After we have considered the sublime program of sanctification which we should follow, it is very consoling to consider the magnificent text of today’s liturgy. They invite us to have complete trust in God’s help. ‘Thy salvation cometh quickly: why art thou wasted with sorrow? . . . I will save thee and deliver thee, fear not . . . As a mother comforteth her sons, so will I comfort thee, saith the Lord.’ God does not want anxiety or discouragement If he proposes to us an exalted way of sanctity, He does not leave us alone, but comes to help and sustain us.
Today’s Mass shows clearly how Jesus comes not only for the people of Israel, for a small number of the elect, but also for the Gentiles, for all men. ‘Behold the Lord shall come to save the nations (Introit), therefore let us have confidence and rejoice as St. Paul exhorts us” ‘Now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing that you may abound in hope’ (Epistle). And in order to stimulate our hope in Christ, the Gospel presents His wonderful works: ‘The Blind see, the lame walk, lepers are cured, the deaf hear, the dead rise again, the poor have the Gospel preached to them.
There is no physical or moral injury which Jesus cannot cure. He asks only that we go to Him with a heart dilated by faith, and with complete trust in His all-powerful, merciful love.”
In the Gospel for the Second Sunday of Advent, Jesus directs our attention to the strong, austere figure of John the Baptist. If we want to prepare our hearts for the coming, we, like St. John the Baptist, must detach ourselves from all the goods of the earth. John had left everything and gone into the desert to lead a life of penance. His example invites us to retire into the interior desert of our heart, far from all creatures, to await the coming of Jesus in deep recollection, silence and solitude, insofar as the duties of our state of life permit.
We must preserve in this waiting, in spite of aridity and discouragement. If we wish to taste the sweet joys of Christmas, we should know how to prepare ourselves with these dispositions which the Church invites us to pray for today: “We beseech You, O Lord, to teach us… to despise the things of earth and to love those of heaven.”