2nd Sunday of Advent Year A

Throughout the first three weeks of Advent, our focus is very clearly on the End of Time, and the Second Coming of the Lord – not on the run-up to Christmas (that only comes in the last week). If we view Advent as a Season preparing for Christmas these readings will make little sense – and neither will the figure of John the Baptist who appears today: if it was about the preparation for Christmas, then John the Baptist, preaching after Jesus was born, becomes a confusing figure: his role is to preach to us, as he did of old, and to prepare us for the (second) coming of the Lord. Everything gets more specific today: what is being preached is not an event, but a person: Isaiah promises him, John welcomes him, Paul invites us to imitate him. We have here a thumbnail portrait of the Messiah useful to refer to when we get to Christmas and he is revealed as a child in a manger!

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