Contents: Volume 2

The 2nd & 3rd Sundays of ADVENT

 - December 8, 2024 - December 15, 2024

1. -- Lanie LeBlanc OP <2nd Sunday of Advent>
2. -- Dennis Keller - OP <3rd Sunday of Advent>
3. -- Paul O'Reilly, SJ <2nd Sunday of Advent>
4. --Fr. John Boll, OP <2nd Sunday of Advent>
5. --(Your reflection can be here!)

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1.
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Advent 2 C 2024

Our readings today touch many aspects of our lives. Many families deal with long lost family members or other loved ones, either far away in distance or in relationship. God doesn't have an app for that; God gave us the Jesus Plan instead. and looks for us as we come home.

That Plan also takes into account the valleys and mountains of our day. Who among us does not deal with some kind of emptiness, those holes in our hearts or relationships, or purpose or life satisfaction of some kind. Don't forget those mountains, those obstacles that seem always to be uphill battles, never-ending or just too tough to tackle some days at all!

The Master Plan is pure hope, it is salvation through Jesus. Although defined in real time history with the specifics of the time of Jesus, the Plan was formulated from all time to be our salvation history. John the Baptist reminds us to repent, be forgiven, and spread this Good News to others.

As we navigate the wanderings and detours of the journey of our lives, let us remember the Destination. Prayer is a necessity. So are companions, including Jesus who walked a journey like no other, yet so much like oursl

May your Advent journey be blessed with the fullness of HOPE!

Dr. Lanie LeBlanc OP
Southern Dominican Laity
lanie@leblanc.one

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2.
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Third Sunday of Advent

December 15, 2024

Zephaniah 3:14-18; Responsorial Isaiah 12:2-3, 4-6; Philippians 4:4-7;
Gospel Acclamation Isaiah 61:1; Luke 3:10-18

We are more than half way through the preparation weeks of Christmas. The entrance hymn in Latin Liturgy begins with the word, “Gaudete.” That is the imperative form of a word that in English means, “Rejoice.” It is a command to have joy in hearts and minds. We express that with song, with praise for the Divine plan, for relationships among us.

Yes, right! Rejoice for what? What about the wars in the Middle East, Ukraine, and the forgotten ones in Africa? In our globalized world, there is a political swing toward authoritarianism and the re-establishment of a feudal system of lords and ladies, relegating the middle class and poor to a return to middle ages serfdom. The poor get poorer, and the rich get richer.

Technology is thought to be our salvation, eliminating thinking, analyzing problems, and creating resolutions to benefit the masses. News Media takes sides, losing its authority for integrity and fairness.

Rejoice? With so many issues and threats to liberty, creativity, and fulfillments of the human heart, rejoicing often seems like a chasing after the wind. What is to rejoice?

The first reading this Sunday is from the prophet Zephaniah. The first part of his three-chapter prophecy covers the period of time before the Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem, the Temple, and the slaughter of citizens of Judah. Those able-bodied, educated citizens of Jerusalem were taken into exile in a seventy-plus-year exile in Babylonian cities as slaves. The part we read this Sunday in Zephaniah is after the Persian empire conquered the Babylonians. Cyrus sent home the enslaved Judaean to rebuild and reestablish their cities and the walls of Jerusalem and a rebuilt temple. This reading from the last chapter of Zephaniah, therefore, is a celebration of restoration, of revitalization, and a growth in the understanding of God’s plan of salvation for the nation. It is helpful to note this salvation is of individuals who make up a community. It is not merely a salvation of this or that person, but of all citizens. That lesson certainly applies to us. We are baptized into a community, into the Body of Christ in this time and this place. The support and presence of the child birthed in Bethlehem comes to us when we live in community.

That fits well into our understanding of the Eucharistic celebration that is the second part of our Mass. We offer on the altar through the agency of the Holy Spirit, who is made present in the presider, our gifts, our joys, our sorrows. And most certainly what holds us captive in our own personal Babylon. Together we rebuilt the protections of the City of God. By means of our faith community we make the Christ present to each other.

That’s help to live a life that makes me happy. The revelation of the Mosaic Commandments is not a confinement, a restriction of freedom. Those commandments, according to the book of Deuteronomy, are the roadmap to living a happy life. The beatitudes Jesus preaches is an additional guide to a happy life. What is not of those two revelations causes anxiety, violence, distrust, cut-throat competition, wars, and abuse of others and our earth.

The Gospel tells us the preaching of the Baptist. It is addressed to people with all sorts of occupations. His preaching is the warm up act for Jesus’ beatitudes. It seems strange that even tax collectors and Roman soldiers asked what they should do. Listening with our hearts to John’s preaching frees our hearts to discover what brings happiness to this life, this life which is precursor to eternity.

Why talk about the heart? Why not stress our free will to choose the good and avoid evil? We describe the heart as the seat of love and hate. What we love is what informs our minds in choosing. Scientists who study the heart and the brain discovered a hard-wired connection between the heart and the brain. (The Biology of Transcendence, Joseph Pearce, Park Street Press, 2002.) What we love or hate informs choices. Advent is the time to evaluate what is in our hearts and make new choices.

Another reason to turn to love is that it focuses us to find something of attraction in all, even in those who irritate the dickens of us. When we turn to love we understand what the life of God is like. That life is reflected in our deepest loving’s. The Good News, the good news that is God’s revelations in Scriptures, Hebrew and Christian, is that God loves us intensely. The proof is God’s commissioning the Son to prove it by birthing in human nature while retaining his divine nature. If God loves us, anyone who hates us cannot disturb our peace. No one can destroy the love of God that gives us dignity, worth, and belonging. We materialize our love of God by loving and caring for our neighbors.

So, therefore, let us rejoice mightily this Sunday, sharing the love with which God graces us. Let us share that love with those gathered here with us. That is how we change the world. Rejoice, again I say rejoice!!

Dennis Keller Dennis@PreacherExchange.com

Dominican Laity, Raleigh, North Carolina

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3.
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Year C: 2nd Sunday of Advent (Yvonne).

Prepare a way for the Lord,
make his paths straight.
Every valley will be filled in,
every mountain and hill be laid low,
winding ways will be straightened
and rough roads made smooth.
And all mankind shall see the salvation of God.

I saw one of my patients this week; I’ll call her Yvonne. She is a woman I’ve not seen for a long time. But I used to see her very often, in fact every week when we went on street outreach in Central London. She is a woman with paranoid schizophrenia, a condition characterised primarily by fear. And it was the extremity of her fear that had driven her to believe that she could only be safe in one particular spot near one particular monument on the Embankment, where she lived for many years of her life.

She was immensely fearful of and hostile to any approach and there seemed very little that we could do to help her. Because she never got in the way, she never came to the notice of the police or emergency services, so it was very difficult to engage other services in helping her. They knew about her, everybody knew her, but there were so many other people who were even more sick that they could never quite get around to her. Despite the immensity of her fears, she was still able to give quite a good account of herself to people in authority and declined all offers of help. And so she continued living for many years in that spot on the Embankment in fear and misery.

But then came the Olympics of 2012 and all of a sudden, for the first time ever, she was in the way. So, for the first time ever, she was important. The embankment was needed as the major highway for very important people to travel in their huge limousines down a special roadway created for them alone between the posh hotels in Park Lane and the Olympic village in East London. That highway had to be prepared, every valley and hill had to be filled in so that these very important people might see only the nicest things in London and certainly not have people like her in the way. So suddenly Yvonne was a very important person. She was swiftly scooped up. Specialist psychiatrists examined her, found her to be very mentally ill (who knew?!), brought her into hospital and over many months made her better.

Then, when she was fully recovered, she was discharged into good accommodation with the support of carers and stable on her medicines. And she has been well ever since. And when I met her there was not a trace of the fear that had previously paralyzed her life. She was well, she was happy and she was immensely thankful for all that had been done for her.

That I think is the spirit of Advent, a special time when we know that someone truly special is coming into our world, into our homes, into our lives. So, it is a time for getting the biggest round tuit in our lives, a time for doing all those things that we never normally get around to, and noticing all those people we never normally see. A time for remembering that Jesus Christ did not come into the world to congratulate it, but to change it.

Let us pray that this each and every one us may find a way to make somebody else’s Christmas.

Paul O'Reilly SJ <poreillysj@jesuit.org.uk>

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4.
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2024-12-08 SECOND SUNDAY OF ADVENT Year C
Baruch 5: 1-9; Psalm 126; Philippians 1: 4-6, 8-11; Luke 3: 1-6

“A voice of one crying out in the desert:
“Prepare the way of the Lord,
make straight his paths.”

How do you read it?
When you hear this, and have heard it preached,
what is the message you hear?

Do you hear that YOU are to prepare the way,
because you need to straighten out your life?

Most often we hear this emphasis on the hearer,
You and I, called to “Prepare the way of the Lord!”

This IS important,
BUT there is another emphasis in the word we hear,
IT is more important
and even foundational in understanding our part!

Hear the Prophet Baruch:
Jerusalem is awakened to see its people:
“rejoicing that they are remembered by God.
Led away on foot by their enemies they left you:
but God will bring them back to you
borne aloft in glory as on royal thrones.
For God has commanded
that every lofty mountain be made low,
and that the age-old depths and gorges
be filled to level ground,
that Israel may advance secure in the glory of God.”

Here it is God, preparing a way for you!
“that [YOU] may advance secure in the glory of God.”
For it is “God (who) will bring (you) back”

We are not left on our own, even in our own hearts!

Paul speaks to us about God making the WAY straight within us:
“I am confident of this,
that the one who began a good work in you
will continue to complete it
until the day of Christ Jesus.
God is my witness,
how I long for all of you with the affection of Christ Jesus.”

This does not mean that we do not make an effort
to prepare the way...
The gospel implies that we too, participate in what God is doing.
We embody our yes to God’s invitation and welcome
to follow the way he has prepared for us,
by our preparing a way and welcome
for others in our own lives.

When we come to know the “the affection of Christ Jesus”
Who is that Way,
we want to respond,
We rejoice to give God permission so that, in our hearts,
“every lofty mountain (can) be made low,
and that the age-old depths and gorges
(Can) be filled to level ground,”

Our yes, opens us and our world to God
“the one who began a good work in you,
(who) will continue to complete it.”

And then, as Isaiah says,
“the glory of the Lord will be revealed,
and all mankind will see it together,”

God’s plan from the beginning
is that we know the Joy of sharing life
with one another in God
and become, In Christ,
the way for other’s to meet God
and come to know his glory!

Fr. John J. Boll, OP

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5.
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Volume 2 is for you. Your thoughts, reflections, and insights on the next Sundays readings can influence the preaching you hear. Send them to preacherexchange@att.net.  Deadline is Wednesday Noon. Include your Name, and Email Address.
 

-- Fr. John

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