Second Sunday of Advent

2000 years on John the Baptist's voice is proclaimed again this Sunday in every Catholic Church throughout the world, dramatically urging repentance as we prepare for the coming of Christ at Christmas, and reminding us too of His Second Coming, where 'He will come to judge the living and the dead.' John uses graphic imagery. Ultimately we will be one thing or another – a fruit-bearing tree or wheat bearing the proper grain at the appropriate time, or a fruitless tree or chaff that is useless. The principal fruit we must bear is the fruit of a repentant heart – humiliated and humble, prayerful,  penitential, open, submissive, obedient to Jesus’ appeal to love and mercy, joyful in having been forgiven, forgiving others, charitable to all , Eucharistic. We must be ‘heart-broken’, strange as that may sound.

And ultimately too we will be in one place or the other, finding a place in the barn of heaven or cast out into the fire that will never go out, in the fires of hell.

As three weeks remain and the Christmas shopping list is seen to, what better present to give Jesus as we prepare at Christmas – which after all is His birthday – than to give ourselves over to the Lord’s mercy and present Him on Christmas Day with a clean human heart.