CẢM NGHIỆM SỐNG LC- BRENDAN -REFLECTION 2ND ADVENT SUNDAY -A
- Details
- Category: 2. Cảm Nghiệm Sống Lời Chúa
-
Mo NguyenDec 7 at 1:26 PM
SECOND SUNDAY OF ADVENT – YEAR A – 08 DECEMBER 2019
REFLECTIONS ON THE GOSPEL (Matthew 3: 1-12)
CONVERSION OF HEART
Today’s Gospel presents us with the appearance and preaching of John the Baptist. John’s message, ‘Prepare a way for the Lord’, virtually sums up the theme of the Advent season. Nonetheless, it is not all that easy simply to take his words and proclaim them as ‘Good News’. Jesus hardly filled the role of preacher of end-time doom that John sketches out for him here.
What is essential and something that truly paves the way for the Good News that Jesus will bring is John’s summons to conversion of heart. The physical ‘way’ (road) that Isaiah wanted prepared for Israel in the wilderness is now one that must be prepared in the wilderness of the human heart. Then the Good News will truly be able to enter in when finally it is proclaimed.
The greatest obstacle to that entrance is complacency, a complacency resting upon privileged status (as in the claim, ‘We have Abraham for our father’) and a sense that one is morally superior to everyone else and so can rest secure.
Unlike John, Jesus will ‘baptise with the Holy Spirit and with fire’. That is, he will seek to catch up human lives into the fire that is God’s love, a sense of which it is the task of the Spirit to communicate. But a ‘baptism’ of this kind will only take effect in truly repentant and converted hearts. John’s challenging message prepares human hearts for the entrance of this good news about God’s love. This is the true ‘knowledge of the Lord’ that Jesus will fully impart.
Brendan Byrne, SJ
Prepare the Way of the Lord:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6VKgUewfBvU
Dọn đường đón Chúa - Lm Thái Nguyên