“The word of God came to John, son of Zechariah, in the wilderness. He went through the whole Jordan district proclaiming a baptism of repentance…as it is written in the book of the prophet Isaiah: “Prepare a way for the Lord, make his paths straight. Every valley will be filled in, every mountain and hill be laid low, winding ways will be straightened…” Luke 3: 1-6
The Second Sunday of Advent is the first three liturgical celebrations which challenge us to pause and reflect on the way/s in which we express our faith. The second is the solemnity of the Immaculate Conception (this year on December 9th) and the third is the celebration of Our Lady of Guadalupe (December 12th).
The Scripture translations have talked of John the Baptist calling people to “repentance”, he used the Greek word metanoia, urging his listeners to break out of their restrictive mindsets. In other words, he was calling them to adopt a new approach to the way they went about living their lives. Metanoia literally means a change of mind and heart. The Baptist was not calling people to come forward and list the sins they had committed. The Gospel writers tell us that whatever it was that John said, it caught the imagination of crowds of people who flocked to listen to him. He succeeded in convincing them that there was no need to get paralysed by fear. Rather, there was a much freer way to live, if only they could come to realise that God really loved them. To do that, he drew their attention to the promise uttered by Isaiah, one of their great prophets. It was a promise which they seemed to have forgotten. All of life’s burdens and obstacles would be smoothed over or pushed out of the way if only they could reach out in love and care for one another reflecting something of the boundless love God had for them. If they could manage to live that way, they would grow to see that “all humankind would see the salvation of God” (Luke 1:11). While the Baptist was taking the first steps to prepare his audiences for the coming of the Messiah, he would get to the point of identifying Jesus as the Christ of God who would confirm the message that he, the forerunner of Jesus had begun to open up. Of course, we have the advantage of knowing that the call to a change of heart would be uttered even more clearly by the One for whose coming we are preparing and who would be born in the stable of Bethlehem. But like the people who were encouraged by the Baptist, we, despite our better understanding, can settle into dull-wittedness and fear. We have to let ourselves be stirred up to see the need for a change of mid and heart. Only that will be enough to enliven our faith in the One who loved us into life. Our daily lives have to be lives of love and service for everyone we encounter.
On the very day after we hear the call of the Baptist to a change of heart, we celebrate the life of the only human being who lived love and service in the way in which her Son taught us to live. Mary reflected the love of God to our world as no other before or after her.
The celebration of Our Lady of Our Lady of Guadalupe commemorates the appearance of Mary, the Mother of Jesus to a poor Mexican peasant, Juan Diego in 1531. The peoples of South America affectionately call Mary by the name of La Morenita – literally “the dear little brown Lady”. The allocation of that name to Mary simply demonstrates that culture influences the way in which peoples of different nations express their faith. We non-Latins are much more cerebral in the language we choose to express our religious faith. In describing the conversation he had with the Blessed Virgin, Juan Diego expressed what she said to him this way:
“Listen, put it into your heart, my youngest and dearest son, that the thing that disturbs you, the thing that afflicts you, is nothing. Do not let your countenance, your heart be disturbed. Do not fear this sickness of your uncle or any other sickness, nor anything that is sharp or hurtful. Am I not here, I, who am your Mother? Are you not under my shadow and protection? Am I not the source of your joy? Are you not in the hollow of my mantle, in the crossing of my arms? Do you need anything more? Let nothing else worry you, disturb you.”
Don’t those words echo the Baptist’s urgings to his audiences to adopt a change of mind and heart to the difficulties that blocked them from living free from fear? La Morenita encouraged Juan Diego to adopt a change of mind and heart.
Pope Francis, the Jesuit Pope who grew up in the Americas, predictably has a devotion to La Morenita. In reflecting in his visit to the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe in February 2016, he said:
“To remain in silence before the image of the Mother was what I intended first of all.” He went on to state that Our Lady of Guadalupe has “etched in her eyes the eyes of all her children.” She “gathers the pains of violence, kidnappings, killings and abuses that harm so many poor people, so many women.” (Reflection offered by Pope Francis on Feb 21, 2016, following the Angelus, to the people gathered in St Peter’s Square.)
There is a clear resonance between the gospel-reading for the Second Sunday of Advent and the Two Marian Feasts of The Immaculate Conception and Our Lady of Guadalupe. Mary, born a sinless human being, through her “yes” to the Angel Gabriel lived a life of selflessness and love that constituted the essence of the call which the Baptist invited all who came to hear him. Mary reached out in love throughout her life to the poor for whom Jesus showed a special preference. In her own life of pain and poverty Mary was humanity’s ultimate expression of the love her Son brought to our world. Her visitations to our world in places like Lourdes, Fatima and Guadalupe have invariably been to the poor, the overlooked and forgotten to whom she has given new heart.
