Saturday, December 09,
2017
Second Sunday of Advent
– Year B
5:00 pm Novena to Our Lady
5:30 pm Sunset Mass
First Reading
ISAIAH 40:1-5, 9-11
1 'Console my people,
console them,' says your God.
2 'Speak to the heart of
Jerusalem and cry to her that her period of service is ended, that her guilt
has been atoned for, that, from the hand of Yahweh, she has received double
punishment for all her sins.'
3 A voice cries, 'Prepare
in the desert a way for Yahweh. Make a straight highway for our God across the
wastelands.
4 Let every valley be
filled in, every mountain and hill be levelled, every cliff become a plateau,
every escarpment a plain;
5 then the glory of
Yahweh will be revealed and all humanity will see it together, for the mouth of
Yahweh has spoken.'
9 Go up on a high
mountain, messenger of Zion. Shout as loud as you can, messenger of Jerusalem!
Shout fearlessly, say to the towns of Judah, 'Here is your God.'
10 Here is Lord Yahweh
coming with power, his arm maintains his authority, his reward is with him and
his prize precedes him.
11 He is like a shepherd
feeding his flock, gathering lambs in his arms, holding them against his breast
and leading to their rest the mother ewes.
“The
Word of the Lord”
PSALMS 85:9-10, 11-12,
13-14
9 His saving help is near
for those who fear him, his glory will dwell in our land.
10 Faithful Love and
Loyalty join together, Saving Justice and Peace embrace.
11 Loyalty will spring up
from the earth, and Justice will lean down from heaven.
12 Yahweh will himself
give prosperity, and our soil will yield its harvest.
13 Justice will walk
before him, treading out a path.
Second Reading
Second PETER 3:8-14
8 But there is one thing,
my dear friends, that you must never forget: that with the Lord, a day is like
a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day.
9 The Lord is not being
slow in carrying out his promises, as some people think he is; rather is he
being patient with you, wanting nobody to be lost and everybody to be brought
to repentance.
10 The Day of the Lord
will come like a thief, and then with a roar the sky will vanish, the elements
will catch fire and melt away, the earth and all that it contains will be
burned up.
11 Since everything is
coming to an end like this, what holy and saintly lives you should be living
12 while you wait for the
Day of God to come, and try to hasten its coming: on that Day the sky will
dissolve in flames and the elements melt in the heat.
13 What we are waiting
for, relying on his promises, is the new heavens and new earth, where
uprightness will be at home.
14 So then, my dear
friends, while you are waiting, do your best to live blameless and unsullied
lives so that he will find you at peace.
“The
Word of the Lord”
Gospel Reading
MARK 1:1-8
1 The beginning of the
gospel about Jesus Christ, the Son of God.
2 It is written in the
prophet Isaiah: Look, I am going to send my messenger in front of you to
prepare your way before you.
3 A voice of one that
cries in the desert: Prepare a way for the Lord, make his paths straight.
4 John the Baptist was in
the desert, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.
5 All Judaea and all the
people of Jerusalem made their way to him, and as they were baptised by him in
the river Jordan they confessed their sins.
6 John wore a garment of
camel-skin, and he lived on locusts and wild honey.
7 In the course of his
preaching he said, 'After me is coming someone who is more powerful than me,
and I am not fit to kneel down and undo the strap of his sandals.
8 I have baptised you
with water, but he will baptise you with the Holy Spirit.'
“The
Gospel of the Lord”
And, as we walk away
from that encounter with the Master, dwell on the story that says that Christ
takes all our confessed sins and hurls them to the bottom of a deep lake. Then
on the lake shores, He nails a large sign that reads "NO FISHING."
George Eliot reminds us, "It's but little good you'll do watering last
year's crops." A woman had a
vision of Jesus. She went and told her priest. He said, "I will not
believe unless your Christ tells you my sins. The woman returned. The priest
asked what his sins were. She replied, "Jesus said He has forgotten
them." It is well said that if you want God to be pleased with you, then
you must please God. Confession would be a good start. The monk says that this
Christmas, instead of dreaming of and unhappy. Become a Christian that Gandhi
would admire.
Homily
from Father James Gilhooley
2
Advent
Second
Sunday of Advent - B Cycle - Mark 1:1-8
A
theologian had a painting of the crucifixion in his study. It showed John the
Baptist with a long bony finger pointing to Jesus. One day a visitor asked,
"What is your job?" The theologian walked over to the painting and
said, "I am that finger." Do our lives point people to Christ? Or do
they turn them away from Him? Before you answer, remember what Gandhi said,
"I would have become a Christian if ever I had met one." In a recent
year, Joseph Donders writes, "One third of all the books in the United
States were written on Jesus." Given that remarkable fact, can you fault
the Church setting up the training camp season that is Advent at the opening of
a new Liturgical year? The Church gives us four weeks to burn off ten pounds of
ugly spiritual fat.
Thus
we will be properly ready to greet the Nazarene on His annual Christmas visit.
St Mark today in 1:1 heralds Him without any hesitation as "Jesus Christ
the Son of God." He shows no doubt, no hesitation. Talk about clearing the
decks for action. Plato wrote, "To find the maker and father of this
universe is a hard task; and when you have found him, it is impossible to speak
of him before all people." I do not know whether the Evangelist Mark ever
read that line while working in Rome with St Peter. But one point is certain.
Mark tells us in in this Gospel he disagrees with Plato. Elizabeth Vanek
catches the spirit of this season: "Advent is the season of the pilgrim
God...We often speak of our journey towards God, but, in reality, it is God who
does most of the traveling."
The
last four miles you might say He leaves to us. The ideal would be to cover one
mile in each of these Advent weeks. The first mile should already be behind us.
The slowest of us can walk a mile weekly in even the oldest sneakers. Instead
of selling out, a bishop suggests that our challenge is to stand out. This
Advent abstain from food one day each week to better understand what hunger is.
And why not give 10% of your income to a charity? Stand out. Advent is designed
to bring out Abraham Lincoln's better angel in us. We should be advancing
toward the peace this season promises. And, as Donders says, "peace is the
opposite of pieces; to be at peace means to be of one piece." We should
all make this verse quoted by William Barclay the capstone of this Advent:
"In youth, because I could not be a singer, I did not even write a song. I
set no little trees along the roadside because I knew their growth would take
so long.
But
now from the wisdom that the years have brought me, I know that it may be a
blessed thing to plant a tree for someone else to water or make a song for
someone else to sing." John the Baptizer's message can be summed up in
that one word, "Repent." In Mark 1:5, the Master Himself also went on
the record, "Repent and believe in the Gospel." What better way to
turn over that famous new leaf than arranging a prime time rendezvous with the
Teacher in confession. St Augustine wrote, "The confession of evil works
is the first beginning of good works." Barclay notes that it is only when
we say, "I am a sinner" that Jesus can say, "I forgive." CS
Lewis writes that though God made us without our consent, He will not save us
without our permission.
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