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2nd Sunday in Advent Lk 3-1-6 |
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| Background: The Christmas stories are a strange mixture of
concrete historical awareness and mystical celebration, the latter usually put togethr from Old Testament themes,
particularly from Isaiah as in today’s Gospel. Luke gives the historical details so
that it relatively easy for us to fix the time that John the Baptist emerged from the
desert and started to preach his baptism of
transformation. Then he switches to the Prophet who is clearly describing (though not exactly predicting) a messianic age.
Luke tells us that this has really happened. We know, he says, we were there when He came.
The prophecy is of course poetic which does not mean it is something less than literal
truth but something more. John prepared for the coming of Jesus and thus fit the Isaiah
model. So too we must prepare the way this advent season and indeed all the time. |
read the padre |
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Story: Once upon a time it
was announced that the Pope was coming to town and indeed to a certain parish in the town.
This was a surprise to everyone, not least of all to the pastor and the bishop. Well,
clearly the parish had to be spiffed up for his holiness, the long overdue tuck pointing
of the school, the repair of the stained glass windows, the purchase of new vestments to
replace the somewhat worn and even rag-tag collection in the sacristy, the installation of
new computers in the classrooms, the resurfacing of the parking lot, an updating of the
public address system, new china and
silverware for the papal lunch – all the things that most parishes need but don’t quite get around to as quickly as they
might. Now there was some talk about all this burnishing of the image in the parish –
there is as you know always talk in a parish about anything and everything. Some people
said why don’t we let the pope see us the way we really are, Others said, isn’t
this a lot of money to spend just because the Pope is coming, still others groaned why do
we have to wait for the Pope to come to do things we should have done long ago. There was,
as you might imagine, some jockeying for position among the parish council, the liturgy
committee, and the music committee and considerable agitation about who the mass servers
would be and whether the Pope would tolerate altar persons. The decision here (and the
pastor claimed Solomon’s cloak for his decision) was that all eighth graders would be
mass servers. Then the pope’s advance people showed up and they are at least as tough
as the Secret Service (who were also there by the way)Everyone was a nervous wreck for a
week for the pope’s visit and virtually no one except the babies and the dogs slept
the night before. Then the Pope came and everything went perfectly and the praised the
parish and its people for all their wonderful work. “Let’s do it again,” a
seventh grade girl told everyone, “It was fun.” No one agreed with her, but she
was right.
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