Homily
for December 10, 2006
Liturgical Year C - Cycle I
2nd Sunday of Advent
By Fr. John Carney Topic:
What Really Matters
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Reading
I Bar 5:1-9 Jerusalem, take off your robe of
mourning and misery; put on the
splendor of glory from God forever: wrapped in the cloak of justice
from God, bear
on your head the mitre that displays the glory of the eternal name.
For God will show all the earth your
splendor: you will be named by God forever the peace of justice, the
glory of
God's worship.
Up,
Jerusalem!
stand upon the heights; look to the east and
see your children gathered from the east and the west at the word of
the Holy
One, rejoicing that they are remembered by God.Led away on foot by their enemies they left you: but God will
bring them
back to you borne aloft in glory as on royal thrones.For God has commanded that every lofty
mountain be made low, and that the age-old depths and gorges be filled
to level
ground, that Israel
may advance secure in the glory of God.The forests and every fragrant kind of tree have overshadowed Israel
at God(s command; for God is leading Israel
in joy by the light of his glory, with his
mercy and justice for company. Reading
II Phil
1:4-6, 8-11 Brothers
and sisters: I
pray always with joy in my every prayer for all of you, because of your
partnership for the gospel from the first day until now.I am confident of this, that the one who
began a good work in you will continue to complete it until the day of
Christ
Jesus.God is my witness, how I long for
all of you with the affection of Christ Jesus.And this is my prayer: that your love may increase ever more and
more in
knowledge and every kind of perception, to discern what is of value, so
that
you may be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the
fruit of
righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ for the glory and praise
of God.
Gospel
Lk 3:1-6 In
the fifteenth year of
the reign of Tiberius Caesar, when Pontius Pilate was governor of
Judea, and
Herod was tetrarch of Galilee, and his brother Philip tetrarch of the
region of
Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias was tetrarch of Abilene, during
the high
priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John the son
of
Zechariah in the desert.John went
throughout the whole region of the Jordan,proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins,as it is written in the book of the words of
the prophet Isaiah: A voice of one crying out in the desert: “Prepare
the way
of the Lord, make straight his paths.Every
valley shall be filled and every mountain and hill shall be made low.The winding roads shall be made straight, and
the rough ways made smooth, and all flesh shall see the salvation of
God.”
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Christmas
is in two weeks and
yet in this second Sunday of Advent, the liturgy, the reading and the
prayers
do not point us towards Christmas.They
point us towards Christ’s coming at the end of time.The season of Advent is a penitential season
to some degree and from the first Sunday of Advent until December 17,
we look
forward to Christ coming at the end of time; in other words, our own
death.Then from December 18 until
Christmas day, we focus on that earlier coming of Christ at Christmas.The focus then is on the end time.As I looked through the readings, I wanted to
grab one sentence that could summarize the message that the Church
wishes us to
hear today and I took this sentence from Paul’s letter.“This is my prayer: that your love may
increase ever more and more to discern what is of value so that you may
be pure
and blameless on the day of Christ Jesus.”He prayed that we may discern what is of value.Other translations say that we may learn to
value those things that really matter.What
are those things that really matter?Well, I’ll give my answer and I think you’ll share it. Number one
is my immortal
soul, my relationship with God, and my relationship with you, with my
neighbor.That first priority we need to
get that right.That is what John tells
us, “to make everything straight, to get yourself right”.Just a word of advice to many of us; quit
trying to fix the whole world and go home and start working on yourself
and ask
yourself the question, “Where do I stand now, at this moment before
God?”It is good to make a spiritual
assessment of
ourselves. A couple
of weeks ago I had
my annual physical with Dr. Paul Daley, a wonderful physician.There are so many great doctors in our
town.I was impressed at the whole
procedure.You know, you have to have
your blood work several days ahead.You
go in there and Daley knows more about me than I know about me.He has this contraption, looks like a
clipboard but it’s a touch-pad, an electronic gizmo of some sort.In this thing, he has everything; he has all
my medicines, all my history.So he
says, “Your cholesterol, what was it last year, the year before…?”, and
I
couldn’t believe it.He just had all
this stuff.I said, “You know, this is
good.”We spend a lot of money and a lot
of time worrying about our health and the best way to do that, of
course, is
preventative maintenance which I’m not doing much of but… What we
need to do is to take
our souls just as seriously as or even more seriously than our bodies.It is not that our soul is better than our
body.We’ll be together body and soul
for all eternity.How exactly God is
going to put that together, we haven’t figured out yet but He will do
it. I’m reading a book
now by
Anthony DeStefano, A Travel Guide to Heaven.I have never even thought about some of the
things that DeStefano’s saying.He says
that heaven is a physical place because we’re there with our body and
it will
be these bodies but somehow they’re all going to be perfect and
there’ll be
colors and sounds, tastes and music, everything.It
is going to be fabulous.I really
recommend this book to you, A
Travel Guide to Heaven. We take a
lot of good care of
our bodies here and not enough good care of our souls.We need to examine our conscience every
night.It should be part of our
life.Before you go to sleep, look back
on the day.We can all remember just
twenty-four hours and what did you do right, what did you do wrong.I try to do that.In
fact, it is part of the Liturgy of the Hours,
a brief examination of conscience.Every
once in a while I look back and I had a good day, a perfect day.That’s usually when you people kept me too
busy to get into trouble of any kind. Now
examine yourself but
don’t be petty, or scrupulous. Don’t
make more laws than God gives us.Remember who you are.You’re a
human person and we have a built-in system of what we call concupiscence,
a fancy
word which means we have a tendency to do things wrong.We have a tendency to sin, don’t we, don’t you,
don’t I?Amen.With
that knowledge and with God’s grace we
can improve and be holy.God gives us
all the grace, that is his gift.Grace
is an interactive gift.Unless it’s
accepted and used, it’s not effective. That
is part of grace--to be accepted and to be used and then we need to
take
ourselves seriously.We have an annual
physical.Although I know some people
who haven’t seen a doctor in forty years and who are in very good
health.However, for most of us, we need
to confess
our sins, the Church says at least once a year and I am praying for the
day
when that is all I will need.However,
if you are too proud to confess your sins, you are too proud to go to
heaven
and I know that I am speaking to some people now that have not been to
confession in ten, twenty, or thirty years.I am talking about Catholics.All
sorts of explanations like, “It’s not really needed,” like you have
your own
catechism at home that you wrote.Jesus
Christ gave us this wonderful sacrament because we need to take a
shower in his
mercy from time to time and to be cleansed.What a gift it is.What a
wonderful feeling to walk out of the confessional to know at least for
that
moment, I am in good shape.Right,
Joanna?Joanna had her first confession
yesterday.Good job.And
she did great. Let me be
honest, I worry
about many of you, I do.You’re just not
using the sacraments that you need that God gives you.So please consider that.By the
way, we’ve been very busy in
confessions lately before Christmas and for the ones that go every
week, would
you give me a break, please?Just wait,
because there are some big fish out there that we want to make sure… My first
priority has to be
my immortal soul, and secondly, my love for God.We
need to spend time in prayer.I know just
about every other person in
confession says, “I can’t concentrate,” as if that is a sin, no that’s
just
part of your human nature.It is hard to
concentrate in prayer.More and more, I’m
recommending people to do spiritual reading.There are millions of books that are excellent, such as the
lives of the
saints, works of the saints, books of meditation.Do
spiritual reading as part of your prayer
because we can concentrate on a chapter for thirty minutes and you will
be
blessed by that.I’m trying to turn the
TV off at night and fall asleep to spiritual reading.Since I’ve started that, my dreams have been saner
and my rest has been greater and deeper.Also, in prayer, focus on thanksgiving and praise.Go into prayer and “kiss up” to God.Tell
him how great he is and how much you
love him and appreciate him. Thirdly,
we need to love each
other, and that is mostly doing the small things right.Jesus teaches us how to love our
neighbor.Read the Gospel and you will
see that oftentimes his apostles were frustrated with him.They wanted him to be this great big messiah,
a political figure, to free Israel and Jesus was just
dealing with the next person he
met and the next person he met.The
Gospels are a story of him touching people, meeting people on the road
in villages,
curing people, touching lepers and the blind, but eating with tax
collectors
and sinners.If you notice everyone he
encounters, he respects and he treats with great dignity, and great
love with
the exception of the religious leaders, many of whom were hypocrites.That is what we are to do, not so much love
each other in big ways but in little ways.I was reading a reflection in a book called Wisdom of the
Sands
by a French author. It is a story about
a king who had great responsibility.He’s praying to God in this meditation, and he’s reminding
himself that
his obligation to love his neighbor extends to the little person, the
next
person he meets.He writes,
“O Lord, I (would prefer to)
safeguard the nobility of
my warriors and the beauty of our temples, for which men barter their
all, and
which give meaning to their lives.But
walking tonight…I came (upon) a little girl in tears.Gently, I drew her head back so as to see her
eyes, and the grief I read in them abashed me.If, O Lord, I give no heed to this, I am excluding a part of
life, and
my task is incomplete.Not that I turn
away from any of the lofty goals I set before me – but that little girl
must be consoled.Thus
alone will all go well with the world;
for in her, too, the meaning of the world is manifest.”
What
really matters?
You do and your love of
God and your love of that little girl.