Second Sunday of Advent, Year A
First Reading: Is 11:1–10
Second Reading: Rom 15:4–9
Gospel Reading: Mt 3:1–12

“A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots,” the prophet Isaiah foretold.
He also foretold John the Baptist, whose voice was of “one crying out in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord; make his paths straight.’”

Isaiah was preparing the Jews for the coming of the Messiah, a descendant of King David, Israel’s second king, whose father had been Jesse.

By quoting Isaiah’s prophecies, the Church is preparing us for the coming of Jesus, the Messiah, whose birth we celebrate at Christmas.

In her Fourth Eucharistic Prayer, the Church says, addressing God the Father, “And when through disobedience [man] had lost Your friendship, You did not abandon him to the domain of death. For You came in mercy to the aid of all, so that those who seek might find You. Time and again You offered them covenants and through the prophets taught them to look forward to salvation.”

In the course I teach, The Catholic Faith in Plain English, people sometimes ask why, after Adam and Eve’s fall, God waited so long before he sent his Son as the Messiah, our Saviour.
I think that without this preparation, humans would not have been able to accept Jesus, a man like us, as God the Son made man for us. Indeed, the Gospels show that many of the Jews, including (at first) the apostles, found it difficult to accept. They needed time to get used to the idea.

Despite their many “backslidings” over the centuries, the Jews never forgot that they were God’s chosen people — “a people sacred to the Lord, your God,” as Moses had said, chosen “from all the nations on the face of the earth to be a people peculiarly His own.”

Accordingly, Jewish children spent five years learning the Old Testament Scriptures in detail. For example, they all knew that the Messiah would be a descendant of King David. That is why those who recognized Jesus as the Messiah addressed him as “Son of David.” Repeatedly, when Jesus quoted from or alluded to the Scriptures, his hearers must have recognized his words, as John the evangelist shows in this Sunday’s Gospel Reading.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church cites Isaiah’s prophecy in describing the Sacrament of Confirmation, in which the Holy Spirit gives us “the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and of fear of the Lord.”

Fear of the Lord is respect for God’s majesty and a sense of his greatness: filial, appropriate to a son or daughter, not servile, appropriate to a slave. In servile fear we dread punishment, but in filial fear we dread doing anything contrary to God’s will.

It is not pure terror, alarm, or fright, but experience and knowledge of God as utterly holy, totally other, incomprehensible, absolute, almighty, all-knowing, and absolutely majestic — who nevertheless became man for our salvation.

God has taken on human nature. That is what we celebrate at Christmas. That is what the Church stresses in her Advent readings. That is what she gives us this season to prepare for.

“You so loved the world, Father most holy, that in the fullness of time You sent Your only begotten Son to be our Saviour. Made incarnate by the Holy Spirit and born of the virgin Mary, He shared our human nature in all things but sin. To the poor He proclaimed the good news of salvation, to prisoners, freedom, and to the sorrowful of heart, joy.”

“And that we might live no longer for ourselves but for Him Who died and rose again for us, He sent the Holy Spirit from You, Father, as the first fruits for those who believe, so that, bringing to perfection His work in the world, He might sanctify creation to the full.”

Meditate on it.

Father Hawkswell is again teaching The Catholic Faith in Plain English, with new insights. The whole course is available in written form and, one session per week, in YouTube form at beholdvancouver.org/catholic-faith-course. Father is also teaching the course in person: on Sundays at 2 p.m. in the John Paul II Pastoral Centre, 4885 St John Paul II Way, Vancouver (33rd and Willow); and on Mondays at 10 a.m. in St. Anthony’s Church hall, 2347 Inglewood Avenue, West Vancouver. The title of the next session is Supernatural Life.

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