Welcome to our Into the Light Reflection site for the Second Sunday of Advent!
We should be about Day 6 into our chocolate Advent calendars.
Our readings for this Sunday, the Second Sunday of Advent are here. (https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/120521.cfm).
Again, these are my notes and interpretations from the 8:30 and 10 (or Noon) Mass homily of Fr Dennis Dillon, SJ, on December 6, 2015. Anything that doesn’t quite make sense should be attributed to my note-taking frailties, and not his homily! The answer is always God’s Love.
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The two poems he referenced with this homily are December by Gary Johnson and Patience by Kay Ryan. Both capture the tension of Advent — waiting and hope.
Ryan writes:
Who would
have guessed
it possible
that waiting
is sustainable—
a place with
its own harvests.
and Johnson finishes his poem with:
Onward we go, faithfully, into the dark. // And are there angels hovering overhead? Hark.
Today’s readings capture the sense that in these moments ” … that they are remembered by God.” Not vice-versa — we are rarely the ones remembering God. We forget God, particularly when we are in the good times.
For the ancient Jewish people their temple was in Jerusalem, and where God manifested. For us, the “temple” is where we gather, as the Body [of Christ]. The Holy Spirit activates it, in all our myriad experiences and stories. These are very different concepts of temple.
Yet, the incarnation of Emmanuel, God-with-us, as Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ, resolves these differences. People must have been in the presence of Jesus Christ in person and somehow associated that experience with their experience of being in or near the presence of God in the Temple.
When we’re in the desert spiritually, we experience the hole in our heart. That is the way it is supposed to be. We have a hole in our heart until we come to rest in God. The quiet re-members us to God, to the Body of Christ.
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May we all receive the graces to have our paths straightened to make way and God’s good work in each of us completed.
The Surest Sign 