Look Deep, There Must Be Something to Give Up

Rev. Marcel Divine Emeka Okwara, CSsR

Homily for the Second Sunday of Advent, Year C

Our Mother of Sorrows Catholic Church

Biloxi, MS

Sunday, December 9, 2012

To live a religious, pious and holy life depends mainly on our willingness and readiness to give ourselves to God. It’s not on the willingness of God to give himself to us because he has already given himself to us. God is already for us. What is needed is our willingness to be for him. What is urgently needed is a strong belief in the possibility to be for him and to give our lives as a living sacrifice to him. Repentance and conversion is a process and the first step of giving ourselves to God. It is the crucial beginning of saying yes to God. It is a change of lifestyle and attitude and behavior that turns one’s attention away from God. For some people, this is impossible. But with God, it is possible.   

In today’s Gospel taken from Luke 3:1-6, St. Luke tells us that John went throughout the whole region of the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.... As John toured the region of Jordan, his message was: Prepare the way of the Lord, make straight his paths. Every valley shall be filled and every mountain and hill shall be made low. The winding roads shall be made straight, and the rough ways made smooth, and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.”  After hearing John’s cry, many people were able to fill the valleys of their dark despair with the light of hope. With their  new found hope and faith they were able to move from the mountains of seeming impossibilities to the mountains of reassuring possibilities. Their lives which was once filled with crookedness were straightened out and made smooth.

We too have our own valleys, mountains and hills, and these come between us and God. They prevent us from saying yes to Jesus. There are people that won’t attend Mass because they don't feel like. Some stay away from Church because they feel that it's filled with hypocrites. Some walk away and stop coming to Mass because a certain change has occurred in their parish, and they feel they are loosing the control and ‘power’ they used to wield. Some allow their moods, feelings, and emotions to block the way of the Lord. Some refuse repentance and conversion toward a new attitude and a new version in life because it threatens their ungodly comfort.

The voice crying out in the desert is urging us to repent, to convert and to change. Repentance and conversion are conscious acts of our wills. They are free choices deliberately made to turn the page of sin, hate and unforgiveness. John travelled the entire region of the Jordan proclaiming: Prepare the way of the Lord, make straight his paths. But how many of us really believe in getting prepared the way of the Lord and making his paths straight? How many of us really believe in confession, repentance, and conversion? Some even argue that they don't need to be converted, that they're on the way to salvation, and that forgiveness of sins is only for those who are sinful. Confession and forgiveness of sins? “Oh, I don’t need them!” some will say. 

But too many of such people will look at the world and conclude that it’s in a bad shape: “Oh, this is a terrible world! Oh, this is a wicked world!” they will say. But while saying that, they will claim that their personal lives are in good shape. Beloved in Christ, nothing is wrong with the world that God created, but something is wrong with the people who live in it. We, each of us is responsible in one way or the other for the wrong in the world- either by commission or omission. So, in this season of Advent, the voice crying out in the desert calls us to repentance and conversion. Do not say, “I don’t think need it.” Everyone of us needs it. There must be something in our lives that we need to give up and abandon! Think! Reflect! Meditate! You will find something you need to let go so that you and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.