Advent Sunday II – Year B
Advent in popular practice has become an ever-lengthening period of Pre-Christmas over-active commercial consumerism, anxiety generation, and culturally required demonstrations of superficial happiness, but in reality it evolved originally as a liturgical Season of Remembrance of the Coming of the Savior-Messiah, Jesus the Risen Christ. Early Christians developed and embraced the idea of a Return of the Risen-Ascended Savior, aka a Second Coming, and one in apocalyptic terms. The apocalyptic setting probably arose due to the all too real proximity of violent religious persecutions towards and religious-political turmoil experienced by many of those early Christians. In our 21st Christian Century, healthy Catholic theological Tradition has moved beyond the ancient simplistic notion of an apocalyptic Second Coming, especially in places where we practice our religious faith in relative security and peace. Today, we emphasize Advent as a liturgical Season of Remembrance keeping in mind especially the Old Testament prophetic announcements of the saving deeds of Israel's God, and the prophetic exhortations to develop and embrace a lifelong sense of hope in that same God's loving-kindness by the ever-present divine promise to save continuously, forever, and for everyone, without exception!
Isaiah's reading today announces just such a remembrance. The original audience of these first words from the anonymous author we know as 2nd Isaiah (aka Deutero-Isaiah) was the recently freed Jewish captives of Babylon in the decade or two just after 539 BC. That Jerusalem's "service is at an end, her guilt expiated" is a metaphor easily lost on us moderns, i.e., that God's Chosen People's captivity was ended by the victory of the Persian Emperor Cyrus the Great (reigned 560-529 BC). In the ancient Jewish prophetic imagination and in their description of God's salvation, God's power had worked through Cyrus to restore the importance of Jerusalem's central position in the universe. Jerusalem's location was and is atop Mount Zion as a beacon on a hilltop. God's power was described in this text as shepherd-like, full of gentleness and generosity for his flock, i.e., the Chosen People. Today's prophetic remembrance, then, calls to mind God's continuing and ever-present consolation. In spite of the six decades of abuse and physical slavery of God's Chosen People in the Babylonian Captivity, divine goodness had prevailed. Deutero-Isaiah exhorted his people to "Make straight in the wasteland a highway for our God ... [that] all mankind shall see it [God's Glory] together." He tried to rouse this sort of response among the liberated Jewish people. The first Christians would come to use this exhortation as an appreciation of the ultimate Salvation of Jesus the eternal Word of God, the Word Made Flesh, the Savior of the new Gospel covenant more than half a millennium after the era of Deutero-Isaiah.
Today's Gospel lesson is the introductory verses of Mark's Gospel account which quotes from today's Isaiah text. In early Christian imagination, the quote from Isaiah described the function of John the Baptist as the final Old Testament prophet and precursor for Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who would himself compose and announce the ultimate Good News, i.e., Salvation in terms even greater than liberation from Egyptian enslavement (when Moses the Lawgiver saved them) or from Babylonian captivity (when Cyrus the Great saved them). John the Baptist was the last of the prophets of the Old Testament and the first prophet of the New Testament by Christian Tradition. He was the hinge personality or the fulcrum of connection between the Old and the New Testaments. His task was to offer and exhort a personal and collective attitude of repentance that his hearers might be well disposed to the Good News to be announced by the true and final Savior, Jesus of Nazareth. Without such a sincere willingness to re-think, to change one's mind, to evolve and grow, and to reform, repent, and renew oneself, the proclamation of any truly Good News would effectively have fallen on deaf ears. But, John had great success inviting and provoking many Jews and even some Gentiles of his day (the common folk, the Pharisees, some Roman soldiers, some tax collectors and prostitutes, even King Herod the Tetrarch) to a heightened level of critical thinking. John plowed the ground in which Jesus would sow the seed of the Good News of the kingdom of God. He even knew that his work was merely preparatory. "I baptized you with water; he will baptize you with the holy Spirit." John seemed to appreciate that only with a genuine, personal change of heart and mind – true repentance – only then could there develop a welcoming place in the heart for God's holy Spirit.
The middle reading today is an early 2nd Christian Century rationale for why the apocalyptic Second Coming of Jesus had not yet occurred. The letter known as 2nd Peter was very likely the final composition of the New Testament. By the end of the first Christian Century, the delay of the Parousia (the divinely implemented End of the World) was obvious. In fact, the belief that the End of the World was very near was what had once provided an urgency to the proclamation of the Gospel in those first Christian generations. Now that the Parousia was clearly delayed, the question arose, "Why rush?" The author of 2nd Peter painted a picture of an unexpectedly patient and merciful God who provided Gospel believers with every possible opportunity to become thoughtful and to engage in on-going self-reform and repentance. His exhortation, parallel to that of 2nd Isaiah in today's first lesson, was to a new kind of gratitude for God's offer of salvation: "be eager to be found without spot or blemish before him, at peace." For selfish purposes, we modern Christians might imagine that a perpetual delay of the Parousia is for our own benefit! Without it, we would never have come to exist!! It makes more sense for intelligent Christians to understand the Parousia, i.e., the End Times, to be a metaphor for our own individual death. When that occurs we imagine we shall meet our Savior most intimately.
Thus, for us 21st Century Christians, Advent reminds us of the numerous occasions of God's patient, wise, and intelligent salvation. Let us exhort ourselves and each other (Yes, such bold interpersonal Gospel meddling has not been our style!) to relish in the blessings which fill our lives. In terms of evangelization, we ought to point out our appreciation of God's blessings and compassion. We should offer to others an intelligent appreciation of the Gospel as a practical and healthy way of life for any who love life for the right reasons. Thoughtful, loving, and wise Christians appreciate God's goodness in the hear and now. We need not wait to meet God face to face at death!