2nd Sunday of Advent – A
December 7, 2025 8:30am
Our Lady of Grace Parish, Parkton
My Name is John the Baptist
My name is John the Baptist.
You just heard about me in the gospel passage. Now, it’s true that I am a bit controversial.
Some people cannot see beyond my appearance: my shoulder-length hair and scraggly beard; my faded jeans with holes in the knees; and my vegetarian diet with lots of tofu. That’s just the way I am, and I guess it turns off some people.
But there are others who look beyond my appearance. They come out to the Jordan River and listen to what I am saying, and I do have something to say.
I Have a Mission
You see, I have a sense of mission about my life.
In fact, it’s because I am so driven by this sense of mission that I don’t spend much time on my appearance. As you just heard, my mission is to “prepare the way of the Lord and make his paths straight.”
“Making the Lord’s paths straight” is something like you building Interstate 95. You did this so that you could have a straight and fast road for traveling from Maine to Florida.
Well, at least it used to be fast. I want you, and God wants you to build a spiritual I-95.
You need to prepare yourselves to let God come into your lives as fully as possible. And you need to do this 1) for your own personal lives and 2) for your community or society.
Prepare Yourselves
For your personal lives, you need to be aware that there is “one more powerful than you.”
That’s what I say about myself today: “There is one more powerful than I who is coming after me.” You know, sometimes we are led to think that we have to be completely independent and self-sufficient and make it 100% on our own.
The truth is that we are all dependent. We are first of all, dependent on God for our lives and everything we have.
Every day, you need to 1) thank God for what you have, 2) ask God for what you need, and 3) listen to God for what you are to do – 1) thank God for what you have, 2) ask God for what you need, and 3) listen to God for what you are to do. This is praying, what prayer is all about.
Maybe you can do this as soon as you get up in the morning or before you go to bed at night or whenever there is a time that works for you. I’m telling you, you need to do this if you are going to stay aware that there is “one more powerful than you are.”
Prepare Your Community
Then, you also need to do what you can to let God enter this community more fully.
The prophet Isaiah in today’s first reading foresees a very ideal society. He imagines that “the wolf and the lamb, and the cow and the bear” will all live together peacefully.
It’s beautiful, this picture of peace and harmony, but it’s only going to happen if you care for the people in your community. Maybe you could start by looking at the problem of food insecurity.
Food insecurity means that people have uncertainty about where their next meal will come from and are getting less food than they need, even having to skip meals. The Maryland Food Bank states that there are 90,000 people in Baltimore City and 102,000 people in Baltimore County who suffer from some degree of food insecurity.
You are already doing something on this by supporting the Our Daily Bread program. Keep it up because this is a way of letting God enter your community more fully.
Conclusion
Okay, I want you to have a good Christmas, but you need to use these weeks of Advent to get ready – “Prepare the way of the Lord and make his paths straight.”
Build that spiritual I-95. If you do, then the Lord can come more fully into your personal lives and into your community this Christmas.
