2nd Sunday of Advent, Year C | Dec 5, 2021
Editor’s Note: Each week, we open the archives to share a previously unpublished homily from Fr. Brian for the upcoming Sunday. Whether you are preparing to preach or preparing your heart for Mass, we hope this offers a fresh perspective on the readings. – Jessica
Liturgical Context: [Advent 2C] Related Homilies: [2015] • [2018] Scripture: [Link to USCCB Readings]
Additional homilies from this day in the liturgical season: 2nd Sunday of Advent – 2015, 2018, 2024
One of things I will always remember from my time at DeSales University was how none of the paths were designed in a straight line.
You would leave your dorm and find yourself walking along all these endless twists and turns, watching the clock tick down to your looming 8 AM as you never seemed to get any closer to your destination.
Or you would look outside of the Student Union and see the main classroom building directly across from you, but need to somehow navigate five different sidewalk segments to actually get there.
And yet, at some point, some students long before me decided that enough was enough.
They simply marched through the grass. One student at a time.
And with each step, the grass was slowly trampled underfoot until a solid dirt path had emerged.
And I, years later, became the lucky beneficiary of these brave pioneers who dared to defy the landscape design that had plagued us perpetually late individuals for decades.
It’s funny that this image was where my mind went after listening to the readings for this weekend.
For that call to make straight paths in the wilderness.
That call that John the Baptist proclaimed.
That call will always demand that there be someone who needs to take the1st step on that new path.
To leave the road that has been long established and plot a new course, a straight line to a more just, a more peaceful, a more compassionate world.
It’s funny, I’ve always been uncomfortable when Jesus calls out the Jewish people for building monuments to prophets that their ancestors murdered.
Because Jesus is onto something about us as human beings.
Which is that most of us deeply resist being the ones who initially make straight the path.
And we often find ourselves wary and threatened by the prophets who do.
We may happily take the straight paths that have long since been paved.
When it costs so little to follow in the footsteps of the prophets of old.
But when the rubber hits the road, we don’t want to be the ones making straight the paths. We just want to walk on them once they’re ready.
We look back on the Civil Rights movement and see the pictures of brave prophets who endured beatings and firehoses, billy clubs and dogs. And so many of us would like to believe that we would have joined them, now that the era is in the past.
But when new voices argue that the path is still not straight. That justice is not color-blind. That what we teach our children is a white-washed version of the truth. That the American dream is still not realized for far too many of our brothers and sisters.
We get uncomfortable. We change the topic. We point to older straight paths and go aren’t those enough. We demonize the voices and stone the prophets in our midst.
We look at someone like Mother Theresa or Dorothy Day. And we are inspired by their generosity. Their dedication to serving our sisters and brothers in need. We can even have grandiose visions of having been one who joined them in their noble work
But when we encounter the hidden saints all around us. Cloaked under the guise of the poor who struggle to keep the electric on. Who cannot find work that pays a living wage. Who sleep under overpasses and in cars. Whose children go to bed hungry.
We look the other way. We insist that we have our own needs, our own problems to deal with. We question their work ethic, the choices they’ve made. We throw up our hands and say, what can we do?
We listen to the words of John the Baptist in the wilderness, of Jesus on the Sermon Mount. We applaud their challenge to the power structures of their day. We delight in their criticism of their religious leaders and their hypocrisy, the political leaders and their corruption. We memorize the beatitudes and their call to hunger and thirst for righteousness, to be peacemakers.
But when the prophets today point out our own hypocrisy and corruption. When they insist on tearing down our own idols of patriotism and consumerism, partisanship and individualism, profit margins and empty piety. When they question the wars we fight, the guns we cling to, the fear we live under.
We circle the wagons and resist their words. We attack these voices as having an agenda. We insist that the paths they are making straight are the wrong paths. And that they are simply false messengers bringing tidings of woe. For we are fine. Everything is fine.
My friends, I am convinced that this Advent time is a time of making straight the paths that exist all around us.
To see the world as it is and dare to take the steps to make it what it can be.
But that prophetic work will always come at a cost.
May we be willing to be the ones to take that step. To accept that cost. To blaze the trail. To make straight the paths.
May we be willing to be the prophets that the world awaits.
May God be Praised.
Video recordings of the Sunday evening Mass, where Fr. Brian regularly preaches, are available on Facebook at Delaware Koinonia. The archive of all of Fr. Brian’s homilies can be found here: Salesian Sermons
IMAGE ATTRIBUTION: Geertgen, tot Sint Jans, approximately 1460-1495. John the Baptist in the Wilderness, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=56033 [retrieved January 2, 2025]. Original source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Geertgen_tot_Sint_Jans_-_John_the_Baptist_in_the_Wilderness_-_WGA08515.jpg.
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