HOMILY FOR THE 2nd SUNDAY OF ADVENT YEAR B
7 DECEMBER 2014 ST BENET’S HALL
The walls of medieval churches were richly painted to provide a visual people’s Bible in an age in which the readings were proclaimed in Latin and literacy was low. Usually these paintings included a last judgement, in which Christ came on the clouds with two figures on his right and left. Which two figures do you think? Mary the mother of Jesus seems a likely candidate and that would be right. One might suspect that the other would be St Peter, holding the keys of the kingdom of heaven or maybe St John the Evangelist, who stood with Mary at the foot of the cross – so it is above our altar in St Benet’s and on many a rood screen.
But in fact in paintings of the Advent, of the last judgement, the other figure was St John the Baptist. Indeed we know that this iconography even had some influence in paintings of the crucifixion – so Grunewald’s Isenheim altar piece, with Our Lady and the apostle on one side of the cross and John the Baptist on the other, an elongated finger pointing to the figure on the Cross, the Lamb of God; a lamb also stands at the foot of the Cross, next to the Baptist, bleeding into a chalice.
The reason why it is Mary and St John the Baptist in paintings of the Last Judgement, is that it is these two figures who dominate the gospels of the Advent season and the Advent season commemorates the coming of Christ, at Christmas but also in the last judgement at the end of time. The Church’s year always begins with the end point. This Sunday and next centre upon St John.
We read today from the beginning of the gospel of Mark, the beginning of the year of Mark, year B of the Sunday cycle. St John the Baptist, as today’s gospel reminded us, was a wild and hairy manwith a strange and unappetizing diet unless one has a particular partiality for locust, a man of the wilderness, a man in the Nazirite tradition of Jewish holy men, consecrated utterly to the Lord their God, courageous truth tellers. Given the exemplary importance for religious life of John the Baptist, it is appropriate this Sunday in particular and here in St Benet’s to note that the Catholic Church is observing this year as one of special prayer for and attention to the gift of religious life in the Church.
Still let us now admit in all due humility that being an exemplar for religious life is but a part, the minor part, of St John’s role. We celebrate him at Mass today as the Advent forerunner of the Lord and the Church applies to him the wonderful words of the first reading from the prophet Isaiah: ‘Prepare in the wilderness a way for the Lord. Make a straight highway for our God across the desert .. then the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all mankind shall see it’. He brings the message that the time of service is ended and that there is to be an atonement for sin. Isaiah celebrates the Lord as a mighty man of war: ‘Here is the Lord coming with power, his arm subduing all things to him’. But then in the moment of his coming, of his arrival, his appearance changes and he becomes a shepherd ‘feeding his flock, gathering lambs in his arms, holding them against his breast and leading to their rest the mother ewes.’ The shepherd who is then also the Lamb of God, who will baptise in the Holy Spirit and feed his flock with his own blood. A warrior becomes a shepherd, becomes a lamb.
So we ask St John the Baptist to prepare in the wilderness, as it may seem, of our lives, through their strange by-ways and tangled paths, the straight highway for our God to come to us, the loving shepherd who can care for us, baptise us with his Holy Spirit and above all and most wonderfully feed us with himself.
The second reading from the second letter of St Peter has a dramatic depiction of the last days: these will come like a thief in the night, with a roar the sky will vanish, the elements will catch fire and fall apart, the earth will burn up, the sky will dissolve in flames and the elements will melt in the heat, giving way to a new heaven and new earth. It seems the very essence of an Advent. But we are not to be concerned with the timings, indeed the words ‘with the Lord a day can mean a thousand years and a thousand years is like a day’ place the event it may seem outside our comprehension of time and place. And in the waiting there are to be homely and everyday virtues: ‘you should be living holy and saintly lives … do your best to live lives without spot or stain so that he will find you at peace.’ The mighty man of war, who will buckle the universe, destroying and recreating, is the shepherd, leading the ewes to rest, the lamb who feeds us with himself and who gives us peace ‘dona nobis pacem’.
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