Share the Spirit of Jesus

Homily for Friday of the Second Week in Advent

In the first reading, the prophet Isaiah is speaking to the Jewish people toward the end of the Babylonian exile. They have been in captivity and separated from their homeland for more than 70 years. Though they have every reason to despair, Isaiah urges them to keep their faith in God and to follow God’s commandments.

It is a request that the crowds around Jesus have failed to properly answer. Jesus criticizes their inability to understand what they are supposed to do, and their ambivalence toward John the Baptist and to him. He wants them to put their trust in him because of what they have seen and heard. His works are his validation; they are the testimony that he is the wisdom of God, the promised Messiah.

The type of despair and doubt these readings portray can also be a stumbling block for us in our own lives. Jesus challenges us to not settle for complacency, but rather to embrace his truth and be changed by it. Through the power of the Advocate, God’s Holy Spirit, we have the ability to be agents of God’s salvation in the world today. Through our baptism, we share in the mission of the Church to help build God’s kingdom on earth.

At times our world can seem like a bleak place. How can we make a difference when there is so much violence and pain? Jesus came to offer us his life-giving Spirit, and it is up to us to answer his call every day to share this Spirit, this truth, with others. God challenges us to have faith in his power to save. Like the Jewish people at the time of their exile, we must remember God’s promise. “If you would hearken to my commandments, your prosperity would be like a river.”

Let us express our faith in God and the saving power in this liturgy as we prepare to receive him in the Eucharist.