Second Sunday of Advent, Year A | Dominica Secunda (II) Adventus, Anno A
4 December 2022 in the year of our Lord
Mt 3:1-12 John the Baptist appeared, preaching in the desert of Judea and saying, "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand!" It was of him that the prophet Isaiah had spoken when he said: A voice of one crying out in the desert, Prepare the way of the Lord, make straight his paths. John wore clothing made of camel's hair and had a leather belt around his waist. His food was locusts and wild honey. At that time Jerusalem, all Judea, and the whole region around the Jordan were going out to him and were being baptized by him in the Jordan River as they acknowledged their sins. When he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to his baptism, he said to them, "You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath? Produce good fruit as evidence of your repentance. And do not presume to say to yourselves, 'We have Abraham as our father.' For I tell you, God can raise up children to Abraham from these stones. Even now the ax lies at the root of the trees. Therefore every tree that does not bear good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire. I am baptizing you with water, for repentance, but the one who is coming after me is mightier than I. I am not worthy to carry his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fan is in his hand. He will clear his threshing floor and gather his wheat into his barn, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire." |
Κατά Ματθαίον Ευαγγέλιον 3:1-12 1 Ἐν δὲ ταῖς ἡμέραις ἐκείναις παραγίνεται Ἰωάννης ὁ βαπτιστὴς κηρύσσων ἐν τῇ ἐρήμῳ τῆς Ἰουδαίας 2 [καὶ] λέγων· μετανοεῖτε· ἤγγικεν γὰρ ἡ βασιλεία τῶν οὐρανῶν. 3 οὗτος γάρ ἐστιν ὁ ῥηθεὶς διὰ Ἠσαΐου τοῦ προφήτου λέγοντος· φωνὴ βοῶντος ἐν τῇ ἐρήμῳ· ἑτοιμάσατε τὴν ὁδὸν κυρίου, εὐθείας ποιεῖτε τὰς τρίβους αὐτοῦ. 4 αὐτὸς δὲ ὁ Ἰωάννης εἶχεν τὸ ἔνδυμα αὐτοῦ ἀπὸ τριχῶν καμήλου καὶ ζώνην δερματίνην περὶ τὴν ὀσφὺν αὐτοῦ, ἡ δὲ τροφὴ ἦν αὐτοῦ ἀκρίδες καὶ μέλι ἄγριον. 5 Τότε ἐξεπορεύετο πρὸς αὐτὸν Ἱεροσόλυμα καὶ πᾶσα ἡ Ἰουδαία καὶ πᾶσα ἡ περίχωρος τοῦ Ἰορδάνου, 6 καὶ ἐβαπτίζοντο ἐν τῷ Ἰορδάνῃ ποταμῷ ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ ἐξομολογούμενοι τὰς ἁμαρτίας αὐτῶν. 7 Ἰδὼν δὲ πολλοὺς τῶν Φαρισαίων καὶ Σαδδουκαίων ἐρχομένους ἐπὶ τὸ βάπτισμα αὐτοῦ εἶπεν αὐτοῖς· γεννήματα ἐχιδνῶν, τίς ὑπέδειξεν ὑμῖν φυγεῖν ἀπὸ τῆς μελλούσης ὀργῆς; 8 ποιήσατε οὖν καρπὸν ἄξιον τῆς μετανοίας 9 καὶ μὴ δόξητε λέγειν ἐν ἑαυτοῖς· πατέρα ἔχομεν τὸν Ἀβραάμ. λέγω γὰρ ὑμῖν ὅτι δύναται ὁ θεὸς ἐκ τῶν λίθων τούτων ἐγεῖραι τέκνα τῷ Ἀβραάμ. 10 ἤδη δὲ ἡ ἀξίνη πρὸς τὴν ῥίζαν τῶν δένδρων κεῖται· πᾶν οὖν δένδρον μὴ ποιοῦν καρπὸν καλὸν ἐκκόπτεται καὶ εἰς πῦρ βάλλεται. 11 Ἐγὼ μὲν ὑμᾶς βαπτίζω ἐν ὕδατι εἰς μετάνοιαν, ὁ δὲ ὀπίσω μου ἐρχόμενος ἰσχυρότερός μού ἐστιν, οὗ οὐκ εἰμὶ ἱκανὸς τὰ ὑποδήματα βαστάσαι· αὐτὸς ὑμᾶς βαπτίσει ἐν πνεύματι ἁγίῳ καὶ πυρί· 12 οὗ τὸ πτύον ἐν τῇ χειρὶ αὐτοῦ καὶ διακαθαριεῖ τὴν ἅλωνα αὐτοῦ καὶ συνάξει τὸν σῖτον αὐτοῦ εἰς τὴν ἀποθήκην, τὸ δὲ ἄχυρον κατακαύσει πυρὶ ἀσβέστῳ. |
Fr John Lankeit's homily :
When Adam and Eve were first created—and to be clear, Adam and Eve were real people, not merely fictional characters in an ancient Jewish myth—when Adam & Eve were first created, they enjoyed perfect balance between their intellect and will on the one hand, and their passions on the other.
We don’t typically speak of the “passions” in everyday conversation, so it’s helpful here to be reminded what the passions are:
[T]he passions are the instinctive, emotional, primitive drives in a human being (including, for example, lust, anger, aggression and jealousy) which a human being must restrain, channel, develop and sublimate in order to be possessed of wisdom. (source)
The intellect and will are the faculties or powers in the human being which collaborate to restrain, channel, develop and sublimate the passions so as to control them, rather than to be controlled by them.
Turning back, now, to Adam and Eve, let’s focus on one particular passion: lust.
Adam and Eve had no experience of lust before they disobeyed God. They could look at each other—with no clothes on—and feel no disordered desire whatsoever.
This is what is meant in the Book of Genesis where it is written:
...the man and his wife were both naked, and were not ashamed. (Gen 2:25)
To have no experience of lust is virtually unimaginable for us in our hyper-pornographic culture which relentlessly foments that particular vice in countless ways:
...from obscene commercials on prime-time TV that 30 years ago would have landed the producers in jail...
...to the portable porn stores that we all carry in our pockets or purses—which we call smartphones...
...to ideologically charged sex education programs in public schools which deliberately corrupt the intellect and weaken the will of impressionable children as early as preschool.
So, now, with a better sense of the passions—and more specifically, of lust—let’s turn to our 1st Reading today, particularly to the section describing predators and prey hanging out together like best friends.
This image is so utterly alien to our experience of nature that it’s hard to take it seriously. In that Reading, the Prophet Isaiah describes what nature—redeemed by the Messiah—will look like:
...the wolf shall be a guest of the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the young goat; the calf and the young lion shall browse together, with a little child to guide them. The cow and the bear shall graze, together their young shall lie down; the lion shall eat hay like the ox. The baby shall play by the viper’s den, and the child lay his hand on the adder’s lair. (Isa 11:6-8)
Not even the most naïve, bleeding-heart animal rights advocate would be foolish enough to put a wolf and a lamb together and expect any result other than...lamb dinner...for the wolf.
Such a scene is utterly unfathomable—and for good reason! Adam and Eve’s rebellion against God ushered in a corruption so pervasive that it is affected all aspects of nature, not just human nature.
What God made perfect—from the beginning—the Devil corrupted by convincing our First Parents to mistrust...and then to rebel against...their Father who created them in perfect harmony with him...with each other...and with the natural world.
The Book of Wisdom is clear on this:
...through the devil’s envy death entered the world, and those who belong to his party experience it. (Wis 2:24)
Death is a given for us because this world has been under the dominion of Satan ever since the Fall of Adam and Eve. That’s why Satan is referred to in Scripture as the ruler of this world (cf. Jn 12:31; 14:30; 16:11).
But death wasn’t included in God’s plan of creation in the beginning. It invaded the world through the doorway of sin.
That’s why the Son of God, the Second Person of the Most Holy Trinity—Jesus Christ—came to restore the original balance with which his Father had imbued the world at its creation.
The technical term for this perfect original balance is “original justice”.
Original justice can be understood as...the state of Adam and Eve before they sinned. It was the simultaneous possession of sanctifying grace—which is the principle that makes supernatural life possible—and the preternatural gifts—[one of which was the balance between the intellect and will, and the passions] ...
Since Adam, human beings are said to be deprived of original justice. Jesus Christ...by his passion and death...regained what Adam had lost. Sanctifying grace is restored...but the preternatural gifts are returned only as capacities (such as the ability to overcome [the imbalance between our passions and our will])...
This is all a rather elaborate, academic way of saying that the suffering, death and resurrection of Jesus restored the possibility of eternal life. We do not escape the justice of God—thus we still all experience physical death as a consequence of sin. But we do, once again, have the possibility of eternal life—after physical death—thanks to the merciful love of the Father...and the self-sacrifice of Jesus.
And though humanity also lost the continuous natural state of mastery over the passions, we can—with God’s help—nevertheless grow in virtue toward that self-mastery in this life, both as a foretaste of heaven...and as an incentive to persevere toward the complete perfection that awaits us there.
Great spiritual masters in the Catholic tradition have likened the passions to wild beasts. They would say that the spiritual life is largely about taming these wild animals—the passions—that rage within us. Some Saints have portrayed fasting, for example, as starving the beast called lust—since fasting tends to diminish the sexual urge.
The Scriptures teach us that the full restoration of creation is God’s work, not something we do. In fact, the corruption of nature—both human nature and the larger natural world—is the predictable result of human beings taking things into their own hands. Left to our own devices—which inevitably lead us to excluding God from his rightful place—the corruption of God’s gifts is inevitable.
One consequence of the humanity’s corrupt state is believing the lie that we can recreate paradise without God. Nowhere is this more evident than purely secularist efforts to protect the environment.
As long as human beings, corrupted by sin, leave God out of the equation, then the restoration of the natural world is not only impossible. We actually make things worse.
Pope Benedict XVI recognized the futility of agendas to save the planet that disregard the image of God in the human person when he wrote:
The way humanity treats the environment influences the way it treats itself, and vice versa... In order to protect nature, it is not enough to intervene with economic incentives or deterrents; not even...education is sufficient. These are important steps, but the decisive issue is the overall moral tenor of society.
If there is a lack of respect for the right to life and to a natural death, if human conception, gestation and birth are made artificial, if human embryos are sacrificed to research, the conscience of society ends up losing the concept of human ecology and, along with it, that of environmental ecology.
It is contradictory to insist that future generations respect the natural environment when our educational systems and laws do not help them to respect themselves. The book of nature is one and indivisible: it takes in not only the environment but also life, sexuality, marriage, the family, social relations...
Our duties towards the environment are linked to our duties towards the human person, considered in himself and in relation to others. It would be wrong to uphold one set of duties while trampling on the other. Herein lies a grave contradiction in our mentality and practice today: one which demeans the person, disrupts the environment and damages society. (CiV, 51)
...through the devil’s envy death entered the world... (Wis 2:24)
Through human pride, this death spreads like a disease that defiles all aspects of God’s creation—from humans, to animals, to oceans, to deserts, to rainforests...
The balance that will be restored at the Second Coming of Christ will be so revolutionary that it is difficult to imagine.
In today’s Gospel... John the Baptist appeared, preaching in the desert...[and] saying, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand!” (Mt 3:1-2)
The sooner we repent of playing God—with our own lives and with the world around us—and the more we strive to grow in virtue—cooperating with God’s grace, particularly in the Sacraments of the Eucharist and Penance (Confession)—the more we will begin to experience this revolutionary restoration...here and now.
Just as the corruption of the human person through sin has spread its disease across the broader natural world, in like fashion, the restoration of the human person through the redeeming work of Jesus Christ is the first and most critical step in spreading that restorative power outward to the rest of the natural world.
We can drive electric cars, or bike to work, or recycle until the cows come home in order to convince ourselves that we are saving the world.
But until we first allow the Lord Jesus Christ to unleash a full-scale environmental cleanup of our souls—and stop treating human beings like disposable waste—then all our planet-saving advocacy will be nothing more than empty virtue signaling.
Our Psalm today proclaims that:
Justice shall flower in his days, and profound peace, till the moon be no more. (Ps 72:7)
The justice spoken of here is not merely environmental justice, or social justice, but the divine justice of God, that will be ushered in at the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. Our task is repent...and to submit ourselves once again to the Lord’s mercy today—if we really wish to have him remove the toxic waste of sin from our souls.
The same God who gave us the beautiful universe...the same God who restored us to friendship with him when we had betrayed his love through sin...is the same God whose coming as a baby we commemorate at Christmas...and whose coming in glory at the end of time we prepare for by making the environment of our souls a welcome...worthy place for him to live.
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