DAILY READINGS & REFLECTION
DECEMBER 11, 2020
FRIDAY OF THE SECOND WEEK OF ADVENT
FIRST READING
ISAIAH 48:17-19
17 Thus says the LORD, your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel: I am the LORD your God, who teaches you to profit, who leads you in the way you should go. 18 O that you had harkened to my commandments! Then your peace would have been like a river, and your righteousness like the waves of the sea; 19 your offspring would have been like the sand, and your descendants like its grains; their name would never be cut off or destroyed from before me.
The Word of the Lord
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RESPONSORIAL PSALM
PSALM 1:1-6
Response: Those who follow you, Lord, will have the light of life.
Blessed is the man
who walks not in the counsel of the wicked,
nor stands in the way of sinners,
nor sits in the seat of scoffers;
but his delight is in the law of the Lord,
and on his law he meditates day and night.
R: Those who follow you, Lord, will have the light of life.
He is like a tree
planted by streams of water,
that yields its fruit in its season,
and its leaf does not wither.
In all that he does, he prospers.
R: Those who follow you, Lord, will have the light of life.
The wicked are not so,
but are like chaff which the wind drives away.
for the Lord knows the way of the righteous,
but the way of the wicked will perish.
R: Those who follow you, Lord, will have the light of life.
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GOSPEL
The Lord will lead you in the way you should go
MATTHEW 11:16-19
16 "But to what shall I compare this generation? It is like children sitting in the market places and calling to their playmates, 17 We piped to you, and you did not dance; we wailed, and you did not mourn.' 18 For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, He has a demon'; 19 the Son of man came eating and drinking, and they say, `Behold, a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!' Yet wisdom is justified by her deeds."
The Gospel of the Lord
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REFLECTION
To what can I compare the people of this day?
Today, we should be distraught before the Lord's sigh: To what can I compare the people of this day? (Mt 11:16). Jesus is overwhelmed by our heart, more often than not, nonconforming and ungrateful. We are never fulfilled; we are complaining all the time. We even dare to blame Him for all the things that disturb us.
Yet the outcome will prove Wisdom to be right (Mt 11:19): it suffices to just look at the Christmas mystery. But what about us? how is our faith? Could it be that our complaints are actually harboring the non existence of our reply? A very appropriate query for the time of Advent!
God comes to our encounter, but man especially the present-day man hides out from Him. Some, as Herod, are really afraid of Him. Others are even harassed by his simple presence: Take him away, take him away! Crucify him! (Jn 19:15). Jesus is the God who comes (Benedict XVI) and we look like "the-man-who-goes away": He came to what was his own, but his own people did not accept him (Jn 1:11).
Why do we run away? Because of our lack of meekness. Saint John the Baptist recommended us to "dwindle". And the Church reminds us so, every time the Advent comes. We must, therefore, become as little children to be able to understand and receive the "Little God". He appears in front of us with the humility of his swaddling-clothes: never before a “God-wrapped-in-swaddling clothes” had been preached! We project a ridiculous image before God when we try to conceal ourselves with pretexts and dishonest explanations. Already at the dawn of humanity, Adam blamed Eve; Eve blamed the snake..., after all the centuries gone by, we remain just the same.
Jesus-God, however, is coming: in the cold and the poverty of Bethlehem he neither admonished nor rebuked us. On the contrary! He begins to load his small shoulders with the weight of all our faults. Should we, then, be afraid of Him? Will our apologies be truly worth before this "Little-God"? God's sign is the Baby: we learn to live with him and to practice with him that humility of renunciation that belongs to the very essence of love (Benedict XVI).
- Fr. Antoni Carol i Hostench (Sant Cugat del Vallès, Barcelona, Spain)
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Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition (RSVCE)
The Revised Standard Version of the Bible: Catholic Edition, copyright © 1965, 1966 the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.