The Second Sunday of Advent tells of the preparations we should all make in welcoming Christ back into our lives. Creator Alme Siderum is the introit chant from the first Sunday, but is suitable for the second as it regards the Creator of the Stars.
The Old Testament prophecy is one from the Helenistic Canon, the prophet Baruch. The book is considered to be one of the Deuterocanonicals because its authenticity was called into question. Saint Augustine of Hippo disagreed. This reading brings to mind one of the few Saint Louis Jesuit songs worth preserving:
Rise Up, Jerusalem, and shine forth.
Thy King shall see, the glory of the Lord in thee….
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Reading 1 Bar 5:1-9
Jerusalem, take off your robe of mourning and misery;
put on the splendor of glory from God forever:
wrapped in the cloak of justice from God,
bear on your head the mitre
that displays the glory of the eternal name.
For God will show all the earth your splendor:
you will be named by God forever
the peace of justice, the glory of God’s worship.
Up, Jerusalem! stand upon the heights;
look to the east and see your children
gathered from the east and the west
at the word of the Holy One,
rejoicing that they are remembered by God.
Led away on foot by their enemies they left you:
but God will bring them back to you
borne aloft in glory as on royal thrones.
For God has commanded
that every lofty mountain be made low,
and that the age-old depths and gorges
be filled to level ground,
that Israel may advance secure in the glory of God.
The forests and every fragrant kind of tree
have overshadowed Israel at God’s command;
for God is leading Israel in joy
by the light of his glory,
with his mercy and justice for company.
The Gospel of Luke gives us the song of St. John the Baptist. It was immortalized by Georg Friederich Handel in his Easter Oratorio Messiah.
Gospel Lk 3:1-6
In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar,
when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea,
and Herod was tetrarch of Galilee,
and his brother Philip tetrarch of the region
of Ituraea and Trachonitis,
and Lysanias was tetrarch of Abilene,
during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas,
the word of God came to John the son of Zechariah in the desert.
John went throughout the whole region of the Jordan,
proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins,
as it is written in the book of the words of the prophet Isaiah:
A voice of one crying out in the desert:
“Prepare the way of the Lord,
make straight his paths.
Every valley shall be filled
and every mountain and hill shall be made low.
The winding roads shall be made straight,
and the rough ways made smooth,
and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.”
Beyond Sodality 