HOMILY FOR THE 2nd SUNDAY OF ADVENT YEAR B
7 DECEMBER 2014 ST BENET’S HALL
The walls of medieval churches were richly painted to provide a visual people’s Bible in an
age in which the readings were proclaimed in Latin and literacy was low. Usually these
paintings included a last judgement, in which Christ came on the clouds with two figures on
his right and left. Which two figures do you think? Mary the mother of Jesus seems a likely
candidate and that would be right. One might suspect that the other would be St Peter,
holding the keys of the kingdom of heaven or maybe St John the Evangelist, who stood with
Mary at the foot of the cross – so it is above our altar in St Benet’s and on many a rood
screen.
But in fact in paintings of the Advent, of the last judgement, the other figure was St John the
Baptist. Indeed we know that this iconography even had some influence in paintings of the
crucifixion – so Grunewald’s Isenheim altar piece, with Our Lady and the apostle on one
side of the cross and John the Baptist on the other, an elongated finger pointing to the figure
on the Cross, the Lamb of God; a lamb also stands at the foot of the Cross, next to the
Baptist, bleeding into a chalice.
The reason why it is Mary and St John the Baptist in paintings of the Last Judgement, is that
it is these two figures who dominate the gospels of the Advent season and the Advent season
commemorates the coming of Christ, at Christmas but also in the last judgement at the end of
time. The Church’s year always begins with the end point. This Sunday and next centre upon
St John.
We read today from the beginning of the gospel of Mark, the beginning of the year of Mark,
year B of the Sunday cycle. St John the Baptist, as today’s gospel reminded us, was a wild
and hairy man with a strange and unappetizing diet unless one has a particular partiality for
locust, a man of the wilderness, a man in the Nazirite tradition of Jewish holy men,
consecrated utterly to the Lord their God, courageous truth tellers. Given the exemplary
importance for religious life of John the Baptist, it is appropriate this Sunday in particular
and here in St Benet’s to note that the Catholic Church is observing this year as one of
special prayer for and attention to the gift of religious life in the Church.
Still let us now admit in all due humility that being an exemplar for religious life is but a
part, the minor part, of St John’s role. We celebrate him at Mass today as the Advent
forerunner of the Lord and the Church applies to him the wonderful words of the first
Document1
1
reading from the prophet Isaiah: ‘Prepare in the wilderness a way for the Lord. Make a
straight highway for our God across the desert .. then the glory of the Lord shall be revealed
and all mankind shall see it’. He brings the message that the time of service is ended and that
there is to be an atonement for sin. Isaiah celebrates the Lord as a mighty man of war: ‘Here
is the Lord coming with power, his arm subduing all things to him’. But then in the moment
of his coming, of his arrival, his appearance changes and he becomes a shepherd ‘feeding his
flock, gathering lambs in his arms, holding them against his breast and leading to their rest
the mother ewes.’ The shepherd who is then also the Lamb of God, who will baptise in the
Holy Spirit and feed his flock with his own blood. A warrior becomes a shepherd, becomes a
lamb.
So we ask St John the Baptist to prepare in the wilderness, as it may seem, of our lives,
through their strange by-ways and tangled paths, the straight highway for our God to come to
us, the loving shepherd who can care for us, baptise us with his Holy Spirit and above all and
most wonderfully feed us with himself.
The second reading from the second letter of St Peter has a dramatic depiction of the last
days: these will come like a thief in the night, with a roar the sky will vanish, the elements
will catch fire and fall apart, the earth will burn up, the sky will dissolve in flames and the
elements will melt in the heat, giving way to a new heaven and new earth. It seems the very
essence of an Advent. But we are not to be concerned with the timings, indeed the words
‘with the Lord a day can mean a thousand years and a thousand years is like a day’ place the
event it may seem outside our comprehension of time and place. And in the waiting there are
to be homely and everyday virtues: ‘you should be living holy and saintly lives … do your
best to live lives without spot or stain so that he will find you at peace.’ The mighty man of
war, who will buckle the universe, destroying and recreating, is the shepherd, leading the
ewes to rest, the lamb who feeds us with himself and who gives us peace ‘dona nobis
pacem’.
Document1
2