Advent: The Lord is Near Year B (Sample)

Reflections for Liturgical Year B

DEACON CHARLES PAOLINO

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Unless otherwise noted, scripture passages are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Catholic Edition, © 1989, 1993 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

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One of my Advent rituals is rereading Charles Dickens’s 1843 novella A Christmas Carol. Commentaries on this story often remark that Dickens influenced the way Christmas has been observed ever since—family gatherings, sumptuous meals, gift giving, caroling, churchgoing.

I have also read that there is a long-standing debate as to whether there is Christian message in the story, but to me the Christian message is clear. In a disturbing passage, for example, the ghost of Jacob Marley shows his former business partner, Ebenezer Scrooge, the spirits of the dead who, like Marley himself, hadn’t lifted a finger in life to assist people who lived in poverty:

“The air was filled with phantoms, wandering hither and thither in restless haste, and moaning as they went. … Many had been personally known to Scrooge in their lives. He had been quite familiar with one old ghost … who cried piteously at being unable to assist a wretched woman with an infant, whom it saw below, upon a door-step. The misery with them all was, clearly, that they sought to interfere, for good, in human matters, and had lost the power forever.”

Marley also described his personal torment:

“It is required of every man that the spirit within him should walk abroad among his fellow-men, and travel far and wide; and if that spirit goes not forth in life, it is condemned to do so after death. It is doomed to wander through the world—oh, woe is me!—and witness what it cannot share, but might have shared on earth, and turned to happiness! … Why did I walk through crowds of fellow-beings with my eyes turned down, and never raise them to that blessed Star which led the Wise Men to a poor abode? Were there no poor homes to which its light would have conducted me!’’

A Christian message? I think so. How often have we heard from Pope Francis about our mission to get out of our comfort zones and go to the edges of society to bring sustenance and justice?

But A Christmas Carol is not pessimistic; its central figure is not one of the dead who had wasted life’s opportunities, but one of the living— Scrooge—who still had time and who responded to what I say was a Christian message by reviewing and re-forming his life.

This book of reflections is an invitation for you to pause—once a week in a small group and daily on your own—to meditate on the meaning of this season and the coming feast and their application to your daily life.

Marley’s ghost and the Spirits of Christmas provided Scrooge with his first Advent: they got him to pause and reflect on his life, and he came to

see that the spirit of Christmas was not about celebrating a holiday but about giving away one’s life every day of the year.

As Dickens wrote in the conclusion of his story, “May that be truly said of us, and all of us.”

Second Sunday of Advent

SUGGESTED ENVIRONMENT

A small table with two burning candles, perhaps in an Advent wreath. Consider decorating the table in violet, the liturgical color of the Advent season.

LITURGICAL READINGS

✧ Isaiah 40:1-5, 9-11

✧ Psalm 85:9-10, 11-12, 13-14

✧ 2 Peter 3:8-14

✧ Mark 1:1-8

FOCUS

Clear the path of anything that separates us from God.

OPENING SONG

“Waiting for a Savior,” Casey McKinley. To download, visit www.ocp.org/renew-music.

OPENING PRAYER

Form two groups and alternately pray from Psalm 85 with everyone repeating the response.

R. Lord, let us see your kindness, and grant us your salvation. I will hear what God proclaims; the LORD—for he proclaims peace to his people. Near indeed is his salvation to those who fear him, glory dwelling in our land.

R. Lord, let us see your kindness, and grant us your salvation. Kindness and truth shall meet; justice and peace shall kiss. Truth shall spring out of the earth, and justice shall look down from heaven.

R. Lord, let us see your kindness, and grant us your salvation.

The LORD himself will give his benefits; our land shall yield its increase. Justice shall walk before him, and prepare the way of his steps.

R. Lord, let us see your kindness, and grant us your salvation.

THE GOSPEL OF THE LORD

“Make ready the way of the Lord, clear him a straight path.”

Read aloud Mark 1:1-8

REFLECT

What word, phrase, or image from the scripture reading touches your heart or connects to your experience? Share with the group or write your responses here:

OLD TESTAMENT CONNECTIONS

Mark quotes Isaiah the prophet: “A voice cries out: ‘In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God’” (Is 40:3). Mark also quotes Malachi (“See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you to prepare the way before me”), placing Malachi first, without naming him (Mal 3:1a). The tendency of later scribes to say “prophets” instead of Mark’s original “Isaiah” reflects an important insight. The testimony is of all the prophets, even if Mark cites only one.

Either Malachi is named after his role, since malachi means, in Hebrew, “my messenger,” or the term is a pseudonym for the author. Either way, the role of all the prophets is summed up in this one—the last prophet in the Old Testament—making Malachi even more suitable for use by Mark.

The prophecy of Malachi calls attention to the failure of the Israelites who had returned to Jerusalem after the Babylonian captivity in the sixth century B.C.—notably the priests, but the people, too—to observe the Law of Moses. Although the prophets had warned the Israelites that the exile had occurred in the first place because of

their failure to keep the covenant, the people hadn’t returned to their homeland long before they became unfaithful in worship and in personal practices. Malachi’s response to this behavior included warnings of God’s wrath but also a promise of a restoration of the covenant and an eventual messianic age.

The proclamation familiar to us—“See, I am sending my messenger to prepare the way before me”—comes from this prophecy (3:1a), as Malachi foresees days of God’s wrath and the renewal of the covenant. The latter is anticipated in the conclusion of the verse Mark quotes: “The messenger of the covenant in whom you delight—indeed, he is coming, says the Lord of hosts” (3:1b). Malachi refers to this messenger as Elijah, who “will turn the hearts of parents to their children and the hearts of children to their parents, so that I will not come and strike the land with a curse” (4:5).

In the gospel tradition, Jesus identifies John the Baptist with Elijah* and John’s appearance with this prophecy (“if you are willing to accept it, he is Elijah who is to come” (Mt 11:14). John imitated Elijah’s wardrobe—the hairy garment and the leather belt (2 Kgs 1:8).

Mark presents a panoply of messengers who must face their intended audiences’ ignorance and unwillingness to heed the messages prophets carry. Also like Jesus, these messengers may be vouched for by God, but they, too, must themselves struggle with the forces of evil and temptation. Nothing comes easily, either for the messengers or for those to whom the messengers are sent.

Adapted from Mark: Growing in Faith by Father David Reid and Deacon Charles Paolino, part of RENEW International’s Scripture Series.

REFLECT

What factors in contemporary life might impede you from hearing God’s word and applying it in your everyday life? How might you contend with these factors? How might you take the occasion of this Advent season to do so?

* Mark 9:11-13, Matthew 11:13-14.

MEDITATE

An acquaintance once shared with me a handwritten register from the Packer House, an old hotel in Perth Amboy, New Jersey, that burned down in 1969.

Perth Amboy was on the vaudeville circuits in the 1920s and ’30s, and the names of some of the stage performers were listed in the Packer House register. Also listed were “advance men,” who, as the name implied, visited a theater town ahead of the acts and made whatever arrangements were necessary, including wakeup calls.

In a way, then, John the Baptist was the original advance man— preparing the people of the Judean countryside and Jerusalem for the ministry of Jesus.

He is described in the Gospels as a rugged firebrand, and his appearance, manner, and language no doubt shook up many listeners, but at the heart of his message was repentance and forgiveness of sins.

Advent is the season of John, the baptizer and advance man, when he urges us, as he did the people of his own time, to prepare to receive Jesus—and meet Jesus at the end of time—by taking stock of ourselves, changing what needs to be changed, and beginning a new relationship with God.

Advent is not formally a penitential season as Lent is, but it still is an invitation for spiritual renewal—an opportunity, as John said, to “reform” our lives, not necessarily by undergoing dramatic conversion, but by sincerely pondering changes in priorities and habits that will enable us to grow closer to Christ.

REFLECT

John the Baptist called people to repent, and in the passage from the Second Letter of Peter in today’s Mass, we read that God shows us “generous patience, since he wants none to perish but all to come to repentance.” How will you respond to God’s patience and desire? Share with the group or write your responses here.

ACT

Spend some time thinking about the challenge from John the Baptist to re-form our lives, not in terms of correcting some flaw or bad habit but in terms of one act of generosity, kindness, mercy, or justice that you have not done before. Plan to put that act into practice during this Advent season and beyond.

CLOSING PRAYER

Almighty God, John the Baptist announced the coming of your Son, Jesus Christ, with a tone of urgency but also with a call for penitence that leads to forgiveness. May we always be willing to examine our consciences and re-form our lives, and may we never hesitate to ask your forgiveness and begin life again. Amen.

LOOKING AHEAD

To prepare for the next group session, read John 1:6-8, 19-28.