Second Sunday of Advent Homily: The Nations Seek the Messiah
Readings for Mass and Virtual Homily, December 7, 2025, Second Sunday of Advent; An Afternoon in Sacramento; Lightening Up as the Sabbatical Nears Its End
Readings for Mass this Sunday:
Isaiah 11:1-10
Psalm 72:1-2, 7-8, 12-13, 17
Romans 15:4-9
Matthew 3:1-12
Dear Friends and Family,
Although there are certainly other places a homilist might go, in terms of elucidating a specific theme in today's readings, one of the obvious possibilities is the conversion of the Gentiles, is the realization by "the nations" that the God of Israel IS God.
This realization occurs, of course, because the Gentiles came to believe that Jesus is the Messiah; the Messiah promised by the Jewish prophets and psalmists. It's intriguing because, of course, the Gentiles knew next to nothing of the Jewish prophets and psalmists. Yet, when presented with evidence of the way in which Jesus fulfilled the Messianic prophecies, via the teaching and the preaching of the apostles, the Gentiles were riveted. It was as if they were being let in on a great, an enormous, an almost unbelievable secret: the fact that God had been acting through the nation of Israel for many hundreds of years, had promised a Messiah through that nation, and had promised that the Messiah was not just for the Jews, but for the world.
The Gentiles flocked to the preaching of Paul and the other disciples. Again and again in Acts of the Apostles, we see Paul, Barnabas and others first preaching the Good News in the synagogues in the Gentile cities to which their missionary efforts took them. And, despite some success in the synagogues, again and again we see Paul, Barnabas and the others turning from the Jews to the Gentiles, with their message of a universal offer of salvation. And the Gentiles -- Greeks, Romans, Syrians, Galicians, Phoenicians and so forth -- respond with an overwhelming enthusiasm; the early Christian communities were composed far more of Gentiles than of Jews.
And I mean, this corresponds to all of us, pretty obviously. Unless you have Jewish ancestry, you are a Gentile. My ancestors in fourth-century Ireland responded with alacrity and joy to the teachings of St. Patrick; the Good News told them things about themselves and the universe that they had never understood before.
Chief among these revelations to the Gentiles was the fact of their utter worth, their priceless value to the God who had made them. The God who had made them for a purpose, the ultimate aim of that purpose being their union with their Creator in heavenly bliss for all eternity. The God who had made them was so determined to see that ultimate union achieved that he became one of us, and died a sacrificial death on our behalf. To ransom us from our folly, God gave us his very self, the Second Person of the Trinity, AS ONE OF US, truly human; one of us right down to the point of dying, just as we must.
God, entering into human death, in order to rescue us from it.
This message was liberating; more than that, it was electrifying to the Gentiles of the first centuries of Christianity. To try to grasp the power of this message among our ancient ancestors, imagine for a moment that the Nativity never happened. Imagine that Jesus never came. Imagine that God never reached out to us, never sought to rescue us.
What would life be like, were it not for Jesus? What would we believe, what would we think, what would feel, about our limited and ultimately doomed (because death cannot be escaped) existence here on earth, if there were no Jesus?
Whatever our answer to that question, the Gentiles experienced it as their reality; our pagan ancestors had zero clue as to the ultimate purpose and meaning of human existence. They had theories. They had myths. They had vague and ragged hopes. They did not have the Good News.
Until they did.
And once they did, and just to visit each of this Sunday's readings:
"On that day, the root of Jesse, set up as a signal for the peoples -- Him the nations will seek out" (Isaiah 11:10)
"May his name be forever; as long as the sun, may his name endure. May the tribes of the earth give blessings with his name; may all the nations regard him as favored" (Psalm 72:17)
"For I say that Christ became a minister...so that the Gentiles might glorify God for his mercy. As it is written, 'Therefore I will praise you among the Gentiles and sing praises to your name'" (Romans 15:9)
As for the Gospel passage, Matthew tells us that John the Baptist warned the Jewish leaders that they could be replaced:
"Produce good fruit as evidence of your repentance. And do not presume to say to yourselves, 'We have Abraham as our father.' For I tell you, God can raise up children to Abraham from these stones" (Matthew 3:8-9)
As it happened, of course, God did not need to raise up children to Abraham from stones. Rather, he raised them up through the Gentiles. Our ancestors. We are the people of the many, many prophecies of the time of the global faith; of the time when "the nations" shall come to worship the God of Israel.
How cool is that?
I took a day off this week and drove over to Sacramento to have lunch with a couple of dear friends, former Pleasantonians who now call Carmichael home. It was great. I am, as you know, from the Sacramento Valley, and I cannot be in Sacramento, let alone Marysville, without feeling just really at home. Right down to the 46-degree early afternoon temperature (given a persistent but fortunately high layer of tule fog), it just felt like...being home. (The sun did eventually come out, around three that afternoon. It turned out to be a beautiful afternoon, but -- again, remembering my childhood in the valley -- the mercury hit 50 and said, "That's it.")
One of the things that delighted me, as I criss-crossed the freeways heading into Carmichael, was the autumn color among the trees. We get some pretty impressive color here in the Bay Area; just this afternoon I took photos of a stand of trees off Main Street in Pleasanton -- they were too gorgeous to ignore. But in Sacramento there is more. I mean, of course -- palms, pines, oaks, olives, citrus, cypress and more -- our capital city is full of trees that are green year round. But it seems as though almost every other tree there -- right now -- is a flaming red, orange, yellow or gold, and it was a constant pleasure, driving amid all that color.
The very fact that I felt free to take the better part of a day out and just head over to Sac for lunch with good friends leads to my second personal observation in this e-mail. I am...letting up on the accelerator, at this point, with the aims and ambitions of the sabbatical. There is a little over a month left. And that month is the holidays. We have gotten a lot done, at San Gabriel, the past half year. We have seemingly endless vistas of bright ambitions yet ahead but...
I was free this Thursday morning to drive to Sacramento, if I so desired, and have lunch with friends I had not seen since before the shutdown. So I did.
I will be working -- lightly -- on and off, on books, videos, marketing plans and so on, with San Gabriel all this month. But I have felt a shift in focus this past week, and I am going to go with that shift. I am going to...write Christmas cards. Go to the gym. See family and friends. Take a few deep breaths.
And give thanks and praise to the Lord for a great sabbatical, the end of which is now coming into view.
All good.
Hope this finds you well and thriving. Happy Second Sunday of Advent!
God bless.
Love,
Fr. Brawn