comfort. It is us. We are the very ones who God wants to send to console and comfort all humankind.  

God does not just want us to go and announce His sure coming, like John the Baptist did, and so prepare for this. He also wants us to be like the joyful messengers to Zion, Jerusalem and all the cities of Judah; we must also proclaim to all peoples, “Here is your God.” The Good News is more than the call we must heed to prepare well for the Lord’s coming.  It is also and always the important work of prophesying the truth that God is here with us now.

You and I know how true it is that God is with us. We have all experienced his goodness and presence in our lives. This gives us the confidence to live our Christian faith. Are we, however, announcing God and God’s saving love in word and deed to all around us like John the Baptist and the joyful messengers did?  Their work is important; they collaborated with God to console the people. They were His heralds. 

This Advent when the pandemic has heightened our fears and anxieties, we need God’s heralds to comfort us.  Even more, we need them to assure and uplift us this Christmas. Come, we pray, because everything we associate with Christmas – family gatherings, festive meals, gifts exchange, and even Christmas Masses with Glorias resounding – will be stripped away, if not pared down to the minimum. 

More than ever, we do not just want God to be with us this year. We really need God, I believe. Who are the heralds He will send if not you and me?

An image the Advent narrative offers for our prayer is that of a pregnant Mary making her way over the countryside to be with her cousin Elizabeth. This visitation is an act of charity; Mary comforts and consoles the elder Elizabeth in her pregnancy. In fact, she who receives Jesus within her is to gift him to all around her. This is how God uses Mary to present Himself to us. Aren’t Christians to do likewise  – to gift Jesus, the incarnate compassion of God, to others in charity, and so console the many in need?

It is easy to be introspective and prayerful at Advent to prepare ourselves for Christmas. But the more Christian act in this time, I suggest, is to herald God’s coming, not as a future event, but as the immediate reality that God is with us, in our midst. This is what Mary proclaimed to Elizabeth with her visit, and, more so, make real that God is in charge.

Who then should we visit this Advent and how should we make this visit count for another? Let us learn from those who have visited us and shown us the loving face of God.  We can only give what we have. God has visited us in different ways, through various people, and his compassion is our comfort. Let us give what is good and loving from God in our lives to those who cry out for our help and care.

Maybe when we act in these ways, consoling and comforting them as God demands we must today, we will hear them echo resoundingly the very Good News those joyful messengers announced in the first reading – truly, “here is our God.”

Isn't this a good way to bring Advent hope to many? Shall we?

photo: ccn. com (internet)