Second Sunday of Advent

Dominica II Adventus B
6 December 2020

“Attitude is everything!”  It’s a common phrase highlighting that a good attitude and positivity really can change your outlook and can frame your life in such a way that, even when things are difficult and maybe not so good, you can be positive, and joyful, and happy.  And there seems to be some truth to that notion.  A positive good attitude breeds more of the same.  Get outside and enjoy some sunlight and fresh air, put away negative thoughts, laugh around a campfire with a good beverage, or just stop and call to mind the good you do have… these and so many other simple things are likely to positively impact you and those around you.  And studies even show that such positivity and focus on the good can have a real measurable impact on a person’s overall health and wellbeing.

It seems fundamental to our nature that we are drawn to goodness.  It is attractive to us.  We love hearing good and positive news.  And on the flip side, aren’t we often aghast when something evil and tragic happens?  Think of an attack that takes many lives.  Our reaction to such things reveals that it’s like we can’t even imagine the degree of evil that sometimes displays itself in our world, so fundamentally good are we.  And can’t we say that too – that negativity, bad things, and evil really do shock us – can’t we say that too demonstrates our fundamental orientation to goodness and positivity?  Even if people who do not ascribe to faith would not want to admit a divine origin of the goodness in us, they still recognize the basic fact of our goodness and our attraction to it.  As a person of faith, I am inclined to see in our natural orientation to positivity and goodness signs of our origins.  We believe we are made in God’s image and likeness, right?  If the supreme Good Himself made us, shouldn’t we expect that marks and characteristics of our Maker are present in us, just as an artist or craftsman leaves his marks in the things he makes?  Our fundamental goodness and orientation to positive things can be considered like the thumbprint of an artist in the clay he molds.  God made us and so no surprise that goodness and positivity resonate in us.

So, what am I doing with this homily this weekend?  Well, I’ve written a few self-help pop-psychology books I’ll be selling in the narthex… No!  No moral therapeutic deism here.  Far more than a basic self-help principle that “attitude is everything,” there is a faith principle and a theological truth we desperately need to latch onto.  We have Good News!  We have been claimed by Good News Himself, the Word of God in our flesh, Jesus the Christ!  We need to spend far more time with, give far more focus to, the Good News than we do the bad news.  Doing so will put you more in touch with the fundamental truth that God loves you and that He is in control.  Doing that will positively impact you.  A solid grasp on the fundamentals of our teaching can also serve to remind us of these things.  Fundamental matters like, God is good and He made the world to be good.  By the guilt of our first parents, sin and disorder entered this world, yes.  But God did not abandon us.  In His great love He sent His Son to suffer the disorders of our world and to bear our sins.  Jesus redeemed us.  And though as we pray soberly in the Salve Regina, we still walk in this valley of tears, we have forgiveness for sin and grace to advance in holiness toward the hope of eternal salvation.  This is Good News!

It is so easy to be wrapped up in and saturated by the bad news.  Yes, we know things in our world need fixing.  We are disturbed by the evil and lies that surround us.  We have anxiety about the state of affairs in our world, our leaders, and their agendas.  And we have worries and frustrations about Church leaders too.  We each have our personal struggles and pains.  No matter what you think of the science or the motivations, together we bear a psychological exhaustion with the events of this year.  I think I’ll scream if I have to think or say “COVID-19” one more time.  And I’m just about ready to trash all the “Closed” signs on every other pew.  Yes, negativity, darkness, and bad news is out there.  But if we believe in Jesus then we must catch ourselves when we give more attention to the bad news, to the kingdom of darkness, than we do to the Good News and the Kingdom of Light!  We don’t have to be naïve and pollyanish about our own sins and the problems in the world and in the Church.  Sober acknowledgement and challenge of those things is needed.  But be careful!  If we have been claimed for Christ and if we truly live as his disciples then we are a people of the Good News!

You know, right, that “Good News” and “glad tidings” are literal meanings of the word we translate as ‘Gospel’?  This weekend in the Scriptures the little appearances and reminders of Good News jumped out at me.  “Give comfort to my people, says your God.”  “Speak tenderly.”  “In the desert prepare the way of the Lord!  Make straight in the wasteland a highway for our God!”  We should evaluate ourselves.  Think of what others who really know you might really say about you and your attitude, the things you say, the way you act, the things everybody can read on social media.  Are you and I known more for spreading the bad news?  God’s word through Isaiah said, “herald of glad tidings; cry out at the top of your voice… herald of good news!”  I know we have worries.  Legitimate ones.  I know it is easy to be wrapped up in what is going poorly.  I know things can feel like a desert or a wasteland.  But still at the start of a new Church liturgical year, something about the Gospel today caught my attention.  Did you notice how St. Mark gets right to the point?  Whereas other Gospels spend significant space describing the conception, the birth, and the infancy of Jesus, how the whole story began, St. Mark makes a beeline to refer to his writing as the ‘Gospel’: “The beginning of the Gospel,” the first line today said.  Again, that word for Good News and glad tidings.

Brothers and sisters, by faith and by baptism we have been brought into the Kingdom of Light inaugurated in our midst.  Yes, we still await the final fulfilment of that Kingdom in Heaven.  And yes, in this in between time of waiting, so characteristic of Advent, we have to suffer the disorders of our fallen world, we have to suffer our own sins and the sins of those around us.  But we cannot give more thought and attention and energy to the bad news than we do to the Good News that defines us.  Think of it this way: We cannot live as children of the light as effectively as we must if we give more attention to the Devil and his kingdom and the bad news than we do to Jesus and his Kingdom and the Good News.  We have received the message of faith.  We are called to be messengers of the same for others.  “A voice of one crying out in the desert: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make straight his paths’.”