"Stir up our hearts, O Lord, to prepare the ways of Your
only-begotten Son, so that through His coming we may be able to serve You with
purified minds."
(Collect of the 2nd Sunday of Advent)
Low Mass at 5pm, St Patrick's Church, College Rd, Kilkenny.
In today’s liturgy the texts invite us to have complete
trust in God’s help. “Thy salvation cometh quickly: why art thou wasted with
sorrow…? I will save thee and deliver thee, fear not… As a mother comforteth
her sons, so will I comfort thee, saith the Lord.” God does not want anxiety or
discouragement. If He proposes to us an exalted way of sanctity, He does not
leave us alone but comes to help and sustain us. There is physical or moral
misery which Jesus cannot cure. He asks only that we go to Him with a heart dilated
by faith, and complete trust in His all-powerful, merciful love.
In today’s Gospel Jesus directs our attention to the strong,
austere figure of John the Baptist. If we want to prepare our hearts for the
coming, we, like St. John the Baptist, must detach ourselves from all the goods
of the earth. John had left everything and gone into the desert to lead a life
of penance. His example invites us to retire into the interior desert of our
heart, far from all creatures, to await the coming of Jesus in deep recollection,
silence and solitude, insofar as the duties of our state of life permit.
We must preserve in this waiting, in spite of aridity and
discouragement. If we wish to taste the sweet joys of Christmas, we should know
how to prepare ourselves with these dispositions which the Church invites us to
pray for today: “We beseech You, O Lord, to teach us… to despise the things of
earth and to love those of heaven.”
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Hark, a herald voice is calling;
“Christ
is nigh,” it seems to say;
“Cast away the dreams of darkness,
O ye children of
the day.”
(Hymnus, En clara vox)
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