Prepare our hearts to receive God

Advent is the time for preparing for the feast of the birth of Jesus. The readings for Mass are chosen to help us get ready and deepen our wonder at this great mystery. This week, the readings help us understand how and why God intervenes in history. They also help us to prepare our hearts to receive God’s action with love and hope. That way, we can approach this Christmas with as much openness and true affection for Jesus as possible.

The readings this second Sunday of Advent focus on salvation and restoration or making whole. In the Gospel (Luke 3:1-6), the figure of John the Baptist, out in the wilderness, captures the starkness of human life and its difficulties. John borrows words from the prophet Isaiah that speak of God’s approach and the salvation He brings. Jesus is not mentioned explicitly by John, but the name “Jesus” means “God saves.” Therefore, when John preaches that all flesh will see God’s salvation, there is a terrific realism to those words in that God Himself will be visible, touchable and audible in the man Jesus. John’s role is to prepare the people, both then and now, to receive God’s salvation in Jesus.

The First Reading from the prophet Baruch (Bar 5:1-9) has a different historical setting but a complementary message. Bar­uch was writing in order to console and encourage the Judean exiles in the sixth century BC. Because of their multiple infidelities and violations of the covenant, they had been defeated by the Babylonians and forced to leave their land. Bar­uch, like many other prophets, consoled the people by assuring them of their eventual return, promised by God. The exile and return, which were real historical events, take on a universal significance in the mind of the prophet. They are an image of everyone’s way of being away from God and then being brought back to Him through His grace. Baruch uses imagery that emphasizes the beauty of the land and the contentment and delight of those who dwell there. It is heavenly! This “being brought back” can only be achieved by God, however, so we, like the exiles of old, must pray and wait for His grace. It was on His terms that the people were exiled, so it must be His initiative to restore them. He will do the same for us through His Son Jesus, as He promised. Just like God brought the exiles home and restored their relationship with Him, just so He restores us, again and again, when we have been exiled by sin.

What we see in Jesus, however, is that He brings us to Himself by first of all coming near to us. That is the tremendous thing that God is about to do, what John is announcing in the wilderness. God does not wait for us to figure things out and return to Him on our own. Instead, He comes to us, as one of us, to walk with us in our restoration.

For this reason, we can thank God just like Paul does in Sunday’s Second Reading (Phil 1:4-6, 8-11). We thank God for His salvation, for Jesus, and the fact that His salvation has reached us. We also thank Him for all the different ways that He restores us or makes us whole — not only us, in fact, but all those we love and cherish. God is at work in our lives and for this reason we can hope. God has done great things again and again and He will continue to save, if we are open to Him.