The Second Sunday in Advent has traditionally been designated by the Church to emphasize the peace that is connected to the coming of Christ. It is perhaps easy to wonder where this peace is in our world. In our day, there is no shortage of things that give us cause to doubt the peace Christ brings. There is no shortage of military conflicts, broken families, natural disasters, etc. It seems that all around us there is pain and brokenness and none of this peace. Perhaps, the question we can ask then is what this Sunday\u2019s Liturgy of the Word is trying to relate to us about peace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the Gospel, we see a condemnation of the Pharisees and Sadducees that perhaps comes across as very harsh to our modern ears. Yet seeing it in a different light will possibly help make sense of this. Here we have been presented with a group of individuals, who, believing that the coming of Christ would usher in an Earthly Kingdom with order and rule, have put their trust in so many different things, mainly themselves. Their idealistic views blinded them into thinking that their own efforts and perfect adherence to the law could bring them peace. While this concern with religious practice was not necessarily bad, it became corrupted when they placed the exterior appearance of it above all else. John the Baptist reminds them, as he reminds us, that the peace of Christ is different. He proclaims Isaiah\u2019s words, \u201cPrepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight\u201d (Mt 3:3), which we could rephrase to say prepare your hearts for the love of Christ. We can ask ourselves, have we built barriers in our lives against our love of Christ and Christ\u2019s love of us that need to be flattened? It is perhaps easy to want to see the world around us be perfected and brought peace. Yet if there is no conversion of heart, no love of Christ in our interior lives, then there can be no peace in the world. Any peace found in the world starts in the hearts of men and women, and this is what John is pointing us to. If there is no conversion as the Baptist instructs when he asserts, \u201cbear fruit worthy of repentance\u201d (Mt 3:8), then no matter how perfect the works of the Pharisees and Sadducees look, they are empty works. And so, when it comes to peace, we must always remember that the peace the world so desperately is in need of starts in the interior of our hearts, where Christ must reign supreme.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Isaac Nibourg<\/strong> \u2013 St. Joseph Seminary, Edmonton, Alberta.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Fot. Matt Duncan\/Unsplash.com<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 2nd Sunday of Advent<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":2715,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,17,18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2714","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog","category-strona-glowna-najnowsze","category-strona-glowna-slider"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n