Second Sunday of Advent.
† Sunday 10th December 2000
Cycle of Prayer: Openness to the Word of God - Bible Day

Theme: Prepare a way for the coming of the Lord.

A reading from the Prophet Baruch 5: 1 - 9
The Jewish people exiled in Babylon, are excited at the prospect of a joyful return to the city of Jerusalem to worship at the Temple, and there, to celebrate the feast. The joyful procession is described as a royal progress, with even the forests and every fragrant tree providing welcome shade for the weary pilgrim. “For God has decreed the flattening of each high mountain…the filling of the valleys to make level ground so that Israel can walk in safety under the glory of God.” So the Prophet Baruch urges the city of Jerusalem to cast aside, “your dress of sorrow and distress, and to put on the beauty of the glory of God forever.”

A reading from the Letter of Paul to the Philippians 1 : 4 - 6, 8 - 11
Paul writing to a Christian community in Greece, speaks of the Day of Jesus Christ that is to come. There are echoes of the thoughts contained in the reading from Baruch, with the sense of joy and expectation of the things to come, and of the need to prepare now a way for the coming of the Lord.. As Christians prepare for the Day of Christ they are to improve their knowledge and deepen their perception. “This will help you,” says Paul, “to become pure and blameless, and prepare for the Day of Christ.”

Gospel according to Luke 3: 1 - 6
Luke the evangelist makes a special thing in this gospel of the fact that Jesus is the spiritual saviour of the whole world, and not merely a Jewish Messiah. He sets his narrative against the back cloth of Roman [universal world ] and local [Palestinian] events. With more than an echo of the Prophecy of Baruch, about the joyful return to Jerusalem, and how the rough roads are to be made smooth, the voice of the precursor John the Baptist, cries out in the wilderness, “Prepare a way for the Lord, make his paths straight…and all peoples shall see the salvation of God.”

© Peter Harrison 2000