Homily by Father Emmanuel Schwab

2rd Advent Sunday – Year B

1st reading: Isaiah 40, 1-5.9-11

Psalm: 84 (85), 9ab.10, 11-12, 13-14

2rd reading: 2 Peter 3,8-14

Gospel: Mark 1,1-8

Click here to download and print the text

I said it last week, the Advent season is a time of spiritual exercise to revive in us the spirit of vigilance, to revive in us the expectation of the Day of the Lord, the expectation that we recall each time. time we celebrate the Eucharist in the acclamation which follows the consecration, the anamnesis: “We await your coming in glory”. This expectation is of course experienced in a renewal of our prayer life, both in the attention we give to prayer and in the time we can devote to it. But this waiting must also have a hold on our lives and our actions, because it is our whole person that is waiting.

We await the coming of the Lord in glory, we await, to use the words of Saint Peter, “The new heaven and the new earth where righteousness will reside”. In this world that is so unjust, in this world that is so painful, so violent, we are witnesses that God wants justice and peace for us, that God works the world from within to transfigure it into his Kingdom. And this will definitely be accomplished in the coming in glory of Christ.

When we are waiting for friends for a meal at our house, our waiting is active, because if we remain lying or sitting in an armchair, quietly, waiting for them, when they arrive, nothing will be ready: the household will not have been done, the table will not be prepared, there will be nothing to eat and these friends will find our way of receiving them very strange. If we trace this to the expectation of the coming of the Lord in glory, we see clearly that we have to work in this expectation. I am not going to cite this or that passage that we can read in Saint Thérèse of the Child Jesus, because there are too many in a certain way... There are many moments in her life when she is waiting for something thing: where she awaits her first communion, where she awaits entry into Carmel, where she awaits taking the habit, where she awaits perpetual vows, etc. And this time of waiting is always for her a blissful time in which something is hollowed out in her, in which something is affirmed in her, because it is an active waiting. What she is waiting for changes her present. How does this expectation of the Day of the Lord influence the way we live? ? How do we truly wait for the Lord in us

preparing for his coming? “Prepare the way of the Lord.” This path of the Lord is our disposition to welcome him, our disposition to receive him.

We remember the first coming of the Lord in the flesh to Bethlehem, some 2000 years ago, to prepare ourselves for his coming in glory at the end of time. But between these two comings of the Lord, the coming in the flesh and the coming in glory, there is a third coming. The Lord never ceases to come to us in many ways, among others in the sacrament of the Eucharist where the Lord makes himself present in our midst, drawing us into the paschal mystery. But it also comes into our lives in many other ways... The time we experience, the passing of days, months, years, the passing of seconds, minutes and hours, is in fact the time of God. Saint Peter told us explicitly: “The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, while some say he is late. On the contrary, he has patience with you.” Why is he patient? “For he does not want to let some be lost, he wants all to achieve conversion”.

Time, the passage of seconds and minutes and hours, days, weeks and months and years, is the time of God's patience. Every morning, when I wake up, I am offered a new day of God's patience with a view to my conversion. The time given to me is not given to me to harden myself, but to convert to what God wants. And what God wants is for us to be saved. And what is it to be saved? It is to be holy. And what is it to be holy? It is loving as God loves.

It is therefore a question of hearing this call and receiving the time that passes as the time of God's benevolent patience into which we must enter. Entering into this patience is both taking seriously the fact that we can and we must convert our lives to the Word of God, learning to do what God asks. This is what Peter tells us: “Beloved, while waiting for this, do everything so that you may be found without spot or blemish, in peace.”

But it is also entering into God's patience with ourselves.

How impatient we often are with ourselves! How little we love each other, in a good way. We have a lot going on and, at the same time, we are very hard on ourselves about some of our faults. Just look at how we are capable of calling ourselves names when we have done something we regret. We very often lack patience with ourselves… And the risk, if we do not have patience with ourselves, is to abandon the spiritual battle, to say “I will never succeed…” . Patience with oneself consists, like Thérèse, in never becoming discouraged, but on the contrary, counting on the grace of God which will never fail us, resuming every day, every moment, the same work, the same fights so that , little by little, we managed, as the drop of water always falling in the same place ends up making a hole in the stone, that our efforts, as minimal as a drop of water falling, could gradually dig into the stone within us. of our faults and our sins, by the grace of God.

Yes, brothers and sisters, this Advent season invites us to renew our entry into the patient mercy… or the merciful patience of God.

“It is for you that he is patient because he does not want to let some be lost, but he wants everyone to achieve conversion.”

This is what Saint Peter invites us to do.

This is what Saint John the Baptist invites us to do.

This is what we must want.

Amen