Responsorial Psalm – Psalm 126:1-2, 2-3, 4-5, 6
Second Reading – Philippians 1:4-6, 8-11
Advent is a time of longing. We are called to anticipate the arrival of Christ at Christmas and to prepare our hearts for the celebration of the Incarnation.
Children seem to understand this task intuitively. No one builds up more anticipation for Christmas than the child eagerly opening an advent calendar to count down the days until the Nativity is here.
Today’s readings invite us all to recapture that same sense of longing, in two slightly different ways.
First, the readings harken to the generations of Israelites who longed for the transformative arrival of the Messiah. The first reading, from the prophet Baruch, captures the longings of the Israelites in exile, when they hoped for the restoration of their land and the reunification of their people.
The account of John the Baptist in the Gospel appeals to the same deep sense of longing. Luke describes John’s ministry in the words of the prophet Isaiah, who insisted that God would free the Israelites from their captivity in exile and “make straight” the path back to Jerusalem for God’s people.
If we can imagine the years of longing that simultaneously pained and sustained the Israelites during their exile, we can appreciate the sense of longing we are called to embrace during this season of Advent. The prophetic texts of the Old Testament suggest that the yearning for restoration was constant for the Israelites during this period. Can we say the same during our Advent? As the busyness of Christmas preparations—the gifts, the food, the travel, the hosting, and more—descend upon us, do we keep a constant longing for the arrival of God at the forefront of our minds?
By appealing to the heartfelt longings of the Israelites over the centuries, the readings remind us to put the longing for God at the center of our lives.
Second, the readings also encourage us to deepen these longings by attending to the promises of God. In essence, they ask us to appreciate what we are longing for.
Throughout the readings for this Sunday, we see numerous ways to characterize the object of our longing. Baruch lifts up “the peace of justice” as a promise from God that awaits the faithful. In a world torn by conflict, both the literally violent (as in wars in Ukraine and the Middle East) and the perennially divisive (as in the polarized domestic politics of the United States), surely we can recognize a longing for genuine peace deep within our hearts.
The responsorial psalm depicts a vision of “laughter” and “rejoicing” when God “restore[s] our fortunes.” In a world inevitably marred by the imperfections of sin and the problem of evil, we all carry burdens that give us reasons to weep, whether that be the death of a loved one, the loss of a job, feelings of insecurity, struggles with mental illness, or something else altogether. By knowing those pains, we also know how profound the desire for genuine reasons to laugh and rejoice can be. We can find our longing in this promise too.
The second reading, meanwhile, offers the prayer “that your love may increase ever more and more in knowledge and every kind of perception, to discern what is of value, so that you may be pure and blameless for the day of Christ.” Here is the longing to be free from sin, to be part of the Gospel’s desire that “all flesh shall see the salvation of God.” If we loved with the purity of perfect perception, we would be saved from our judgmental tendencies and our temptations to dismiss others as not worth our time. We could see with the eyes of God and encounter the world as a gift, worthy of love even in the midst of its imperfections. Surely we can imagine the happiness this approach would inspire and can long for this transformation in our own lives.
By spelling out all these possible futures that God can bring about, the readings for this Second Sunday of Advent help to refine our longings so that we can see how our deepest desires turn us back to God. As St. Augustine famously insisted, “our hearts are restless until they rest in You,” reminding us that our ultimate longing is something that only God can fulfill.
Perhaps this Sunday, when we light the candle that symbolizes peace, we can pause to recognize our longings and turn in anticipation to the Christmas that is to come, when the God who promises to fulfill our longings dwells among us and gives us a newfound peace once again.
