Friday, December 13, 2002
2nd Week of Advent

1st Reading: Is 48:17-19

Gospel: Mt 11:16-19

Jesus said to the crowds, "Now, to what can I compare the people of this day? They are like children sitting in the marketplace, about whom their companions complain: 'We played the flute for you but you would not dance. We sang a funeral-song but you would not cry!'

For John came fasting and people said: 'He is possessed.' Then the Son of Man came, he ate and drank, and people said: 'Look at this man! A glutton and drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!' Yet the outcome will prove Wisdom to be right."

Commentary

Jesus wept over Jerusalem, for falling to recognize the way to peace when it was offered. Something similar is happening here: John the Baptist lived a radically poor life in the desert and was condemned as too fanatical; Jesus ate and drank with society's outcasts, and people rejected him too: "What can you expect from a man with friends like that!" Todays first reading laments: "Had you paid attention to my commandments, your peace would have been like a river, your righteousness like the waves of the sea." Isaiah's words echo the frustration of Jesus in his longing to open the eyes of the blind and the ears of the deaf. We are those blind and deaf… we are always in need of healing and liberation. Advent offers it by suggesting: God is near, but perhaps not always where I expect or where I am looking.

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