Second Sunday of Advent

 Lectionary: 6

Up, Jerusalem! stand upon the heights;
look to the east and see your children
gathered from the east and the west
at the word of the Holy One,
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.

 B ecause the Bible began recording stories, songs, rituals, customs, and laws of our people three thousand years ago, it remembers the comings and goings of many people. Human history is an endless story of migration, displacement, and exile. People have fled droughts, fires, floods, earthquakes, famine, disease, and warfare since we first appeared in Africa. Mass migrations, for better or worse, have made us what we are. 

As the Bible tells the story, it all began when an angel with a fiery sword drove Adam and Eve out of paradise. We've never forgotten Eden, that lovely garden; but it's gone without a trace, as if it never were, as if it never happened. 

The Bible remembers the Jews driven by famine from Palestine to Egypt, and back to Palestine from Egypt,. They remember the Assyrian army driving them like cattle out of Israel, and the Babylonian army driving them out of Judah. 

But they have never forgotten God's promise someday to gather all their children from all the nations and bring them home to Jerusalem. The Prophet Baruch said, 

They were led away on foot by their enemies;

but God will bring them back...

They will be borne aloft in glory as on royal thrones.

They will be given all the honors God’s holy people should have. 

However, those who return may be very few, only a remnant. Usually, by the third, fourth, or fifth generation, expatriates have forgotten their language, their customs, and their religion. They have intermarried and adapted to new ways of life; they have little memory of the old country, and no desire to return. If many Americans can say our names are German, French, Irish, or Italian, we don’t know when our ancestors came to America, nor do we speak their language. 

Today, the Church in the United States – baptized and adopted into the people of God –  suffers a similar catastrophe and nurtures a similar hope. We have sadly watched the children we bore, sheltered, clothed, and fed carried off by an unstable culture with strange doctrines, false ideals, and bizarre fantasies. We taught them to pray, but our schools taught them to worship money, power, popularity, and pleasure; and assured them they could forget the faith of their fathers if they studied science, technology, engineering, and math. 

And they become only workers and consumers of an enormous machine known as “The Economy.” While they believe they are a free people, they are, in fact, slaves of their own fears, impulses, and desires, preyed upon by greedy merchants and avaricious politicians. As Saint James said, “They are like the waves of the sea, driven and tossed by the wind… double-minded and unstable in every way.” They do not remember the Lord; they cannot remember his command to “Do This in Memory of Me.” 

Jesus urges us to... 

“Strive to enter through the narrow door, for many, I tell you, will attempt to enter but will not be strong enough. (Luke 13:24)

And Saint John the Baptist describes the way home. It is “a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.” Advent invites expatriates of God’s kingdom to come home, especially through the Sacrament of Confession, or Reconciliation. That simple ritual is a most extraordinary sign of God’s particular concern for each of us. The Confession of sins to a priest in the confidentiality of the confessional is a singular privilege that God has given especially to his Catholic people. It is a demonstration of his mercy, a pledge just as real as the black smudges of Ash Wednesday; and more substantial than money in the bank. 

But many people are afraid of the confession of sins. In that regard, the Sacrament is like all of God’s greatest blessings – marriage, priesthood, virgin birth, birth in a stable, poverty, homelessness, martyrdom, crucifixion – to name a few. Penance seems to demand everything we’ve got. We must surrender our lives to God. And that seems like a big deal until you realize your life is not that important, and giving one’s life to God is really no great sacrifice. But it pays enormous dividends.  

The Lord gathers his people as he gathered the shepherds who heard the angels, and the magi who followed the star. We must return to Bethlehem to find the Child in Mary’s arms, and worship him.  No one will be saved by spending more money, building impenetrable walls or more powerful weapons. 

A remnant will be saved who remembers who they are, and where they came from. They will see that the valleys and mountains that once blocked the way home have been filled in and leveled; crooked ways have been made straight; and barren lands are flowing with milk and honey. And they will be, as the Prophet Baruch said, “carried home in glory as on royal thrones.”