A homily for the Second Sunday of Advent, December 10, 2023
Is 40:1-5, 9-11, 2 Pt 3:8-14, Mk 1:1-8
I’m spoiled, and on this particular subject, doubly so.
Having lived at the Jersey Shore essentially all my life, I’ve rarely sat in the kind of summer weekend traffic that transforms the Garden State Parkway into the Garden State Parking Lot. And our family weekend getaways in the summers of my youth were to the Kittatinny Mountains in Northwest Jersey (yes, both are real…), so we traveled opposite the Shore traffic both ways, 5 mph over the speed limit while they motored at about 6 mph. As in only 6 mph.
More than once, I’ve seen those creeping cars’ occupants closely enough to make out their faces. The frustrated driver, waving his arms or banging his hands on the steering wheel as he inches forward and then jams on the brakes. The angry shotgun passenger, facing the back seat to tell the impatient young’uns, “We’ll get there when we get there!” The dog, with its head out a side window and its tongue hanging so low it almost could drag on the hot asphalt.
I live here, and I love being close to the ocean, but to this day I wonder if that trip is worth the hypertension.
We impatient Americans of the 21st century may wonder the same thing about Advent.
We’ve had Christmas on our minds since before Halloween. Candy canes were on the store shelves alongside the Hershey’s fun-size mega-mix bags. Mid-afternoon on Thanksgiving, our tributes to the Trans-Siberian Orchestra, uh, Santa, uh, Our Newborn King switched on and the sensors on the International Space Station went haywire.
We’ve even vacuumed up more than our fair share of pine needles already (though the windows still need washing).
Except for those December 23-24 chances to get mauled at the mall, we’re done with our shopping, or at least we have planned out how and when to snag those final items.
We’re all ready to feast on Who pudding and rare Who roast beast.
So what else do we have to do in Advent that we already have not?
We need to ask Isaiah. To ask John the Baptizer.
“Prepare the way of the Lord,
make straight his paths.”
The paths that run straight through our hearts and minds and souls.
We need to take a deep breath or two, shut out the world — if only for five minutes — and chat with God.
Mayor Ed Koch used to greet everyone by asking, “How’m I doin’?” We should be asking God that same question in this season of preparation.
And we also should be asking God, “Am I doing enough? Enough of what you want me to do? What you need me to do?”
In those quiet times, if our relationship with the Almighty is strong and loving, God’s answers will come to us much more quickly than St. Peter preached.
With 15 days left before Christmas, and God-only-knows-how-many-more days in our lives, we can do for our sisters and brothers as the Father, Son and Holy Spirit command, out of love. We can use the unique gifts we’ve already received — intellect, physical skills, creative talents, the power of grace — and regift them, pay them forward.
And we’ll know the trip was worth it.
