St. Peter's News

The video and prayer for the Third Week of Advent, Cycle C, is based on Luke 3:10–18. The art is Domenico Ghirlandaio’s Preaching of St. John the Baptist.

Domenico Ghirlandaio’s fresco of John the Baptist preaching is one of a series he created for the Tornabuoni Chapel of Florence’s Santa Maria Novella Church. In this scene, we meet John the Baptist preaching to the crowds, standing on a rock and holding a cross staff with one hand, while instructing with his other. As he turns his attention to the people on the right of the scene, we can imagine him articulating the admonitions listed in Luke’s Gospel in response to the question, “Teacher, what should we do?” In his teaching to share goods justly and avoid extortion and excessive taxing, John is preparing the way for the Lord.

As John prepares the way by his preaching, Christ appears on the top left, heading down a path toward the crowd. Not one person notices him. At the moment, the focus is still on John’s preparatory role, on his preaching ministry that prepares the expectant hearts of the crowd for the advent of the Lord. Christ’s downcast gaze and crossed hands in contrast with John’s more active expression and hand gestures also underscore the focus of the moment.

To the left of the scene we meet a gathering of women, a feature characteristic of Ghirlandaio’s work. They too are engaged in listening to John. Two of them are pictured from the back, one standing and one seated at the foot of the rock on which John stands. The seated woman is especially evocative; her body is turned and directed toward John, even as a child at the foot of the prophet reaches out to get her attention. This detail alludes to conversion away from the pagan classical world that the child represents to the anticipation of the Gospel heralded by John. Seeing the woman’s back, the viewer is called to follow her example and to find oneself in her company in the crowd surrounding John.

In the midst of the elegant and colorful crowd, John the Baptist stands on a rock in his camelhair shirt and preaches the coming of Christ. His words call us to turn too, make way for the Lord, and let our hearts be filled with joyful expectation as he nears.

Explore Advent, Part 2

“Advent is a time to look for “desert places”: the place of solitude, the place of true silence in which we can become fully awake to our sin and God’s forgiving grace which alone can heal it.”-Br. Robert L’Esperance

This week we focus on John the Baptist through scripture, art and commentary. Let’s move to  Advent 2.

     

John the Baptist in art

 

John the Baptist Presentation

       

St Nicholas Day is December 6. 

 

Here is a presentation that provides the background of this saint who has had a colorful and varied history over 1800 years.

 

The Second Week of Advent is the week of Peace. This verse tells us that Jesus came to be the Prince of Peace. The word peace is the Hebrew word shalom which means completeness or well being. Jesus did not come just to end wars, but to make us complete by saving us from our sinfulness.

One of the hallmarks of the Christmas story is when the angels appear to the shepherds and proclaim, “Peace on earth,” in Luke 2:14.

Jesus brought about peace, in the most unexpected ways, when he arrived. The Jews, particularly the zealots, wanted a rebellion. They wanted their Savior to overturn the oppressive rule of the Romans and bring about peace in a violent way.

But Jesus had something else in mind. Jesus brings us peace in a number of ways.

First, he gives us inner peace. Because of his work on the cross, we have a chance to receive salvation and be indwelled by the Holy Spirit. This grants us an inner peace (John 14:27). Not only do we have the peace that comes from our assurance of salvation, but we also have the peace of mind knowing God will heal this broken world and will come again.

Second, we have peace with others. We put aside our differences (Galatians 3:28), especially with other believers, because we belong to the same family. We have the same purpose: to let others know about the peace of Christ.

The Hebrew word for peace: Shalom, goes far beyond not fighting with others or peace as we know it. Shalom which means completeness or well being. Jesus did not come just to end wars, but to make us complete by saving us from our sinfulness. As pointed out in the book Not the Way It’s Supposed to Be, shalom is, in essence, how things are meant to be: a slice of heaven.

The peace of God allows us to look at others through heaven’s eyes and help guide the world to see God’s here and not-yet here kingdom.

Peace from God, biblical peace, allows us to trust in God’s promises (Proverbs 3:5), through restful, tranquil faith, despite the dark, scary world around us.

1. Looking at Sin by Debie Thomas

John’s gaunt austerity is the only gateway we have to the swaddling clothes, angel’s wings, and fleecy lambs we hold dear each December. As baffling as it may seem, the holy drama of the season depends on the disheveled baptizer’s opening act. So again, why the wilderness?

For starters, because the wilderness is a place of vulnerability, risk, and powerlessness. In the wilderness, we have no safety net. To locate ourselves at the outskirts of security and power is to confess our neediness in the starkest terms. In the wilderness, we have no choice but to wait and watch as if our lives depend on God showing up. Because they do. And it’s into such an environment — an environment so far removed from safety as to make safety laughable — that the word of God comes.

“Sin.” We associate it with shame, guilt, and condemnation.

Advent begins with an honest, wilderness-style reckoning with sin. We can’t get to the manger unless we go through John, and John is all about repentance. Is it possible that this might become an occasion for relief? Maybe, if we can get past our baggage and follow John out into the wilderness, we will find comfort in the fact that something more profound is at stake in our souls than, “I make mistakes sometimes,” or “I’ve got a few issues.” What ails is something deeper, grimmer, and far more consequential.

Sin, at its heart, is a refusal to become fully human. It’s anything that interferes with the opening up of our whole hearts to God, to others, to creation, and to ourselves. Sin is estrangement, disconnection, sterility, disharmony. It’s the sludge that slows us down, that says, “Quit. Stop trying. Give up. Change is impossible.”

Sin is apathy. Care-less-ness. A frightened resistance to an engaged life. Sin is the opposite of creativity, the opposite of abundance, the opposite of flourishing. Sin is a walking death. And it is easier to spot, name, and confess a walking death in the wilderness than it is anywhere else.

John underscores his message of repentance with a harrowing description of the coming Messiah

I wonder if we squirm because we misconstrue the meaning of judgment. I tend to equate judgment with condemnation, but in fact, to judge something is to see it clearly — to know it as it truly is. In my dictionary, synonyms for judgment include discernment, acuity, sharpness, and perception.

What if John is saying that the Messiah who is coming really sees us? That he knows us at our very core? Maybe the winnowing fork is an instrument of deep love, patiently wielded by the One who discerns in us rich harvests still hidden by chaff. Maybe it’s in offering God every particular of our lives that we give Him permission to “clear” us — to separate all that’s destructive from all that is good, beautiful, and worthy.

Finally, Matthew suggests that the wilderness is a place where we can see the landscape whole, and participate in God’s great work of leveling inequality and oppression.

Unless we’re in the wilderness, it’s hard to see our own privilege, and even harder to imagine giving it up. No one standing on a mountaintop wants the mountain flattened. But when we’re wandering in the wilderness, and immense, barren landscapes stretch out before us in every direction, we’re able to see what privileged locations obscure. Suddenly, we feel the rough places beneath our feet. We experience what it’s like to struggle down twisty, crooked paths. We glimpse arrogance in the mountains and desolation in the valleys, and we begin to dream God’s dream of a wholly reimagined landscape. A landscape so smooth and straight, it enables “all flesh” to see the salvation of God.

Where are you located during this Advent season? How close are you to security and power, and how open are you to risking the wilderness to hear a word from God? What might repentance look like for you, here and now? Where is God leveling the ground you stand on, and what will it take for you to participate in that uncomfortable but essential work?

Debie Thomas: The Voice of One Crying

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