Second Sunday of Advent – Year B
Mark 1:1-8
The beginning of the Good News about Jesus Christ, the Son of God. It is written in the book of the prophet Isaiah:
Look, I am going to send my messenger before you;
he will prepare your way.
A voice cries in the wilderness:
Prepare a way for the Lord, make his paths straight.
and so it was that John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. 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. John wore a garment of camel-skin, and he lived on locusts and wild honey. In the course of his preaching he said, ‘Someone is following me, someone who is more powerful than I am, and I am not fit to kneel down and undo the strap of his sandals. I have baptised you with water, but he will baptise you with the Holy Spirit.’
Don’t travel along ancient roads, look for new ways
Introduction
One day the disciples of a rabbi broke in the classroom and, beaming, told the good news: “The Messiah has come.” Unperturbed, the teacher walked to the window, turned around his eyes and looked at the people who, like every morning, moved hurriedly along the street. The poor at the crossroads were begging for alms, the owners shouting at the servants, the children were crying, the blind were led by the hand, the lame struggled to walk. He sat down, invited the students to continue studying, then added, “How could the Messiah come into the world if everything continues as before?”
When will the oracles 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)?
The story seems to speak against the Lord’s promises; it seems 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 or their spears into pruning hooks (Is 2:4).
Doubts about God’s faithfulness to the commitment made to bring forth a new world appear when one forgets that the lovers’ time are not scanned by the clock but by love: an hour passes in an instant and a moment seems to be 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 also expects us to open wide our heart and, for him, “a thousand years” waiting “is like one day” (2 P 3:8).
To internalize the message, we repeat:
“Lord, make us abandon the old paths, teach us to prepare for you a new way.”
Gospel Reflection
“This is the beginning of the Good News of Jesus Christ, the Son of God” (v. 1). A verse that seems useless: what was the need to recognize the fact 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 out good from the hand of God, was then 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 props up. You can check it out. The kingdom of God is present in the world.
The Christians of the first century ask, “Where, how and when has the new world in which we entered through faith started? What is our history?”
In the 60’s A.D., many eyewitnesses were still alive. To answer these question it was decided to write an official text in Rome telling the origin and presenting the contents of the “good news”. Mark was commissioned to draft it. He was a highly respected disciple, traditionally identified with the “son of Mary,” the owner of the house where the first Christian community in Jerusalem used to meet (Acts 12:12-17). He could be that young man who, at the time of Jesus’ capture, was in Gethsemane. 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 was presented in the Judean desert to call his people to conversion. Jesus of Nazareth went to him to be baptized. There was the beginning of our story. There the gospel began.
For many the gospels are only the four books wherein the events of Jesus’ life were narrated. Yet, the use of calling these texts gospels was introduced several decades after they were written. Before this term did not indicate a book, but simply a joyful news brought by a messenger. The proclamation of victory, lucky events, peace agreements and, above all, the news about the birth, life, the glorious deeds of the Roman emperor were gospels because they aroused hopes of welfare, health, peace. The one who heard of them quivered with joy. In the famous inscription of Priene in Asia Minor, dating from the year 9 A.D., it says that Augustus’ birthday “was for the world the beginning of the gospels thanks to him.”
When Mark wrote his book, Augustus was already dead for more than fifty years. It is therefore possible to take stock of what happened after him. His legions have put an end to the riots that shook Rome for a century. With him a period of prosperity and peace throughout the Mediterranean basin has begun. Many thought it was the beginning of the golden age. Instead, his birth did not mark for the world the beginning of lasting joyful news. Of the first twelve Caesars, seven died a violent death, Caligula and Nero were certainly not exemplary. When Mark put his hand to his work, the violent civil war that brought to power the Flavian family broke out.
By using the term gospel, Mark intends to tell his readers: the gospels of the emperors betrayed the expectations. The joyful news that does not disappoint is another one: it is Jesus, the anointed by of the Lord, Son of God.
After the first verse, the Baptist (vv. 2-4) is introduced in the scene. He was an ascetic who had fixed his abode in the wilderness of Judah. He lived on the fringes of social, political and religious structures. He was the son of 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 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 “prepare the way of the Lord , level his paths” (v. 3). These words were already heard. They were those of the anonymous prophet who, in Babylon, nearly six centuries before, encouraged the exiles to return to their land.
Many took in this 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 path to reach the promised land. The ultimate destination of God’s people is not Palestine.
To which country the Lord wants to lead them? They now still don’t know. They neither know the new Moses who will lead them.
A particular emphasis is given by the evangelist to 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 raiment, as those who lived in city’s palaces did. He did not fed on the products of the cultivated fields, but of what was found or widly grew in the desert. His was a refusal of the corrupt and frivolous society which, having lost the great sense of simple life, had also forgotten his God.
Israel, the bride, had to return to the desert to regain the affection of her Lord who waited for her. “So I am going to allure her, lead her once more into the desert, where I can speak to her tenderly. There she will anwer 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 was that of the prophets (Zech 13:4) and, in particular, of Elijah who, like John, “wore a mantle of fur with a leather belt around his waist” (2 K 1:8). The content of the Baptist’s preaching (vv. 7-8) was the announcement of 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 the earlier conduct and 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 needed another water, water that would enter the person and would act in him as a lifeblood. The Baptist promised it and also indicated he would give it.
The water that submerges kills; but the water that enters, that which is absorbed by plants, animals, man, is life. In these two functions of water two moments of our baptism are recalled. Death to the past is indicated by the immersion in water, the gift of the Spirit is represented by the living water offered by Christ: “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me and let the one who believes in me drink ” (Jn 7:38).
Fernando Armellini
https://sundaycommentaries.wordpress.com
Something More Important Than Success
We wait for him, yet we go out into the wilderness to find him. We wait for him but we prepare the way for him. We can do nothing to force him to come, yet we must do everything to make ready for him.
Today we think specially of John the Baptist as the one who made ready for the coming of Jesus. The gospel writers see him as the one who fulfils the prophecy of Isaiah. He goes into the wilderness and prepares a way for the Lord. He went into the wilderness; he was sought out by many people who wanted a change; and he pointed away from himself to the Life-giver who would be coming.
He went into the wilderness. For the people of Israel the wilderness was a good but frightening place: it was where they had first met God, but in order to meet him they had to do without a lot of the creature comforts which we think go with normal living. The prophets saw the wilderness as the place which the disobedient nation would have to go back to, for something which was a cross between a punishment and a honeymoon with God, their uncomfortable lover. So John the Baptist in the wilderness reminded the people of Judaea and Jerusalem that they had strayed from God and they must take steps to seek God. He didn’t go into their towns and cafes and schools; he didn’t go into the places where the powerful met and made decisions; he didn’t try to make himself popular or speak to the media. He just spoke, saying people should repent. The Gospel writer doesn’t tell us how people got to hear about him out there by the Jordan, but they flocked to hear him.
The people who went to hear him wanted a change; they may have wanted all kinds of changes – in the way they were governed, in their financial circumstances, in their health: but they were willing to see themselves as the ones who had to change first. John had touched a chord in people’s hearts: they were hungry for something, and they sensed that in order to get whatever it was, they themselves needed to change, to accept responsibility for what was wrong with their world. Jesus too would attract a lot of people who knew something was wrong; and like John, only in a more encouraging way, he would give them hope that things could change, and indeed were changing. In our day people are hungry for God, without necessarily knowing it. They need to meet wilderness people – people who don’t seek popularity, people who live a life of trust in God, people who put love for God and for human beings above consumerism and competition. And like Jesus who was tempted in the wilderness but met people in their towns and cafes and schools, you can find wilderness people in all sorts of ordinary places, not only the dramatic desert near the Jordan.
And those wilderness people – you and me, I hope: oh dear……. well, who else has God got to do his work if it isn’t those who say they believe in him? – we wilderness people, meeting people in towns and cafes and schools and other ordinary places, don’t get people to believe in us: we point away to the one who is greater than us, who is God’s gift to the human race; we point to Jesus Christ. The way to lead people to God is to avoid pointing at ourselves; we may want to tell others that faith makes a great deal of difference in our lives: that’s fine, as long as it’s pointing to the God in whom we have faith, not just to ourselves. It’s not clever of us to have faith: we’ve been given it: it’s a gift. People are not hungry to hear one more success story: they want to hear about the one who gives something much more important than success: they want to hear how to get a LIFE. He will baptise you with the Holy Spirit, said John. That is, he will make you new people, children of God, inhabitants of the new world which is coming to us as God’s gift. It’s not a world we can construct by massively funded renewal programmes, though belonging to it will make us better citizens and will give us better political vision, and more commitment to humanly-shaped economics. But the special gift we will give to the world when we tell the good news about Jesus is the gift of hope; and that’s the most practical virtue of all.
Colin Carr O.P.
http://torch.op.org
Advent: a time of expectation by the human race and a time of mission
Romeo Ballan mccj
With the “Joy of the Gospel”, we have started a new liturgical year, last Sunday. We are now in the second Sunday of Advent.
We know that Advent means arrival, coming. We are waiting for the coming of our Saviour, Jesus Christ. So we are full of joy and hope, open to new commitments.
We have heard “the beginning of the Gospel of Jesus, Christ, the Son of God” (Gospel,v. 1). This Gospel invites us to “prepare the way of the Lord”; and, God willing, we may also be His messengers to others, by the power of the Holy Spirit (v. 8).
The message of the Lord brings always comfort, peace, courage and good news (I Reading). We are called to conduct ourselves “in holiness and devotion”, waiting for the coming of the day of God”; the great hope is for “new heavens and a new earth” (II Reading). With joy and missionary commitment, let us go forth to encounter the Lord who will come again the next Christmas.
Let us go forth, then, to offer, each one of us, our life to Jesus Christ.
There are three persons who, during Advent, may help and prepare us most for the meeting with Christ: the prophet Isaiah, John the Baptist and Mary, the Mother of Jesus. And each has a particular missionary link with the Messiah-Saviour who is coming:
Isaiah foretold him;
John pointed Him out when He came;
Mary, the purest of creatures, without stain, the Immaculate Conception, welcomed her Lord and gave Him a human body; now She offers Him to all, even to those who do not yet know Him.
Isaiah is also the prophet of the universality of God’s salvation, which is being offered to “all people”, to “all nations”. By the gift of faith, we Christians have a privilege: we know who the Saviour is that has come and that will come the next Christmas; while the non-Christians – who are the majority of humanity (about two thirds) – are still awaiting, or have not yet agreed to the announcement of Christ, our Saviour. What can we do for them?
Advent is a liturgical time favourable to rediscover the “Joy of the Gospel”, as Pope Francis teaches us, and to awake again in the Christians a conscience of missionary responsibility. We are invited to missionary prayer and commitment, especially during the season of Advent, as this is a traditional time of expectation by the human race.
