Advent is our wake-up call to return home to God and to listen again to God's dream for us.

We light the second candle of the Advent season today.  The countdown to Christmas is moving on.  The media, and especially advertisements, remind us constantly that the time is drawing short.  Of course, the reminder is too often in terms of how many shopping days till Christmas.

Today’s Scripture readings give us a different point of view.  John the Baptist is clear and direct:  “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is close at hand.”  There is passion in the words of John the Baptism;  not the passion about the number of shopping days left but a passion about us preparing for the coming of the Lord into our hearts and our world.  The passion of John was a call to repentance.

In today’s Gospel, we are to enroll in the school of John the Baptist, hear his message and put it into action.  John the Baptist is our model for advent preparation preaching a baptism of repentance.  John  the Baptist appeared in the wilderness to give us a wake-up call.

The Advent question I have for myself and for all of us is do we have the passion of John the Baptist in recognizing our need for repentance and conversion in our lives?  What are the habits, the addictions, the sinfulness that we need to confess?  Humbly may we seek the grace of God to help us leave behind all that keeps us from putting Christ at the center of our lives.  All of us, including and especially myself, need to seek the conversion of our lives whereby God is our true North Star in all we say and do.

This past Tuesday we had a wonderful and enthusiastic Town Hall meeting in which we expressing our hopes of inviting more people to join our parish community, to make us even more vibrant that it already are.  We suggested some possible actions steps:  do a mailing, announcements during Mass, even going door to door.

More than strategy steps, we need the passion, the authenticity, the commitment of John the Baptist to help point us to the Lord at the center of all we say and do in our parish community.  May we pray in this Advent season to take on the passion and the need for repentance that so characterized the mission and preaching of John.

We need to more aware of the wilderness that is in our lives and in our world.  Perhaps we need to re-think our values totally.  We need to repent of all that keeps us from placing at the center of our lives and in this Advent season we need to find our way back to God. 

The repentance we seek is a fundamental change of heart which results in leaving sin behind and embracing God’s freely shared life and love.  The prophet Isaiah promises that the Savior will usher in a new era of relationships.  Then the wolf shall be the guest of the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; the calf and the young lion shall browse together…There shall be no harm or ruin on all my holy mountain.  Woody Allen’s comment to this was:  The lamb and the wolf shall lie down together – but the lamb won’t get any sleep.’’

Advent has more to offer us, however, than that.  Advent has a Savior for us.  Beyond our own efforts to recognize sin and failure in our lives, beyond our confessions and admissions that lead us to repent, Advent presents us with what we truly need – a Savior.  For if we’re honest with ourselves we will admit that we cannot deal with sin, repentance, and conversion all on our own.  We can’t manage our lives all by ourselves.

I invite you to consider the first three steps of the famous Twelve Steps in Alcoholic Anonymous.   Of the twelve, the first three are the most vital and critical.  They deal with what John the Baptist is talking about in the call to repentance.  So, substituting the word sin for the word alcohol the steps are:

1 – We  admitted we were powerless over sin – that our lives had become unmanageable.  As Pope Francis himself acknowledges very freely, we confess that we are all sinners.  We need more than what our will power provides us.  The truth of our lives is that we are not lone rangers.  Left to ourselves, we become entangled in demons that keep us from placing Christ at the center of our lives.

2 – Came to believe in a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.  That power is the merciful love of Jesus of which we are the generous recipients.  May we all value the grace offered to us in the sacrament of reconciliation.  May this Advent be all about our journey back to God.

3 – Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood him.   God’s grace is freely offered to each and every one of us, but we need to make the decision to yes to the plan for our lives.  We have the wonderful example of Mary who we celebrate in a special way on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception this Thursday.  Mary said:  “I am the servant of the Lord.  Be it done to me according to your Word.”

Mary is our example of John the Baptist’s call of repentance.  When Mary said yes to the plan of God for her life, she made the decision to live out God’s plan for her life, rather than providing for her security and comfort. 

Each year the church marks the season of Advent as a time to nourish hope in God’s kingdom.  During these four weeks, we open the Word of God to hear anew God’s dream.  Advent is a wonderful time of hope and trusting in God’s promise that a Savior will be born to us who is Christ the Lord.   But for us to make room in our hearts for the Savior, we must heed the call to repentance from John the Baptist.

What spiritual discipline of prayer and service to others is going to characterize your Advent days?

In our Catholic liturgical tradition, we are richly blessed in our sacramental life.  God still illumines our eyes through the light of baptism.  God still opens our ears through His Word.  God frees from what holds us bound in reconciliation.  God feeds us at the table of the Eucharist.  In these ways and many others, we come to experience something of God’s vision for us, and we are empowered to take that vision into the world through acts of justice and mercy.

Advent, like discipleship, calls us to firmer conversion and deeper commitment, it calls us also, and in equal measure, to Christ-like compassion even as we extend God’s mercy to all long after the Jubilee Year of Mercy is done.