PREPARE THE WAY FOR THE LORD
Second Sunday of Advent, Year B, St. Francis Xavier Pastoral Area, Baron Goni, 10.12.2023. Homily by Archbishop I. A. Kaigama
Readings: Is. 40:1-5.9-11; Ps. 85; Rm. 15:4-9; Mk. 1:1-8.
PREPARE THE WAY FOR THE LORD!
Warm Advent greetings to you my dear parishioners of St. Francis Xavier Pastoral Area, Baron Goni, together with your priest in charge, Fr. Emmanuel Odion. As I pray with you during my first pastoral visit, I urge you to keep the flag of faith flying. It is good to learn that despite the poor security situation, the economic hardship, and other challenges, you remain resilient Catholics. Remain ever prepared to answer anyone who asks you for the faith that is you (cf. 1 Pt. 3:15).
Today’s readings all enjoin us to a spiritual preparation that disposes us to receive the Lord worthily not only at Christmas but always. I often marvel at the amount of time, money and energy put into meticulously preparing some social celebrations such as weddings, birthdays, anniversaries, jubilees, etc. Both Prophet Isaiah and John the Baptist in our readings today make a serious call to us to prepare the way of the Lord, to make room in our hearts and lives for the coming of the Messiah. It is a call to turn away from sin and to embrace the love and mercy of God. Both Prophet Isaiah and John the Baptist speak about making straight the paths for the Lord. The road is not the mediocre type of roads contractors in Nigeria make only to claim highly inflated contract sums, and within a few months the roads begin to deteriorate. I know of roads in my home State of Taraba, from Jalingo/Kona to Numan and from Jalingo/Kona through Zing to Yola that have been and are still in very terrible conditions. When these roads were made one would need not more than 30 minutes to travel from Jalingo to Numan, but now you need not less than three hours! One needed only one a half hours to travel from Jalingo through Zing to Yola but now you need close to four hours. These roads even though initially looked good and served for a while, they were not regularly maintained. Now, because of this neglect, after you make a journey on these roads as in many other Nigerian roads, your body aches all over and your car needs multiple repairs. It seems to have become a culture in Nigeria for roads to be poorly made. On the surface they look deceptively good but after a few months or even years, they start to degenerate very badly. Generally, the roads are not maintained, which explains why many lives are lost on our roads through avoidable accidents.
Neglecting the spiritual roads into our hearts is what the readings speak about today. It is not only government that neglects roads, but we too individually neglect the condition of the roads that lead to our hearts, which is why the readings today call us to repentance as the only way to expel the poison of sin from our hearts.
For this you don’t need to go and buy medicine from a pharmacy and what we need does not cost money. We need only to look inside our hearts and examine the state of our relationship with God. The precondition to be forgiven our sins is linked to leading holy, pure, and saintly lives. This is the preparation needed to meet with our Lord and King, Jesus Christ. He is coming to create everything fresh, because He is the Prince of peace, the Light of the world and the Comforter of our souls.
Isaiah’s prophecy gives us all great hope that salvation is on the horizon. It is not yet here, though, but is still in the future—though not far away. Therefore, we must heed to his voice to “prepare in the desert a way for the Lord” (Is. 40:3). The description of a “desert” in this context refers to physical dryness. Similarly, our life of sin leads to the dryness of the soul longing for the presence of Christ, that is why we are called to prepare this desert of ours for the coming of our Master. This calls for a transformative change in our lives.
Peter tells us in the second reading that Christ will return. He renews our hope, just like the Prophet Isaiah did, by exhorting us to hold fast to the prophetic promises regarding the return of Christ. Peter centres on “the Day of the Lord,” which he says approaches like a thief and he goes further to say “therefore, beloved, since you wait for these, be zealous to be found by him without spot or blemish, and at peace” (2 Pt. 3:14). As we continue to prepare and wait for the Lord’s coming, we join our voices to that of the psalmist and say, “Let us see, O Lord, your mercy and grant us your salvation” (Ps. 85:7).
All our actions must be driven by love, goodness, kindness, and compassion. We sincerely commiserate with the victims of the December 3 accidental airstrike of a gathering at Tudun Biri, Igabi Local Government Area of Kaduna State, by the Nigerian Army. It is regrettable that innocent civilians gathered for a Muslim religious celebration of the Maulud were mistakenly shelled. We can all see what the menace of terrorism/banditry is causing us. The country has so far expended huge resources and yet the terrorists/bandits seem to increase their strategic aggression and appear hell-bent on destabilizing our country. In trying to combat them, we lose lives of security agents in battle, as well as such sad loss of innocent lives as those of Tudun Biri. The effects of terrorism, kidnapping, banditry are cascading on our villages and towns in many parts of our country, not sparing our politically “sacred” Federal Capital Territory. During this Advent Season, let us intensify prayers for the repose of the souls of those who have lost their lives, speedy recovery of the wounded and for divine consolation upon families affected by these criminal and inhuman activities.
I urge the 93 candidates for confirmation, the 10 couples to be joined in holy matrimony, the ecumenical friends from the Anglican Church, Celestial Church of Christ, Holy Spirit Ministries International Church and others and all the parishioners of St. Francis Xavier Pastoral Area, Baron Goni, to live in a manner that when the Lord comes, He will find you and all of us faithful and spiritually ready to welcome Him.
