Second Sunday of Advent, Year C, 8 December, 2024: Baruch 5:1-9; Philippians 1:4-6, 8-11; Luke 1:1-6
Every Second Sunday of Advent we recall John the Baptist—and isn’t that appropriate? During Advent don’t we look forward to the Second Coming of the Lord as we look back to his First Coming? Being in neither one nor the other, don’t we live in an “in between” time? And isn’t John the Baptist a man somewhere between the Old and the New Covenant?
Isn’t my daily life always between its promise and its final realization?
John the Baptist preached, gathered people to his message—including Jesus—and baptized them into repentance to further a Kingdom yet to come, a Kingdom he would never see. He would have to leave his vision to others—not unlike Jesus.
Isn’t that also our lot? We work hard to fulfill a God-given call, only to find it taken from our hands, its future as ambiguous as the conditions that called us to that task. All those factors out of my control may bring that task to a halt.
And couldn’t that be the ultimate occasion for trust in God?
What I have done may even disappear—or has it just withered and gone to seed, to grow again, without me, in some new form? What I have done can never be undone, even when I do not know how to measure its impact.
And in the Risen Lord, won’t I still enjoy the harvest gathered after my lifetime?