2nd Sunday of Advent 5 December 2021 Aspiring to higher
things
People liked hearing John the Baptist preach, even the evil Herod (Mk 6,20), and the crowds who went out to confess their sins (Mt 3,5). John did not spare the feelings of those who heard him. He was calling them to repentance - which can be painful - but is always a good thing to do.
When we hear the Gospel in all its clarity, or when we hear stories of heroism in those who lived the Gospel, we find we have two opposite leanings within us.
One is to settle with what we have and just amble along at our own pace, admiring the great ones but not attempting to join them.
The other leaning is to allow ourselves to be stirred within, so that we aspire to greater levels of holiness, really wanting to make some impact with our lives on this world.
In practice the two tendencies co-exist and fight for our attention.
We like feeling inspired, but we also like to take it easy!
We hear about the saints, or people who have been through great trials, or generally are closer to God than we are.
We sense that some of that holiness should have a beneficial effect on us. Imagine spending a morning with the Holy Family, for instance!
We can neutralise that call to higher things by putting limits on it – for example, by declaring that we are good enough as we are, and don’t need changing.
Or we can give space for that influence of grace to lift us to higher things.
We never know ourselves which tendency will prevail. Some days we do better than others.
Consistency itself is something that can be helped by exposure to higher powers.
We do not just admire those who pray more than we do, who seem to be closer to God. We come to be like them.
We gradually extricate ourselves from too much worldliness.
With other fields of endeavour we can learn from the masters – be it sport, or music or scholarship. We can admire the best at their craft, but we cannot ever be that good.
But the spiritual world is open to all; the Gospel is addressed to everyone.
Anyone, high or low, gifted or not, can answer the call to holiness.
Holiness does not require ‘talent’ in the normal understanding of the term.
We do not have to be ‘good at’ something to make progress in holiness.
Anyone can be generous, kind, forgiving, chaste, honest, etc
We cannot do it without grace, but we have access to all we need of that.
We can keep listening to the stories, letting the example of great figures inspire us. We can also recognize the temptation to level all that out, to excuse ourselves from taking part.
We need to see instead that we are vital players in the drama and are called to an open-ended commitment, which will see personal progress, and also communal progress if others do the same thing.
John’s preaching is both to correct the usual sins, but also to prepare people for something deeper than they had expected.
No one expected the Messiah to be so concerned with the spiritual life as He was, but eventually the idea sinks in.
They thought He was coming only for political liberation.
Instead He teaches how to be holy, how to live to the full, with a spiritual understanding.
The fullest understanding of salvation involves the ability to be inspired, without resistance, and without conditions.
As the saying goes: We let go and we let God.
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