Meditation for the Second Sunday of Advent, A: Be converted, the Kingdom of Heaven is near – Vatican News

Jesuit Father Flavien Zolabi introduces us to meditation with the texts of this second Sunday of Advent Year A.

Readings: Is 11, 1-10; Ps 71 (72); Rm 15.4-9; Mt 3.1-12

Dear brothers and sisters, today we celebrate the second Sunday of Advent in liturgical year A. We resolutely continue our spiritual journey towards an encounter with Christ, who comes to save us.

The readings offered to us communicate a message of hope and invite us to conversion. Indeed, in the first reading from the book of the prophet Isaiah, it is to the people of Israel whose hearts are filled with despair because of their sins and their infidelity to the covenant that the prophet announces a better future. It is about the coming of a king on whom will rest the Spirit of the Lord, spirit of wisdom and discernment, of counsel and strength, of knowledge and fear of the Lord. This Messiah King will usher in a new age, a new kingdom of justice and peace, where the lost order and harmony of creation will be restored. The Christian faith discovers in Jesus of Nazareth the fulfillment of this promise that God made to his people through the prophet Isaiah.

In the second reading taken from the letter to the Romans, addressing the faithful of Rome, Jews and pagans converted to Christianity, the apostle Paul invites them to conviviality. He urges them to understand that their differences should no longer constitute a reason for discrimination or reciprocal rejection, since they are all inhabited by the same spirit of Christ, who saved them. How far we Christians today are from realizing this dream of the apostle Paul! Indeed, we painfully witness here and there disconcerting divisions both between Christians of different sensitivities and between Christians of the same communities. We realize, then, how much we still and always need conversion in order to all live as children of the same father, redeemed by the same Saviour. And it is precisely this call to conversion that we hear from the mouth of the greatest of the prophets, John the Baptist, in today’s Gospel.

In the Judean Desert, John the Baptist proclaims:convert, for the kingdom of heaven is very near“. The desert where John the Baptist proclaims his message of conversion undoubtedly evokes our different ordinary living environments. God never ceases to join us in the reality of our existence, to speak to us, to wake us up, to invite us to return to him. To convert means precisely to abandon the wrong direction in which we are committed by our divisions, our selfishness, our indifference, our sins, to take the path towards God. The path of unity, of self-sacrifice, of love. Certainly, conversion is a program that lasts our whole life. But the call of John the Baptist, the precursor, is pressing for us in this season of Advent when we are called to open our minds and our hearts generously to Christ who comes to meet us. Let us not be deaf to this call, dear brothers and sisters. Because, it is insofar as we manage to listen to this voice of the precursor, insofar as we allow ourselves to be drawn towards God, that we too will be able, in our turn, to be authentic messengers of the Lord for our brothers and sisters. scattered across the world. Amen.

Follow the meditation proposed by Father Flavien Zolabi, SJ

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Meditation for the Second Sunday of Advent, A: Be converted, the Kingdom of Heaven is near – Vatican News


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