MASS READINGS

December 05, 2010 (Readings on USCCB website)

COLLECT PRAYER

God of power and mercy, open our hearts in welcome. Remove the things that hinder us from receiving Christ with joy, so that we may share his wisdom and become one with him when he comes in glory, for he lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever. Amen.

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Recipes (1)

• Whole Wheat Sweet Porridge

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Activities (6)

• Advent and the Year of the Eucharist
• Christmas Wheat
• Posters for Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany
• Religion in the Home for Elementary School: December
• Religion in the Home for Preschool: December
• Jerusalem Christmas Decorations

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Prayers (9)

• Hungarian wheat
• Advent Prayers
• Jesse Tree Prayer Service
• Second Sunday of Advent: Prayer Devotions
• Advent Table Blessing 1
• Novena in Honor of Our Lady of Guadalupe
• Christmas Anticipation Prayer
• Book of Blessings: Blessing Before and After Meals: Advent (1st Plan)
• Novena to the Immaculate Conception

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Library (3)

• Jerusalem, Mother Of All Peoples | Pope Saint John Paul II
• Jerusalem, Praise Your Saving God | Pope Saint John Paul II
• The Question of Jerusalem | Archbishop Jean-Louis Tauran

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Blog & Podcasts (11)

• Advent Feast: Our Lady of Guadalupe
• Advent Reading: The Last Battle
• Advent: Beginning the New Liturgical Year
• Advent: Ever Ancient, Ever New
• Advent: Focusing on the Essential with Expectant Delight
• Anticipation
• Living Advent Simply with Food and Family
• On Jordan's Bank
• The Jesse Tree Redux
• The Jesse Tree, Part 1: Relating the Old Testament to Children
• The Spirit of Advent: Listening to Christ

» Enjoy our Liturgical Seasons series of e-books!

"As the journey of Advent continues, as we prepare to celebrate the nativity of Christ, John the Baptist's call to conversion sounds out in our communities. It is a pressing invitation to open our hearts and to welcome the Son of God Who comes among us to make divine judgment manifest. The Father, writes St. John the Evangelist, does not judge anyone, but has entrusted the power of judgment to the Son, because He is the Son of man.

"And it is today, in the present, that we decide our future destiny. It is with our concrete everyday behavior in this life that we determine our eternal fate. At the end of our days on earth, at the moment of death, we will be evaluated on the basis of our likeness or otherwise to the Baby Who is about to be born in the poor grotto of Bethlehem, because He is the measure God has given humanity.

"Through the Gospel John the Baptist continues to speak down the centuries to each generation. His hard clear words bring health to us, the men and women of this day in which even the experience and perception of Christmas often, unfortunately, reflects materialist attitudes. The 'voice' of the great prophet asks us to prepare the way for the coming Lord in the deserts of today, internal and external deserts, thirsting for the water of life which is Christ." — Benedict XVI

Jesse Tree ~ Joseph

"Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand!" (Mt 3:1)
The heartfelt appeal of the man that from his mother’s womb was selected as the precursor, resonates more than ever in our time. The one that would straighten the tortuous path and the wayward road of the people of Israel, is the luminous figure who the Fathers of the Church have identified as the ‘last of the prophets’, St John the Baptist.

St John’s cry in this second Sunday of Advent, re-echoes strongly in our hearts and resonates in our souls which are called to open wide the door to the Lord who is coming. For this, we are invited to repentance, so that we may bring ‘good fruit as evidence of repentance’. (Mt 3:8), otherwise we could become like the ‘tree that does not bear good fruit and will be cut down and thrown into the fire.’ (Mt 3:10). This implies and involves a true and authentic change of life. To realize this purpose, we must hope that the Lord that "is God of endurance and encouragement”, grants us “to think in harmony with one another, in keeping with Christ Jesus” (Rm 15:5). As He welcomed us, we are also called to welcome each other "for the Glory of God "who is like ‘a shoot that shall sprout from the stump of Jesse’. The Glory of God will manifest itself to us with his “ spirit of wisdom and of understanding, spirit of counsel and of strength, a spirit of knowledge and of fear of the Lord (Is 11: 1-2). This spirit will be no longer temporary, as already happened in the past, but will be permanent, constructed on He who the Lord will send. "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, […]"Today this scripture passage is fulfilled in your hearing." (Lk 4:18-21).

As St Jerome referred to in the lessons of the second nocturne: "this branch without any knots protruding from the stump of Jesse is the Virgin Mary, and the flower is the same Saviour, who said in the Song of Songs: I am the flower of the field and the lily of the valley”. The devout St. Bernard, commenting the beauty of this flower that the Lord left to bloom for us, affirmed in his second homily of Advent, said: "The Son of the Virgin is the flower, purple and white flower, chosen among a thousand; flower whose sight gladdens the angels, and the smell of which restores life to the dead flowers in the fields as she calls herself, and not the flowers of the gardens, because the flower of the fields blossoms by itself without the help of man, without the processes of agriculture. So the womb of the Virgin, as an eternal green field, has produced this divine flower whose beauty is imperishable ever, and whose glory never be darkened. […]O heavenly plant, the most precious and most holy of all! O true tree of life, that you're the ' only one worthy to bear the fruit of salvation. "

In this time, therefore, we must ask the Lord, as St. Augustine always affirms, the gift of conversion: "What, then? It is perhaps dependent on you, O man, if converted to God once you have earned his mercy, while on the contrary those who have not converted have not obtained mercy but have encountered the wrath of God? But you what resources available to convert, if you had not been called? Was it not He who called you when you were the enemy, to grant you the grace of repentance? So do not ascribe to yourself the merit of your conversion: why, if God had not intervened to call you when you fled from him, you would not have been able to look back¹."

Citations:

• Is 11,1-10:  http://www.clerus.org/bibliaclerusonline/en/9abtajk.htm


• Rom 15,4-9: http://www.clerus.org/bibliaclerusonline/en/9aewjuo.htm


• Mt 3,1-12: http://www.clerus.org/bibliaclerusonline/en/9abttkc.htm

1. St. Augustine Expositionson the Psalmi, 84, 8-9.

From the Congregation for the Clergy

Advent Reflection: Dare to Step Forward toward God's Mysterious Presence
From early times the Church's liturgy has set words from one of the psalms at the beginning of Advent, words in which Israel's Advent, the boundless waiting of that people, has found concentrated expression: "To thee, O Lord, I lift up my soul; O my God, in thee I trust . . ." (Ps 24:1). Such words may seem hackneyed to us, for we no longer attempt the adventures which lead man to his own inner self. While our maps of the earth have become more and more complete, man's inner self has become increasingly a terra incognita, an alien region, in spite of the fact that there are greater discoveries to be made there than in the visible universe.

To thee, O Lord, I lift up my soul: recently I came to a new awareness of the dramatic meaning behind this verse when reading an account which the French writer Julien Green recently published concerning his path to conversion to the Catholic Church. He tells how, in his youth, he was in bondage to "the pleasures of the flesh". He had no religious conviction to restrain him. And yet, the strange thing is that, now and again, he goes into a church with the unadmitted longing for some miracle to happen that would instantly set him free. "There was no miracle", he goes on, "but, from afar off, the sense of a presence." This presence warms him and seems to offer hope, but he is still repelled by the idea of salvation being connected with belonging to the Church. He desires this new presence but is unwilling to undertake renunciation; he wants to effect his own salvation, as it were, and without any serious effort. Thus he encounters Indian spirituality and hopes to find in it a better way. But he suffers the inevitable disappointment and begins to examine the Bible. He is so in earnest about this that he starts taking Hebrew lessons from a rabbi. One day the latter says to him: "Next Thursday I won't be coming since it's a holy day." "Holy day?" asks Green in surprise. "The Ascension—do I have to tell you that?" answers the rabbi. The young man in his earnest search is suddenly struck as by a thunderbolt: it is as if the words of the prophets were raining down upon him. "I was Israel", he says, "whom God was entreating to come home." I felt the application to myself of the words, "The ox knows its owner, and the ass its master's crib; but Israel does not know..." (Is 1:3).

This kind of experience of the truth of Scripture in our lives is what Advent is. This is what is meant by that verse, "I lift up my soul"; from being a hackneyed phrase it can become something new, adventurous and great if we begin to explore its truth.

Julien Green's account of his turbulent youth provides an amazingly accurate description of the struggles which our own age has to face. First of all there is the universal acceptance of the modern lifestyle, which on the one hand seems to us to be the inalienable form of our freedom yet is felt to be a slavery which it would take a miracle to abolish.

(And there is no question of the Church's old-fashioned ways being of any use here; the Church is not even regarded as an alternative. Exotic religions, by contrast, present a novel attraction.) And yet it is of great significance that the longing for liberation is not extinguished, that occasionally it asserts its influence in moments of quiet in a church. And it is this readiness to expose oneself to a mysterious presence, to accept it slowly and gradually, to allow it to penetrate, that enables Advent to take place, the first glimmer of light in however dark a night.

Sooner or later it becomes alarmingly clear: Yes,I am Israel. I am the ox that does not know its owner. And when, appalled, we get down from the pedestal of our pride, we find, as the Psalmist says, that our soul lifts itself up; it rises, and God's hidden presence penetrates ever deeper into our tangled lives. Advent is not a miracle out of the blue such as is offered by the preachers of revolution and the heralds of new ways of salvation. God acts in an entirely human way with us, leading us step by step and waiting for us. The days of Advent are like a quiet knocking at the door of our smothered souls, inviting us to undertake the risk of stepping forward toward God's mysterious presence, which alone can make us free.
—Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Seek That Which is Above

Second Sunday of Advent
Station with Holy Cross In Jerusalem (Santa Croce in Gerusalemme):

The church in Rome appointed as the stational church for the Second Sunday of Advent is the Church of the Holy Cross in Jerusalem. Of old, salvation was of the Jews, but through them, and through this church, salvation is also given to the heathens. The Jerusalem, the Sion of today's liturgy, is the Holy Catholic Church, the vessel that contains Christ and his salvation. In the mind of the liturgy the figure applies also to each Christian soul, and to the church of stone in which we await the celebration of Mass in anticipation of the advent of our Redeemer (Baur, The Light of the World).

For more on Santa Croce in Gerusalemme, see:

• Rome Art Lover
• Roman Churches
• Churches of Rome
• PNAC
• Aleteia

For further information on the Station Churches, see The Stational Church.