Second Sunday in Advent – Year B

DON’T TRAVEL ALONG ANCIENT ROADS; LOOK FOR NEW WAYS

Introduction

One day, the disciples of a rabbi rushed into the classroom beaming and told him the good news: ‘The Messiah has come.’ Unperturbed, the teacher walked to the window andlooked carefully at the people who, every morning, rushed along the street. The poor were at the crossroads begging for alms, the owners were shouting at the servants, the children were crying, the blind were being led by the hand, and the lame struggled to walk. He sat down, invited the students to continue studying, and then asked, ‘How could the Messiahhave come into the world if everything continues as before?’

When will the predictions of the prophets come true? Until when must we “wait for a new heaven and a new earth in which justice reigns” (2 P 3:13)? Our short story seems contrary to the Lord’s promises; it looks like a denial of the Christian faith in Jesus as the Messiah. After thousands of years, “the sound of distress and the voice of weeping” (Is 65:19) have not gone away. The swords are not changed into plowshares, nor the spearsinto pruning hooks (Is 2:4).

Doubts about God’s faithfulness to his commitment to bring forth a new world arisewhen one forgets that lovers’ time is not measured by the clock but by love: an hour passes in an instant, and a moment seems a lifetime. Those who love are patient and know how to wait. To have Rachel, Jacob served the father-in-law for seven years, “which seemed to him only a few days because he loved her so much” (Gen 29:20).

​The Lord expects us also to open our hearts wide and wait patiently for him, accepting that for him, “a thousand years is like one day” (2 P 3:8).

“Lord, make us abandon the old paths, teach us to prepare for you a new way.”

First Reading: Isaiah 40:1-5,9-11

The first years of exile in Babylon were difficult, but the Israelites adapted to their newsituation, and many eventually reached even prestigious social positions.

After forty years, a prophet arose. He was an enlightened man, a sensitive poet, abrilliant theologian. He attentively followed the political events of his time and realizedthat the kingdom of Babylon was crumbling while the power of Cyrus, king of Persia, was dramatically increasing. It was time to awaken in the exiles, the hope of slavery’s end, and the imminent return to the fatherland. He began to circulate his insights, predictions and hopes among the captives. But so as not to arouse the suspicions of the Babylonian authorities, who would accuse him of subversion, he used encrypted language with imagesthat only the children of Israel could understand. He proclaimed their upcoming releasefrom Babylonian slavery by referring to the miracles during the Exodus from Egypt andpromised even greater prodigies.

However, too few of the deportees had cultivated a spiritual sensitivity like his. The majority, seduced by the lure of pagan life, were now part of the new social and religious reality. They had forgotten the glorious past and saw the references to the promises made to Abraham as fairy tales devoid of any value. These exiles weakened in faith, were unable to grasp the call of God. They had neither the courage nor the will to start a new life andwere content to remain dispersed among the Gentiles. The history of salvation would go onwithout them. In a word, the exiles’ greater danger was not the harshness of life in exile but its seductions and attractions.

The experience of these slaves is a warning to anyone who, like them, adapts to abland, convenient and empty life and rejects the persuasions of the Lord to allow himself to be freed and look to the future with the eyes of God.

The message of this prophet is therefore addressed to us today. It starts with a pressing invitation from God: “Be comforted, my people… Speak to the heart of Jerusalem, proclaim to her that her time of bondage is at an end, that her guilt has been paid for. She has received double punishment for all her iniquity" (vv. 1-2). As the thieves who had to pay twice what they had stolen (Ex 22:3), Israel had served time for her mistakes; she had paid heavily beyond measure, as always happens to those who deviate from God’s ways.

In common parlance, ‘console’ is equivalent to speaking words of comfort, to communicating some serenity to one in distress. However, it does not change the painful situation that causes pain. But the consolation of God cannot be reduced merely to a tender caress that heartens. God consoles by assisting one in desperate straits; he comforts the miserable by lifting him from the dust (1 S 2:8), changing his mourning into dancing andhis cry into a song of joy (Ps 30:12).

Jesus calls the Holy Spirit the Consoler (Jn 14:15) because, with his coming, he renews the face of the earth (Ps 104:30).

God consoles, that is, he sets people free from all bondage through his word, which is not as fragile as the grass that dries up or like the flower that fades but is alive and eternal(Is 40:6-8). It never returns to God without having done what it wants or accomplishingthat for which it was sent (Is 55: 11).

In the second part of the reading (vv. 3-5), an anonymous voice cries: “In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord ... every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill made low.” The construction of a road is the condition for God to come to comforthis people. A vast desert separates Palestine from Mesopotamia. The road in ancient times that connected Babylon to the cities of the Mediterranean coast did not cross it; it wentnorth, skirting it for almost a thousand kilometers. The mysterious voice calls on the exilesto chart a new, spacious and straight road, which would allow them to easily and quickly reach the destination where the Lord wants to lead them.

The Prophet employs a series of images to highlight the commitments of one who wants to make room for God, which one must undertake in one’s own life. He asks the exiles to prepare the way for the Lord, not a path that leads a person to God, but one that allows God to reach a person.

The opening of this new road is the inner disposition to abandon the old ways, thoseways that God has always refused: “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, my ways are not your ways” (Is 55:8). Mountains to be leveled and valleys to be filled are the impediments to the divine encounter; they include failures in communication in mutual respect between peoples of different cultures, races, and religions. Only by removing these barriers is it possible to prepare the way for the Lord, the way of acceptance, forgiveness, and reconciliation.

In a grand vision, in the third part of the reading (vv. 9-11), the prophet describes the return of the exiles to the Holy City. Their guide is not a man like Moses, as happened during the exodus from Egypt. It will be the Lord himself who precedes and leads them as a shepherd leads his sheep, “gathering the lambs in his arms… gently leading those that are with young” (v. 11).

The image is very moving. It shows God’s tenderness towards the weak: tender, sweet, patient; he respects the time and spiritual rhythm. He values those who walk quickly but directs his attention and concern to those who advance with difficulty, who lingers along the way.

When the group of exiles is near the city, some break away from the group and run ahead to announce the ‘good news’ of liberation. The Prophet invites Zion to become the harbinger of ‘good news.’ Her message of joy, the ‘gospel’ proclaimed by her is: God will never abandon you, he will always look for you in the land of bondage, and he’ll take youin his arms and will accompany you on the path that leads to freedom.

Second Reading: 2 Peter 3:8-14

The early Christians were convinced that the Lord Jesus would soon change the world. However, after a few decades, they realized that their hopes were misguided. They began to wonder at the delay, and the first doubts arose about God’s faithfulness to his promises.Unbelievers mocked their expectations and asked, “What has become of his promised coming? Since our fathers in faith died, everything still goes on as it was from the beginning” (2 P 3:4).

To these struggling Christians, a pastor of souls in the second half of the first centuryA.D. addresses a word of encouragement explaining the reasons for the delay in the coming of the Lord.

Today’s Second Reading examines two of these reasons. First, the way God measures time is different from ours. For him, a thousand years are as one day (v. 8) and, if he does not destroy the world, despite its overflowing wickedness, he wants all people to have time to repent and be saved (v. 9). He does hasten the time because he respects man and tries toconquer him with his love, and his apparent delay should be seen as a sign of his mercy, patience, and desire not to lose any of his children.

The author of the letter intends to clarify a misunderstanding: the coming of the Lordis not to be imagined as his return in glory, to destroy his enemies, as apocalyptic sectspreach even today. Behind their concept lies the idea that his first coming in the manger atBethlehem and his sacrifice on Calvary have failed. He will return to implement by forcethe project he was not able to accomplish with sweetness and with love. No. All of hiscomings are glorious, and all are revelations of his goodness, justice, and his desire not tolose any of his creatures.

Gospel: Mark 1:1-8

“The beginning of the Good News of Jesus Christ, the Son of God” (v. 1). A verse thatseems useless: where was the need to recognize that we are in the first line of the Gospel? Instead, it is an introductory sentence carefully composed by Mark. With the first word of his book, he wanted to draw his readers’ attention to the beginning of the book of Genesis:“In the beginning when God began to create the heavens and the earth.”

The world, which came good from the hand of God, was later corrupted. The Israelites, for centuries, were waiting for God to fulfill his promise: “I now create new heavens and a new earth, and the former things will not be remembered” (Is 65:17). Here it is—the evangelist says—the good news: the new reality has popped up. You can check it out. The Kingdom of God is present in the world! The first-century Christians ask, ‘Where, how and when did the new world in which we entered through faith start? What is ourhistory?’

In the 60’s A.D., many eyewitnesses of the life of Jesus were still alive. To answer these questions, it was decided to write an official text in Rome telling the origin andpresenting the contents of the ‘good news.’ Mark was commissioned to draft it. He was ahighly respected disciple, traditionally identified with the ‘son of Mary,’ the house ownerwhere the first Christian community in Jerusalem used to meet (Acts 12:12-17). He couldbe that young man who was in Gethsemane at the time of Jesus’ capture. He ran away naked when the guards grabbed the sheet he was wrapped in (Mk 14:51).

Mark could have summarized the Gospel in dense theological formulas. Instead, he chose another literary genre, the story. It all started—he writes—when John in the Judean desert began to call his people to conversion. Jesus of Nazareth went to him to be baptized.Therein lies the beginning of our story; there, Mark’s Gospel began.

For many, the Gospels were only the four books wherein the events of Jesus’ life were narrated. Yet, the tradition of calling these texts ‘Gospels’ was introduced several decadesafter they were written. Before this scriptural adoption of the term, it did not indicate a book but simply joyful news brought by a messenger. It included the proclamation ofvictory, unanticipated events, and peace agreements but, above all, information about the Roman emperor's birth, life, and glorious deeds. It was hailed as gospels because theyaroused hopes of welfare, health, and peace. The one who heard them quivered with joy. In the famous inscription of Priene in Asia Minor, dating from the year 9 A.D., it says thatAugustus’ birthday ‘was for the world the beginning of the gospels, thanks to him.’

When Mark wrote his book, Augustus was already dead more than fifty years. It is, therefore, possible to take stock of what happened after him. His legions had put an end to the riots that shook Rome for a century. With him, a period of prosperity and peace throughout the Mediterranean basin had begun. Many thought it was the beginning of the golden age. Instead, his birth did not mark for the world the beginning of lasting joyfulnews. Of the first twelve Caesars, seven died violent deaths, Caligula and Nero wereindeed not exemplary. When Mark put his hand to his work, the violent civil war thatbrought to power the Flavian family had broken out in the year 69.

By using the term ‘Gospel,’ Mark intends to tell his readers: the gospels of the emperors betrayed their expectations, but the joyful news that does not disappoint is verydifferent: it is Jesus, the anointed of the Lord, the Son of God. After the first verse, the Baptist (vv. 2-4) is introduced as an ascetic who had fixed his abode in the wilderness ofJudah. He lived on the fringes of social, political and religious structures. He was the sonof a people who, for centuries, were on the way. They came out of Egypt to enter the Promised Land, later became slaves again in Babylon, and finally were brought by God back to Jerusalem.

When they thought of being finally free, John the son of Zechariah came to invite them to depart again: He urged them to “prepare the way of the Lord, level his paths” (v. 3). These words were already known, for they were those of the anonymous prophet whoencouraged the exiles to return to their land in Babylon nearly six centuries before. Manyaccepted John’s invitation. They came from Judea and flocked to the Jordan to be baptized. They understood that it was necessary to repeat the experience of the Exodus. They must get back on the right path to reach the Promised Land and learn that the ultimate destination of God’s people is not Palestine.

To which country does the Lord want to lead them? They still don’t know, neither do they know the new Moses who will lead them. The evangelist gives a particular emphasisto the clothing and frugal food of John. “John was clothed in camel’s hair and wore a leather garment around his waist. His food was locusts and honey” (v. 6). He did not walk around in soft clothing as those who lived in the city’s palaces. He did not feed on the products of the cultivated fields but on what was found or grew wild in the desert. He refused to belong to a corrupt and frivolous society which, having lost the great sense of a simple life, had also forgotten God.

Israel, God’s bride, had to return to the desert to regain the affection of her Lord, who waited for her there. “So I am going to allure her, lead her once more into the desert, where I can speak to her tenderly... . There she will answer me as in her youth, as when she came out of the land of Egypt” (Hos 2:16-17). The Baptist had a mission to fulfill: to prepare the way for this encounter of love. The strange clothing that distinguished him wasthat of the prophets (Zec 13:4) and, in particular, of Elijah who, like John, “wore a mantle of fur with a leather belt around his waist” (2 Kgs 1:8). The focus of the Baptist’s preaching (vv. 7-8) was announcing the coming of one, stronger than he, who would baptize with the Holy Spirit.

To baptize means to immerse. John immersed in the water those who accepted his invitation to conversion. The gesture expressed the final break with their earlier conductand the decision to live a whole new life. This baptism, however, was not enough: the water of the Jordan did not communicate life; it only washed the body. They neededanother water, water that would enter the person and would act in him as lifeblood. The Baptist promised it and also indicated they would receive it from the Coming One.

The water that submerges kills, but the water that enters, absorbed by plants, animals,and man, gives life. In these two functions of water, two moments of our baptism are recalled. Death to the past is indicated by immersion in water, and the living water offered by Christ represents the gift of the Spirit: “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me and let the one who believes in me drink” (Jn 7:38).