"God is my witness, how I long for all of you with the affection of Christ Jesus.” With St. Paul’s words in the second reading of this Second Sunday of Advent I express my own feelings for you today. After several months away from this blessed land, the Lord has allowed me to address you again in person, seeing your faces, hearing your voices, celebrating together the mystery of a God who loves us and makes himself food and sacrifice for us at every Holy Mass.
Many experiences can happen in three months. Now that I see myself here again, it seems to me that an eternity has passed since the last celebration over which I presided in this church. Between that Mass, so long ago, and this one, many have been the experiences, the inner battles, and the graces received. I ask God that we all know how to make the most of the time He gives us. Only Jesus has words of eternal life.
Like St. John the Baptist in today's Gospel, the Word of God finds us, too, in the desert. I am not referring to the arid terrain of Arizona, but to the holy land of Advent. A desert is a place of prayer, silence, and penance. To speak to our hearts, the Lord has prepared this time in which he invites us to turn away from the noise and the usual comforts to set out on a journey. The sign of the priest celebrating facing the tabernacle expresses precisely this penitential and pilgrim aspect of Advent. It is a reminder that speaks to us of the seriousness of these weeks that precede Christmas, the expectation of the imminent coming of the Lord, the need to take vital and concrete steps before Jesus is born. "This is my prayer: that your love may increase ever more and more (...) so that you may be pure and blameless for the day of Christ."
A desert is also a place of the essential. There one is stripped of what is unnecessary, secondary, irrelevant. Its naked and lifeless landscape sends a message that is important for us: everything in this life passes; what is important is not what we have, but what we are before God. In the words of St. Francis of Assisi, "What we are before God, that we are and no more."
Let me ask: who are you before God? Under those layers you wear, behind the masks, you put on before others, who are you really? The Holy Gospel tells us that the Baptist proclaimed a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. This is the logical sequence presented to us today in the readings: first, sincere conversion; second, the gift of divine mercy and the forgiveness of our sins; third and finally, joy in God's salvation. These are the three necessary steps, which we must take in order, one after the other, because without forgiveness there is no joy, and without repentance, there can be no forgiveness.
Today we ask the Holy Spirit to guide us on this Advent journey. May he grant us the grace to convert from the heart, moved by love for this Jesus who comes to be born in the poverty of Bethlehem to teach us the way of humility. May this repentance for our sins then lead us to receive forgiveness in the sacrament of penance, where the Lord himself awaits to give us his infinite love that forgives all. As the psalm says: Let the Lord do great things for you, and you will be filled with joy.
I conclude recalling the words of the prophet Baruch that we heard today: "Put on the splendor of glory from God forever." St. Irenaeus wrote that man's glory consists in persevering in the service of God. Yes, God, our good Father, glorifies his servants. God comes this Christmas to give us glory and life in abundance. Let us allow all the light of the Holy Trinity to penetrate to the depths of our souls so that the darkness that blinds us may disappear and we may reach our ultimate goal: eternal communion with God, Mary and all the saints in the everlasting joys of heaven.
