2nd Sunday of Advent, Year B
First Reading: Is 40:1-5, 9-11
Second Reading: 2 Pet 3:8-15
Gospel Reading: Mk 1:1-8

“Advent,” from the Latin adventus, means “a coming, approach, or arrival.” God came 2,000 years ago in the person of Jesus Christ. He is coming again this Christmas. He will come to each of us at our death. He will come again at the end of the world.

Isaiah prophesied it: “Here is your God!” John the Baptist announced it: He is “coming after me.” Peter warns about it: when he comes again, “the heavens” will be “dissolved.”

God is coming. The world we see is not the whole story. At our death or at the end of time, this world will vanish and we will see the underlying, everlasting spiritual realities.

God became man. Jesus founded his Church and promised to stay with it until he returns. These facts should determine “the sort of persons” we are, Peter says.

Our religion should not be simply added on to what we see as our “real” lives, ignored when what we call “more important” matters arise. It should be the very basis of our lives.

It means making decisions that conflict with worldly wisdom – even, apparently, with our happiness. A woman about to move in with a man she is not married to told me, “I have to do what I’m comfortable with.” No; she has to do what is right, for what makes her comfortable now might leave her supremely uncomfortable for all eternity.

It should not surprise us. As Christ warned, we have to prefer him to everyone and everything else. Following him is like carrying a cross.

However, it leads to perfect, unending happiness. As Isaiah says, “his reward is with him and his recompense before him.” He knows, far better than we do, what will make us happy, for he made us. Accordingly, he leads us like a shepherd, Isaiah says: not necessarily the way we want, but the way he knows is best for us.

Death, judgment, hell, and heaven are called “the four last things to be ever remembered.” In today’s secular world, they come to our minds seldom, if ever. When they do, we push them aside. They disturb us; they undermine our security; they threaten to take away the familiar things and destroy the very basis of our happiness.

The truth is quite different. We have no security here on earth: we will die, and the world will come to an end. If death takes away everything familiar, it is because we have not taken pains to familiarize ourselves with eternal things. If death destroys our happiness, it is because we have pretended to be satisfied by this world.

In truth, we are not satisfied; we yearn for something more. We cannot find it on earth even by winning the lottery, changing our spouse, getting a promotion, etc. We must “wait for new heavens and a new earth, where righteousness is at home.”

God has made us for himself, and our hearts are restless until they rest in him, St. Augustine said. For a few centuries, Satan has tried to calm this restlessness with material goods, but he has failed.

Accordingly, people are becoming interested in “man’s spiritual dimension and its integration with the whole of life, the search for life’s meaning, the link between human beings and the rest of creation, the desire for personal and social transformation, and the rejection of a rationalistic and materialistic view of humanity,” says the Vatican’s “Christian reflection” on the New Age movement.

However, in their search for truth, people are turning not to the Catholic Church, but to “ancient gnostic ideas under the guise of the New Age,” St. John Paul warned. “We cannot delude ourselves that this will lead toward a renewal of religion.”

God is coming. During the rest of Advent, let us ask him to “open our hearts in welcome” and remove whatever hinders us “from receiving Christ with joy.”