The Second Sunday of Advent – Cycle B : December 7, 2008

Scripture Readings
First: Isaiah 40:1-5, 9-11.
Second: 2 Peter 3:8-14.
Gospel: Mark 1:1-8

Prepared by: Father Stephen Dominic Hayes, OP

1. Subject Matter
 The readings of this Sunday continue to focus upon the eschatological realities of the last
four things: death, judgment, heaven, and hell. The preaching of John the Baptist focuses
our attention on the Christians unique position between the two comings of Jesus Christ: his
first coming in Bethlehem 2000 years ago, which we celebrate anew every Christmas, and
his final coming in glory, when all the world, Christian and non-Christian, will find him to be
Judge and Savior.
 John the Baptist required those who came to him to undergo a bath of repentance (mikvah)
of the kind prescribed for proselytes to Judaism (though this requirement is not clearly
attested in contemporary Jewish sources), requiring this even of those who had been Jews
all their lives - and thus prophetically, as God’s herald, commanding a sign of and
commitment to conversion of heart from those who were already keeping the Law as ritual
and social convention. This conversion " from the heart" is a thing fundamental to the
Christian life; and the Baptist’s Gospel calls us to conversion from the depths of our being.

2. Exegetical Notes
 Isaiah 40:1-5, 9-11: This passage is the introduction to the body material called Deutero-
Isaiah, and is characteristic of the circumstances of his journal after the destruction of
Jerusalem and the Temple, and the captivity in Babylon. This particular passage sums up
the rest of this section of I Isaiah, looking forward to that day, when God, and the shepherd-
king of Israel, greater than any human king, will bring his people back to their home in
Jerusalem. A divine voice adjures the prophet to "speak tenderly" to his people. God is
speaking, not to the historic ruins of the Jewish state, but to the people of God bound now
after the penance of the exile to him personally. Deutero-Isaiah, studiously avoid references
to thecult or worship of the Temple and focuses on the Word formed deep within the mind
and heart of God, and now received just as personally by a people humbled by their
experiences. In verse 3, we find introduced a crucial and rich expression with a subsequent
and rich development, "prepare the way of the Lord." John the Baptist is to announce this
 way, and Jesus declares himself in fact to be that holy Way which leads to his Father, as
does no other. The passage finishes with Jerusalem portrayed as a coming in eschatological
reality gone on the home of God on earth in the center of world redemption. The city has
only one king, God himself, with the prophet passing over any claims of the house of David to
that office. Jesus Christ, of course unites both a historical and human line of kingship from
David with a divine title to rule as Son of God, the title with which Mark opens his Gospel in
today's reading.
 2 Peter 3: 8-14: This passage from the second letter of Peter turns her eyes forward to the
second coming of Jesus. The concern of Christians as to why the Lord has not yet appeared
is put down to the forbearance and mercy of God who wishes all sinners to have a chance of
salvation. Nevertheless, the author emphasizes that the Day of Judgment will "come like a
thief" (v.10), and seems to go back to our Lord' s own words. In Matthew 24:25. These
verses (7-13) are the only scriptural passage, which hold that the world will be destroyed in a
final and fiery conflagration. The message to the congregation, however it is clear: the Day
of Judgment is coming, so be vigilant and watchful for it.
 Mark 1:1-8: By calling his work "the Gospel," Mark makes a claim from the outset that he is
writing not a biography of Jesus, but a proclamation of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, in which
he is again made present, The account of John the Baptist's preaching, which begins as the
setting and prologue to the public ministry of Jesus makes the connection between a
fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy, and the revelation of the one "my year than" John,
whose sandal strap John is unworthy to untie (this was work for slaves in an ancient
household.) John himself identifies himself with the prophetic voice who speaks in Isaiah 40:
"the voice of one crying in the wilderness."
 John is clearly portrayed in the line of Old Testament prophecy, clothed as he is "in camel's
hair with a leather belt around his waist." (Zechariah 13:4,) There seems also to be an
attempt to identify John with the prophet Elijah by this costume (2 Kings 1:8), in fulfillment of
Malachi 4:5.. John's ministry in which he calls souls to repentance and metanoia is sealed
by the sign of a baptism of repentance based on the ritual bath required of converts to the
Jewish religion. All Jews, all children of Abraham in faith are called now to be converted from
the heart in preparation for the advent of the one who will baptize with the Holy Spirit. In his
own person, therefore, John sums up the integrity and truth of the whole history of Old
Testament prophecy which comes to a culmination in the revelation of "the Lamb of God who
takes away the sins of the world,” his very dress and habit proclaiming, as does his voice
and deeds, his spiritual union and prophetic manifestation of the One whose messenger (GK:
anggelos) and voice he is.

3. References to the Catechism of the Catholic Church

 CCC 425: The transmission of the Christian faith consists primarily in proclaiming Jesus
Christ in order to lead others to faith in him. From the beginning, the first disciples burned
with the desire to proclaim Christ: "We cannot but speak of what we have seen and heard. "
And they invite people of every era to enter into the joy of their communion with Christ…
 CCC 515: From the swaddling clothes of his birth to the vinegar of his Passion and the
shroud of his resurrection, everything in Jesus’ life was a sign of his mystery. His deeds,
miracles, and words all revealed that "in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily." His
 humanity appears as "sacrament," that is, the sign and instrument\ of his divinity and of the
salvation he brings: what was visible in his earthly life leads to the invisible mystery of his
divine sonship and redemptive mission.
 CCC 523: St. John the Baptist is the Lord's immediate precursor or foreigner, sent to
prepare his way… Going before Jesus "in the spirit and power of Elijah," John bears witness
to Christ in his preaching, by his baptism of conversion, and through his martyrdom.
 CCC 524: When the Church celebrates the liturgy of Advent each year, she makes present
this ancient expectancy of the Messiah, for by sharing in the long preparation for the Savior's
first coming, the faithful renew their ardent desire for his second coming. By celebrating the
precursor’s birth and martyrdom, the Church unites herself to his (John’s) desire: "he must
increase, but I must decrease."
 CCC 720: Finally, with John the Baptist, the Holy Spirit begins the restoration to men of "the
divine likeness, “ prefiguring what he would achieve with and in Christ. John's baptism was
for repentance; Baptism in water and the Holy Spirit will be a new birth.
 CCC 1696: The way of Christ "leads to life"; a contrary way "leads to destruction." The
Gospel parable of the two ways remains ever present in the catechesis of the Church; it
shows the importance of moral decisions for our salvation: "There are two ways, the one of
life, the other of death; but between the two, there is a great difference." (Didache, 1,1)

4. Patristic Commentary
 The Venerable Bede (In Marc. 1,1): The beginning of this gospel should be compared with
that of Matthew, in which it is said, The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the son of
David the Son of Abraham. But here he is called the Son of God. Now from both we must
understand the one Lord Jesus Christ, son of God, and of man. And fitly, the first Evangelist
names him son of man, then second, son of God, that from less things our sense may by
degrees mount up to greater, and by faith and the sacraments of the human nature assumed,
rise to the acknowledgment of his divine eternity.
 Pseudo-Chrysostom ( Vict. Ant. E Cat. In Marc.): Otherwise it can be said, that he has
compressed into one, two prophecies delivered in different places by two prophets; for in the
prophet Isaiah, it is written after the story of Hezekiah, The voice of one crying in the
wilderness; but in Malachi, Behold, I send my angel. The Evangelist, therefore , taking parts
of two prophecies has put them down as spoken by Isaiah, and refers them here to one
passage, without mentioning, however, by whom it is said, Behold, I send my angel.
 The Venerable Bede (In Marc. 1,3): What he is revealed, in which is subjoined, Prepare ye
the way of the Lord, make his paths straight. For whosoever preaches a right faith and good
works, what else does he but prepare the way for the Lord's coming to the hearts of his
hearers, that the power of grace might penetrate these hearts, and the light of truth shine
them? The paths he makes straight, when he forms pure thoughts and the soul by the word
of preaching.
 Pseudo-Jerome (Genesis 24, 61.; Psalm 95:6): Now by John, as by the bridegroom's friend
and a the bride is brought to Christ, as by a servant Rebecca was brought to Isaac;
wherefore there follows and there went out to him all, &. And the bride leaping down from her
camel signifies the Church, who humbles herself on seeing her husband Isaac, that is, Christ.
 But the interpretation of Jordan, where sins are washed away, is” an alien descent”. For we,
heretofore aliens to God by pride, are by the sign of Baptism made lowly, and thus exalted on
high.
 St. John Chrysostom: Because indeed John preached repentance, he wore the marks of
repentance in his garment and his food, wherefore there follows, And John was clothed in
camel's hair.
 St. Gregory the Great ( Moralia 31,25): Or, by the kind itself of his food he pointed out the
Lord, of whom he was the forerunner: for in that our Lord took to Himself the sweetness of
the barren Gentiles, He ate wild honey. In that He in His own person partly converted the
[Judeans], he received locusts for his food, which suddenly leaping up, at once fall to the
ground. For the [Judeans] leaped up when they promised to fulfill the precepts of the Lord;
but they fell to the ground, when by their evil works they affirmed that they had not heard
them. They made therefore a leap upwards in words, and fell down by their actions.
 The Venerable Bede (In Marc. 1,7-8). Thus then John proclaims the Lord not yet as God, or
the Son of God, but only as a man, mightier than himself. For his ignorant hearers were not
yet capable of receiving the hidden things also grab a Sacrament, that the eternal Son of
God, having taken upon him the nature of man, had lately been born into the world of a
Virgin;… to these words, however, he subjoins, as if covertly declaring that he was the true
God, I baptize you with water, but each about place you with the Holy Spirit. Who can doubt,
that none other but God can give the grace of the Holy Spirit?

5. Examples from the Saints and Other Exemplars

 Father Arthur MacGeoheghan, O.P. was martyred for the Catholic faith in 1713. He had
joined the Order in Spain, and, while a member of the convent of Holy Rosary in Lisbon, was
sent to Ireland to procure religious vocations there in his native country. While passing
through England, he was arrested and tried for the crime of being educated abroad, which
was one provision of the English penal laws against Catholics. Father Arthur took the
occasion of his trial to boldly proclaim himself a Dominican, and that he was on his way to
Ireland to obtain more young men to be trained as Dominicans, and that he was perfectly
willing to die for the true faith. He was found guilty, hanged, drawn, and quartered. His bold
testimony in court became so well known that eligible young men from all over Ireland,
hearing of his case, said goodbye to their families and took ship for Spain and the
Netherlands, risking death. So that they might come back to Ireland as priests and martyrs
themselves. In this way, we see how the preacher can bring Christ to those who hear his
message, even at the distance, because the preaching itself contains and manifests the
Word of God who saves sinners, purifies hearts, and transforms lives.
 The foundation of the Order of Preachers was attended by a number of visions by numerous
persons throughout Europe, all of which had a similar pattern: Christ was seen wrathful,
ready to pour out the burning power of the Apocalypse upon a world that seemed too busy
and full of itself to countenance any further spiritual progress. His hand is stayed by the
Virgin Mary, who begs one last chance for humanity: the advent of her Preachers. The story
points out, not only the charismatic origins of our holy Religion, but the importance of
preaching in the present age of grace, as it constitutes a kind of advent of Christ in itself,
making visible through the preacher and the preacher's union with Christ, a union with Christ
 and the preacher’s hearers. The coming of the Order of Preachers was seen by their
contemporaries as something that stood between the two Advents of Nativity and Last
Judgment, enacting a moment of grace and crisis, which forced those who heard the word of
truth to make a choice for or against the Christ who is its origin and fullness.

6. Quotes

 Pope Benedict XVI (Coworkers of the Truth, San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1992, pp. 390-
391): One single soul, in Pascal's beautiful words, is worth more than the entire visible
universe. But in order to have a living awareness of this, we need conversion, we need to
turn around inside, as it were, to overcome the illusion of what is visible, and to develop the
feeling, the ears and the eyes, for what is invisible. This has to be more important than
anything that bombards us day after day with such exaggerated urgency. Metanoite:
change your attitude, so that God may dwell in you, and through you, in the world. John
himself was not spared this painful process of change, of turning around.
 Pope Benedict XVI (Homiletic and Pastoral Review, vol. XCVII, August -- September 199,
pp. 10 to 11.): Christ' s "I" is totally open to the "Thou" of the Father; it does not remain within
itself, but takes us inside the very life of the Trinity. This means that the Christian preacher
will not speak about himself, but will become Christ's own voice, by making way for the
Logos, and leading, through communion with the Man Jesus, to communion with the living
God … the ministry of the Word demands that the priest divest himself profoundly of his own
self … the ministry of the Word requires that the priest share in the kenosis of Christ, in his
"increasing and decreasing." The fact that the priest does not speak about himself, but bears
the message of another, certainly does not mean that he is not personally involved, but
precisely the opposite: it is a giving-away-of-the-self in Christ that takes up the path of his
Easter ministry, and leads to a true finding-of-the-self, and communion with him who is the
Word of God in person.

7. Other Considerations
 In the background of today's readings, and of the patristic analysis of the texts, runs the
notion that connected to the Lord's Advent is the notion of his incarnation, on his visibility.
On the surface, this may seem obvious, but the incarnation revealed at Bethlehem is
intimately connected with the revelation to the whole world still coming at history's end.
Tertullian quotes Isaiah 40 in his work Against Praxeas (27,6): " The Word, indeed, is God ;
and “the Word of the Lord endures for ever “, by continuing in his own proper (divine) form.
Since he can not be transfigured, it follows that his becoming flesh must be understood in
just this sense, then he really comes to be in the flesh, and is made visible, is seen, and is
touched by means of that flesh, and that all else in this matter must be understood in the
same way." This same blessed flesh of Christ, born at Bethlehem in which suffered for us on
Calvary will be seeing in its glorious and immortal form on the day the history closes, for it is
in this flesh that the Divine has become visible, and by means of this Body the second
Advent of God shall become manifest.
 The Fathers and Church tradition testify to a third Advent as well: Christ comes to us in the
Sacraments and in the present age, between his first and second Advents. In this third
Advent, Christ makes himself present sacramentally through baptism and confirmation, as
well as the other sacraments of grace, and most particularly in the Holy Eucharist.. these
 sacraments make the Body of Christ visible in the here and now, through the bodies of
Christians joined in heart and soul and deed to Christ. This visible Church is the place where
the world will find the” Strong One” prophesied by John in the present moment.

Recommended Resources
Benedict XVI, Pope. Benedictus: Day by Day with Pope Benedict XVI. Yonkers, Copyright
Ignatius Press/ Magnificat 2006. New York: Magnificat: SAS, 2006.

Brown, Raymond E., S.S., Fitzmeyer, Joseph, S.J., and Murphy, Roland E., O. Carm. The
Jerome Biblical Commentary. Two Vols. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, Inc.,
1968.

Donahue, Jiohn R., S.J., and Harrington, Daniel J., S.J. The Gospel of Mark. Sacra Pagina
Series, Vol. 2: Daniel J Harrington, ed. Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1991.

Dorcy, Sr. Mary Jean, O.P. St. Dominic’s Family. Rockford, Ill: Tan Books and Publishers, 1983.

Jacobs, Louis. A Concise Companion to the Jewish Religion, originally published by Oxford
University Press 1999.

Jurgens, William A. The Faith of the Early Fathers. 3 Vols. Collegeville, Minnesota: The
Liturgical Press, 1979.

Thomas Aquinas, St. Catena Aurea: Commentary on the Four Gospels Collected out of the
Works of the Fathers. Volume III- Pt. II: St. Luke. Albany, N.Y.: Preserving Christian
Publications, Inc., 2001.

Tugwell, Simon, OP., ed. Early Dominicans; Selected Writings. Classics of Western
Spirituality. New York; Ramsey; Toronto : Paulist Press, 1982.