2nd Sunday of Advent [B]

December 10, 2023

Mark 1:1-8

What are your dreams and hopes in life? The answers can be extremely diverse. Students dream of finishing their studies and graduating from their schools with honors. Others wish to work in big companies or have respectable businesses. Others hope to achieve high-level careers or acquire cozy properties and flashy cars. Yet, we can also dream for other people, like parents, who wish their children to grow healthy and succeed.

Why do we have hopes and dreams and hopes? Unlike animals, we not only wish to survive but also want to become a much better version of ourselves. Our material and biological composition alone cannot explain this ability to hope. There is something beyond this body and this world. Pope Benedict XVI beautifully offers us an answer through his encyclical Spe Salvi, “Man was created for greatness—for God himself; he was created to be filled by God. But his heart is too small for the greatness to which it is destined. It must be stretched.” The reason that God has given us these immortal souls and through our dreams and hopes, we are enlarging our souls and eventually being ready, through the help of grace, to receive God.

Advent is the season of hope because this season teaches us to hope rightly. We can learn from our Gospel. St. Mark opened his Gospel by presenting John the Baptist, who announced the true hope of Israel, that the Lord is coming. During this time, Israelites lived through extremely harsh times under the Roman Empire. The taxes were choking their necks, the Roman-appointed rulers like Herod were cruel, and some Jews were stealing and scamming fellow poorer Jews. At this time, it was easy to fall into despair and stop hoping, or they developed a delusion that the Messiah would come as a military leader that would lead them to bloody victory against their oppressors. John told them to keep hoping because the Lord was coming, but he also reminded them that the best preparation was not political nor military ways but repentance. For, God of Israel is neither a god of war, nor a god of wealth, nor a god of politics, but He is the God of holiness.

We live in a much better time than the ancient Israelites, yet terrible things can always diminish or even corrupt our capacity to hope. Economic difficulties, broken relationships, and failures to achieve our dreams are to name a few. We may live depressed, hopeless, and in survival mode, no different from many animals. Or, we may grow delusions and false expectations. We falsely expect God to be a magician, so we go to the Church and pray because God will grant us anything we wish. We also may fall into the temptation to utilize evil and unjust ways to realize our dreams.

The season of Advent teaches us to hope and dream. The season introduces us to the biggest dream in our lives: to be saints, that is, to welcome God, and to be with God. We must dare to hope despite countless challenges and failures, yet we shall see our hopes and dreams into building blocks to stretch our souls to receive God.

Rome

Valentinus Bayuhadi Ruseno, OP