This year, rather than repeating one of the two stories of the Annunciation (which are read in years A and B) we meditate on the Visitation. The focus is on Mary. Notice how her greeting sets everything in motion. Notice how she is called blessed three times in this short passage. That is why Christians call her the Blessed Virgin. The reason is her total cooperation with the will of God in the birth of his Divine Son. Luke makes it clear to us that Mary has been raised up by God to perform an essential task in the history of salvation. And so today we stand once again at the threshold of our salvation story. We stand with Mary, open with her to God’s plan. Let us thank God for the gift of Mary, the blessed one who opens the way. Let us give thanks for the Coming King who comes to us through her, his hands full of compassion and mercy. Like John in his mother’s womb let us, too, leap for joy. Let the Spirit transform us and fill us with new life.

 

Once again our attention is drawn to John the Baptist. The gospel passage we read today is divided into two sections, both of them full of good news. The first gives us a taste of John’s preaching to ordinary people: tax-collectors, soldiers and the like. We are given a heart-warming message of non-violence, honesty, truth, sharing, justice, kindness, mercy, contentment, compassion and generosity. The second gives us a taste of John’s messianic preaching. John tells the people that one mightier than he was coming whose sandals he was not fit to tie. The symbolism is one of humble service. John baptises with water but the Messiah will baptise with Spirit and fire, ready to set God’s saving harvest in motion. As Christmas approaches we are invited to reflect on the future that awaits us and how we will live it. Are we ready to let a compassionate Jesus winnow our lives and burn our dead chaff? Are we ready to let him draw us ever more fully into new life? Are we open to Christ’s transfiguring mercy? Are we ready to bring the light of joy to the world? Are we ready to produce fruit worthy of repentance? Are we ready to live an ethics of contentment and generosity as the Baptist urges all of us to do! God really wants us. God really loves us. God really looks at us with eyes full of mercy. But every genuine turning to God challenges us to expand our hearts. Turning to God is made real by serving others.

 

Every Advent, on the second and third Sundays, we focus our attention on John the Baptist, the prophet of God’s mercy. For Luke, the Baptist brings to an end the story of the Old Testament prophets and in so doing prepares the way for Jesus. The Prophets had insisted that God would come again. That is why John cries out in the words of Isaiah 40:3: 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. For every Christian Jesus represents what Israel was waiting for with expectant hearts. We should not be surprised, then, that for Luke, what Jesus does and says has universal implications: his reach is cosmic. Are we ready to let him touch all peoples and the whole of creation through the ethical and spiritual quality of our own daily lives? Will I open my life to Jesus’s compassion? Will I walk with and help the weak, the destitute, the sick and the hopeless? Am I open to being an advent person in real terms? Have I learnt with Martin Luther King Jr not to mouth pious irrelevancies and sanctimonious trivialities while people suffer? A radical Advent life is one that understands that doing justice for the poor is proper worship of God. Am I ready to light my second purple candle, bright sign of my preparation for the Lord’s coming? Will I make room in my life for the-God-who-comes this week? Will I serve God’s interests or my own? What do I conceal behind the mask of piety?

 

In Luke’s account of the apocalypse we are invited to contemplate the images of cosmic disruption the gospels associate with the Parousia, the second coming of Christ. We are also invited to reflect on the implications of dark times for the Church and the human family: division, the nations in dismay, people perplexed. More to the point we are invited to greet what is happening courageously. These events are not bad news, but good. That is why we are invited to be ready, standing erect, our heads held high. For the fullness of redemption is at hand. What a tragedy if we were asleep, distracted, on that great day because of our carousing and drunkenness, our minds and hearts trapped in the anxieties of life. The call is to be awake, on the watch, alert, vigilant, ready to take our place in the bright presence of the Son of Man, to be signs in our own lives of the triumph of love over darkness. Some people say, “The time is near” when it is not. We always need the grace and light of resilient hope because there are always moments of disappointment and loss. Advent invites us to look to the light. And so we light our first advent candle.

 

Is our God crazy or cosmic? That is the large and exciting question that challenges us on this last Sunday of the liturgical year as we celebrate the Solemnity of Christ the King.  It is the celebration of the climax, not only of this year of grace but also of the end, the omega point of the mystery toward which we orient our lives.  Behind Christ is the God who reveals himself in Christ, the ‘I AM’ who is the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End.

 

Death is coming for us, whether we will confront it on our own personal eschaton or in the cosmic apocalyptic drama as described in the Gospel of Mark.  Even if “the need” does not occur in our lifetime, and even if another group of end-time prophets falsely calculate Jesus’s return and offer precise dates that do not come to pass, we will still come to our end.  How are we preparing for it?

 

We are approaching the end of our reading of the gospel of Mark. Today’s reading provides a contrast: the self-assured scribes parading their virtue, and the humble widow offering all she had to live on. Jesus attacks the hypocrisy of those religious people who make an outward show of virtue, but whose hearts are full of greed. His words against such behavior are harsh: they will receive a severe sentence. Such texts as this are sometimes used as a pretext for a general denigration of all the teachers of Judaism. We must bear in mind that the gospels also tell us of good and virtuous scribes and Pharisees.

 Jesus observes the generosity of the poor widow. Unlike the scribes he has previously criticized, she does not trumpet her virtue. Almost unnoticed, she gives all she can for the upkeep of the temple of God. Jesus then ‘called the disciples and said to them’. In this way the evangelist underlines this teaching of Jesus.

Our first reading, from the first Book of Kings, portrays another widow, the widow of Sidon who is suffering from a punishing famine. Like the widow in the gospel, she shows remarkable generosity and trust in God. Though she does not have enough for herself and her son, she agrees to prepare something to eat for Elijah too, with remarkable consequences. Her example of faith is recalled by Jesus in chapter 4 of Luke’s gospel. 

 

Jesus is now in Jerusalem and the evangelist Mark gives us an account of his activities there. He has several encounters with the religious teachers. In this particular meeting there is no animosity. It is a peaceful dialogue between those who seek to do God’s will. The passage shows how Jesus’ teaching takes the Hebrew Scriptures as its starting point. The words of Scripture Jesus speaks here are the same words we have already heard in the first reading from the Book of Deuteronomy, which includes in its final verses the Jewish prayer known commonly as the Shema’ (‘listen, Israel).

To these words taken from Deuteronomy Jesus adds a quotation from Leviticus, another book of the Law, which commands love of neighbour.

The conversation with the scribe continues by raising a point very frequently made by the prophets of the Old Testament and by Jesus: love of God and of neighbour is of more importance than ‘holocaust and sacrifice’.

There is a profound agreement between Jesus and the teachers of Judaism. The tragedy which follows comes when worldly calculations are seen to be more important than seeking together to do the will of God. It is a situation repeated with dreadful regularity throughout the history of the world.

 

Are we aware of our own blindness, of our inability to recognize Jesus who is passing through our everyday lives?  Do we urgently ask for insightful faith so that we recognize who Jesus really is?  Or are we reluctant to leave even the small, secure territory that we have staked out for ourselves and push forward to Jesus, ready to enter with him into whatever “Jerusalem” he will lead us, with his promise of a share in his passion, death…and resurrection?

 

Our gospel today follows on from the third passion/resurrection prediction in Mark 10:32-34. In that light it is important to remember that Mark always depicts Jesus on the way to Jerusalem and the Cross. We need to read the two stories in today’s gospel in that light: the story of the Zebedee brothers’ desire for power, and Christ’s saying about true greatness. The long form contains both. The short form contains only the saying about being a servant and a slave. On the surface the story of the Zebedees is one of ambition and seeking power. But it quickly turns into a story of persecution and martyrdom, of suffering and cross, part of Mark’s description of the path of discipleship and true spiritual leadership. The true disciple/leader knows that spiritual greatness and humble self-sacrifice go together. The greatest is the least, the first is the last. Unfortunately, every time Jesus spoke about the Cross his disciples’ thoughts turned to glory. Did the Zebedees understand? Do we? Were they blind to Jesus’ paradox? The true disciple understands paradox. The true disciple also understands that genuine prayer changes us, makes us more like Christ. Are we ready to serve? Are we ready to take up our own cross and follow Jesus? Why are we shocked when people reject the faith community because they see hypocrisy and arrogance instead of gentleness and healing? It was ever so!