The Second Sunday of Advent
But according to his promise we await new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells. Therefore, beloved, since you await these things, be eager to be found without spot or blemish before him, at peace.
Advent is for us a special time of grace and preparation for the advent of the Lord. Indeed, it is not simply a time of preparation for the Christmas celebration of the Lord’s first coming, but more importantly a preparation and heralding of his second coming, when “the glory of the LORD shall be revealed, and all people shall see it together.” [Isaiah 40:5]
This 2nd advent of the Lord, the coming of Christ in glory, is what the Church is always preparing for and always moving forward toward with great joy. We believe that in His second coming Christ will put an end to death and to evil of every kind after the judgment of the living and the dead. And we also rejoice because He will then establish the “new heavens and the new earth in which righteousness dwells,” as St. Peter teaches us in today’s second reading.
All of this is part of the burning hope of the Church, and it is the basis for her great longing for the return of her bridegroom. This time Jesus will come for us not in weakness but in the power and glory that already is His in heaven where he now sits at the right hand of the Father. It is this hope and yearning of the Church through the ages that provides the ultimate horizon which guides her every action in this world.
To be precise, then, the season of Advent is a very special moment when the church looks both backwards and forwards at the same time. More precisely, she looks backwards at the first coming of Christ in order to help us more deeply appreciate the greatness of what we look forward to at his second coming. Looking back at Christ’s his first coming into this world, we see that He came into this world in the humility and weakness of our humanity. And he chose this way of entering our world so that we might identify ourselves more closely with Him simply because He took on our lowliness for the purpose of our redemption, that is, precisely so that He could suffer and die for us. Christmas recalls for us that stunning act of Almighty God in which He lowered himself to come among us in this fallen world in order that He might raise us one day to share His divinity and the heavenly kingdom.
Looking forward, however, we see that the Second coming will not be in the manner of the first. In stark contrast to the humility, poverty and weakness that God assumed in the first coming of Christ will be the glory and power that will mark his second coming. Whe He at last returns to our world, He will come in His glory to judge the living and the dead, to establish the final kingdom of God by his power, and to utterly transform this whole of the universe beginning with our own resurrection.
The second coming of Christ, then, will also be the fulfillment of the prophecy of Isaiah that we heard in today’s first reading:
Comfort, give comfort to my people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and proclaim to her that her service is at an end, her guilt is expiated;
That prophecy pertains in different ways to both comings of Christ. By mentioning the guilt that is expiated, the passage points to His first coming, when Christ made expiation for our sins by His suffering and death. But by mentioning that Jerusalem – which is to be the Church, the New Jerusalem – is to see an end to her service, the passage is then pointing to the second glorious coming when Christ will put an end to “the service” of the Church and will then establish His kingdom in power.
Likewise, this prophecy again is pointing to the second coming when Isaiah says “Here is your God! Here comes with power the Lord GOD, who rules by his strong arm.” This cannot be referring to the first coming of Christ, since He did not come then with power but in weakness and so He did not rule by his strong arm. In the first advent of Christ, and to the end of time, He rules only by truth, gentleness and love, and never imposes his rule and kingdom by force.
But this will not be His way of ruling when he returns in glory, for then
Every valley shall be filled in, every mountain and hill shall be made low; the rugged land shall be made a plain, the rough country, a broad valley. Then the glory of the LORD shall be revealed, and all people shall see it together.
At the end of time, no one will be able to deny His truth when he returns in glory. Then everything shall be made “plain” by the destruction of every power that opposes the Kingdom of God, and he will truly rule by “his strong arm,” for at last by His divine power He will establish the kingdom and will level all opposition.
St. Peter then speaks of the way that his glorious second coming and rule will transform even the material universe, for “then the heavens will pass away with a mighty roar and the elements will be dissolved by fire.” Nonetheless, that does not mean that the material creation will be annihilated. Indeed the Church joyfully looks forward to that tremendous moment of His coming as the beginning of a new creation, no longer marred by man’s sin and the evil of Satan and his followers. For as 2nd Peter says, “according to his promise we await new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells.” So we look forward and yearn for this new creation in which evil no longer has any place. The damned will not be transformed and thus they will not be part of the new creation as such.
All of this is our sublime hope as Christians, even if the world does not believe any of this and thinks that we Christians are simply deluded. But it is the world in opposition to Christ that is truly deluded, often thinking that man can even create a paradise on earth by his own means. The unbelieving world asserts such madness even while it can see the disintegration of every human society through history. No matter how many towers of Babel the ideologues of this world try to build, those towers always come tumbling down.
That is why Advent also has a warning for us here and now. Because Christians will always live in just such a deluded world, we have to be especially prepared for this second coming. For, as St. Peter warns us today, quoting the Lord, “the day of the Lord will come like a thief” [in the night]. That is, the world will not be prepared precisely because of its deep seeded skepticism and unbelief. But hopefully, we who believe will never be caught unprepared. St. Peter puts it bluntly, “Since everything is to be dissolved in this way” he says, “what sort of persons ought you to be, conducting yourselves in holiness and devotion waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God.” In other words, if the very heavens are to be dissolved in fire, how urgently must we pray and watch to avoid the fire that never ends and is never quenched.
Then the Apostle goes on to warn us not to be fooled by what seems like an unintelligible delay in His fulfilling His promise, for ‘The Lord does not delay his promise, he is patient with you, not wishing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance.” This, if God has delayed bringing this world would end up to our very day, then we have to recognize that it is simply part of his mercy toward us, His mercy to give us the time for repentance. We dare not waste this opportunity.
Finally, in today’s Gospel we see again that “Prepare the way of the Lord, make straight his paths” was the message of John the Baptist at his first coming, and we learn that many from Jerusalem were going out to confess their sins and be baptized, but not all. Some delayed, and then Christ passed by, and so they did not enter the kingdom of heaven. That is why the Church on the second Sunday of Advent always recalls in her Gospel these words of John the Baptist, and addresses them anew to us who now await the second coming: “Prepare the way of the Lord, make straight his paths.” We must not delay, we must not be caught unprepared for that day is surely coming.
No, let us rather joyfully prepare the way for the Lord into our hearts, first in order to be properly prepared to celebrate the memory of his first coming at Christmas; but even more importantly to be ready to greet Him with hope when at last he comes in glory to judge the living and the dead and make all things new, beginning with ourselves.