2nd Sunday of Advent

2nd Sunday of Advent
Is. 40: 1-5, 9-11. Peter 3:8-14. Mk 1:1-8

Abbot Raymond - Community Chapter Homily

“With the Lord, ‘a day’ can mean a thousand years and a thousand years is like a day. The Lord is not slow to carry out his promises, as anybody else might be called slow”.
These words from today’s 2nd Reading remind us that we can’t judge God by our own human standards. Obviously the Church means to teach is today that the fulfilment of the hopes and promises of the Advent Season can only be understand by using God’s standards and not our own. Advent promises us one who is to come, whose “rule will be from sea to sea; from the great river to earth’s bounds”; “He will rule over the House of David”; “his reign will have no end” and so on. But the history of the Church since then just doesn’t seem to live up to those promises. Even to this present day the Kingdom of Christ seems a long way off. It still seems very far from being universal in its power or universal in its extent.
From the perspective of men, the Church, the Kingdom which Jesus came to establish on earth, can only be seen, here and now, as a struggling remnant, persecuted on all sides. It is constantly swimming against the tide of evil; swimming against the powerful currents of secular society. But this impression comes from a lack of appreciation of the past history of God’s People and from a lack of understanding of the future destiny of God’s People. All this is so well described for us in the New Catechism:
“The Kingdom will be fulfilled, not by a historic triumph of the Church through a progressive ascendancy, but only by God’s victory over the final unleashing of evil, which will cause his Bride to come down from heaven. God’s triumph over the revolt of evil will take the form of the last judgement after the final cosmic upheaval of this passing world.”
Meanwhile, from the perspective of God, the Advent claims and promises are all fulfilled in our lives hidden with Christ. It is in the minds and hearts of those who receive him; of those who welcome him, of those who believe in him and trust in him, that is where the kingdom of the Messiah is well and truly established here and now.

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