“Confession: Preparing for the Lord”
Second Sunday of Advent – B
I am impressed with the directness and simplicity of how St. Mark begins his gospel. “This is the gospel (the good news) of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.” What could be more basic to our faith than our belief that Jesus is not only Messiah and Savior, but that he is Son of God and everything about him is good news for us! That Jesus is Son of God is one of the things that is unique about our Catholic Christian faith and different from all other religions. Moses, Mohammed, Buddha, Confucius, whomever, are all revered as prophets who spoke for God or wise and holy people who taught the path to God, but none are honored as God. Jesus is proclaimed in the gospels as God (not “a” God, but “the” God, the only God, one in being with the Father and the Holy Spirit).
Mark does not spend much time speaking about Jesus’ birth or his Mother Mary or the Nativity story. Mark goes right to the point of speaking about St. John the Baptist and his role in the incarnation story.
It was important for St. Mark to talk about John the Baptist as he began his gospel for two reasons. First, many people thought John was the messiah, the savior of God’s people. But Mark makes it very clean through John’s own words, “One mightier than I is coming after me. I am not worthy to stoop down and untie his sandals.” Second, it is important to bring up John the Baptist as Mark begins his gospel due to the message of the Baptist: prepare! He is talking about preparing our hearts.
How do we prepare our hearts for the coming of the Jesus, the Messiah?
We can start by a good examination of conscience. Can we say we love God perfectly and completely? Can we say we love our neighbor perfectly and completely?
As John the Baptist reminds us, preparing for the coming of the Messiah involves repentance. We do not enter God’s kingdom by accident or by default. It’s like anything else in life, if we want something worthwhile or to accomplish anything worth accomplishing, we need to work hard and prepare, not just our homes and our meals and our gifts, but our very soul.
How does this happen? Repentance requires us to take a spiritual inventory of what needs to change in our lives – of where we have fallen short of God’s commands. We do not have to do this alone; through prayer the Holy Spirit will guide us and help us see where we have strayed. The Holy Spirit will gently reveal our sins to us. The practice of confessing our sins and practicing penance will help us to experience God’s cleansing us of our sins and gives us a real sense of gratitude for his love and unfailing, never-ending mercy.
Sisters and Brothers let us all make it a point to try to get to Confession before Christmas. Let repentance become a daily practice as well so that we can keep our conscience clean of all those sins that can pile up and obscure our relationship with Christ. Repentance is powerful! God will use it to soften our hearts and draw us closer to himself and one another.
So, to sum up Mark’s gospel message, and the message of St. John the Baptist, go to confession!
May God bless us all with a joyful Advent!