8 December 2024 - 2nd Sunday of Advent "C”
Ba 5, 1-9; Phil 1, 4...11; Lk 3, 1-6
Homily
The person of John the Baptist is at the heart of the liturgy of the second and third Sundays of Advent. In next Sunday's Gospel we hear his message, his call to conversion. Today's Gospel is about his mission as a prophet. We are not talking about his own words, but about the Word of God that was addressed to him, or rather, to translate the text more literally, the Word of God that ‘came down upon him’. Moreover, in these first chapters of Luke's Gospel, each section begins with an intervention by this Word of God. From the very opening of that Gospel, the Word of God is addressed to Zechariah in the Temple, and then to Mary, in whom it becomes flesh. Here, at the beginning of chapter three, it descends upon John the Baptist.
The interventions of the Word of God are always like a sword that separates, that establishes a break in time and space. The old man Simeon had announced to Mary that the sword that would pierce her heart would also separate people by revealing what was in each person's heart. In the passage we have just read, Luke takes pleasure in specifying the precise historical context in which this Word takes place.
The Jews were under Roman rule, at the time. Tiberius Caesar was the Roman Emperor and Pontius Pilate was his governor in Judea. Galilee was under the puppet king Herod and his brother Philip. The religious leaders Annas and Caiaphas were totally compromised with these foreign powers. The Word of God was not heard in the political and religious context of Jerusalem, but was heard in the desert.
The rupture is now complete. It is there, in the desert, that Jesus will come to be baptized by John; it is there that the Spirit will descend on Him and that the voice of the Father will be heard: ‘ This is my beloved son ’. And it is there, in that desert, that He will begin His own mission.
To describe that mission, Luke quotes Isaiah's prophecy: ‘ Every ravine will be filled in, every mountain and hill will be made low; crooked ways will become straight, crooked roads will be made smooth; and every man will see the salvation of God ’. We can see here the announcement of a world where the gaps between men, between social and religious classes and between peoples will be bridged - a world where the equality of all before God will be respected. A world quite different from that of Tiberius, Pilate, Herod, Philip, Lysanias, Annas and Caiaphas. This last world, based on inequality, conquest and oppression, is doomed to disappear.
In the new world, the only distinction maintained is that of service. The gaps are not bridged by the violent revolution of the oppressed, but by the voluntary lowering of the privileged to serve all, just as Christ himself became the servant of all, inviting them to sit down at table so that He could serve them.
It is the same new humanity that the prophet Baruch proclaims in the text we had as our first reading, and which proclaims this renewed equality between men and peoples as a source of joy. ' God will lead Israel in joy, in the light of His glory, giving them His mercy and His justice as their escort ’.
This joy, which Baruch proclaims for Jerusalem and the Hebrew people, the Gospel proclaims for all humanity, recreated by this new irruption of the Word of God into our desert.
Armand Veilleux