ADVENT SECOND SUNDAY 24

II SUNDAY OF ADVENT, 08 DECEMBER 2024 (Baruch 5.1-9; Phil. 1.3-11; Luke 3.1-6) Focus: What a powerfully comforting message of Advent it is! He is coming. Therefore, “Take off the garment of your sorrow and affliction, and put on the beauty of the glory from God”. 1. Our God is a God of joy, God of glory, and not of sadness or misery. He is a God of fidelity, a God of hope, and not of infidelity or hopelessness. 2. Therefore He assures and promises us joy and glory, putting off sorrow and pain, darkness and confusion. 3. In fact, the very purpose and destiny of life are joy, beauty, and glory. God wants our life to be beautiful and glorious. 4. Life can be beautiful, only when it is joyful. And life can be glorious, only when it is joyful and beautiful. 5. In fact, this is the real salvation, which God comes to give us, by coming as one of us and to be with us. The real salvation is this, that our life is a thing of joy, beauty, and glory, and not of misery and darkness. The choice is ours – to make our life a beauty or misery. 6. If this is salvation, if this is the aim and meaning of life, then how to achieve this aim? How to make our life such? 7. The Word of God offers us a clear program of life. We know that to achieve or accomplish anything in life, to gain any success, there is always some program of doing, some dynamics, some mechanisms, some requirements, some equipment. 8. For example, to reduce obesity, cut down the fat, regulate the diet, work on exercise; to make oneself fit and healthy, keep active and keep mentally free; to make oneself efficient and effective, get skilled, enhance the talents and nurture aptitudes. 9. In the same way, to attain that eternal joy, beauty, and glory with the Lord, we also need to do some work-outs, some controlling, some regulating, some restraining, some training. 10. Some of the concrete details of this journey of life are put before us from all three readings. There are: 11. Be converted, i.e. repent, do not continue without any reflection and realization; pause a while and take stock of the direction and the quality of life; make a positive turn in life. 12. Be dedicated, i.e. prepare the way of the Lord, and not the way of the world; do not block the way of the Lord, but make the things conducive to that way. 13. Be straight, i.e. make straight what is crooked. 14. Be smooth, i.e. make smooth what is rough; apply the gentle balm amidst what is rude and blunt. 15. Be humble, i.e. make low the high mountains and hills of pride and arrogance. 16. Be mature, i.e. fill up the valleys of weaknesses and defects. 17. Be balanced, i.e. level what is uneven, of disorder and disharmony. 18. Be educated really of heart, i.e. be with insight and divine knowledge. 19. Be wise and guided, i.e. decide and follow what is best. 20. Be loving, i.e. let love overflow more and more. 21. Be just, i.e. produce a harvest of goodness and fairness. 22. Be steady, i.e. walk in the light of the Lord. 23. Be holy, i.e. stand before God pure and blameless. Direction: Let us know the Way – walk the Way – show the Way. Let us constantly liberate ourselves from the clutches of sin and evil, and experience the “saving” grace of salvation. Let us beautify and glorify our life, with real conversion and thus “enjoy” life!