Repentance leads us to forsake sin and put ourselves into the loving arms of a merciful God. Let me put it an even simpler way: repentance is the recognition that I am infinitely loved by God, that I have sometimes failed to live up to that love, and that I need his mercy.
Repentance, in the end, is giving God a free hand to work in my life as he wants. This is supremely freeing. It means that I don’t have to save myself. It means that I can allow Jesus to enter into my life and take control, trusting that he deeply cares for us."
Greetings and blessings to all of you. As we celebrate the Second Sunday of Advent, John the Baptist comes on the scene. He appears proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.
John the Baptist is inviting the people of his day to prepare the way of the Lord through repentance. “People of the whole Judean countryside and all the inhabitants of Jerusalem were going out to him,” St. Mark says. Based upon this, his message was accepted by many.
A willingness to turn one’s life around
The biblical notion of repentance is not just confessing sin, but it involves a willingness to turn one’s life around… a conversion of mind and heart… a turning away from the things which lead me away from the receptivity of grace and turning completely toward God. To undo the negative and do the positive… to get our act together… to shape up.
Why would we want to repent and reform our lives? Not because we “dread the loss of heaven and the pains of hell,” but because in Jesus, God’s living presence of unconditional love, mercy, compassion and healing, is knocking on the doors of our hearts. This is the promise.
Put ourselves into the loving arms of a merciful God
Repentance leads us to forsake sin and put ourselves into the loving arms of a merciful God. Let me put it an even simpler way: repentance is the recognition that I am infinitely loved by God, that I have sometimes failed to live up to that love, and that I need his mercy.
Repentance, in the end, is giving God a free hand to work in my life as he wants. This is supremely freeing. It means that I don’t have to save myself. It means that I can allow Jesus to enter into my life and take control, trusting that he deeply cares for us.
New life and freedom
In this Season of Advent, Our Savior whom we await is able to transform our life with his grace, with the power of the Holy Spirit, with the power of love. In fact, the Holy Spirit fills our hearts with God’s love, the inexhaustible source of purification, of new life and freedom. This type of repentance brings to us not the baptism which John the Baptist proclaimed, but the Baptism which Jesus promised.
Starting anew
Jesus is the beginning of new possibilities and God is doing something new for us in him. In Advent, the joy and hope become present when we participate in the work of repentance. God comes with power to save us from our weaknesses and enables us to start anew.
Where does the Christmas story begin? It begins in the stages of preparation; it begins in the thinking and hoping for a new beginning that will help us to celebrate the birth of our Savior with deep gratitude for what God has done for us.
As we journey through this season, we will come to see how the Virgin Mary fully lived this reality, allowing herself to be ‘baptized’ by the Holy Spirit who flooded her with his power as she said “yes” to becoming the Mother of God.
May she, who prepared for the coming of Christ with the totality of her existence, help us to follow her example, and may she guide our steps to the coming Lord.
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