A Lectio Divina Approach to the Sunday Liturgy
BREAKING THE BREAD OF THE WORD (Series 8, n. 2)
2nd Sunday in Advent, Year C – December 6, 2009 *
“Pure and Blameless for the Advent of Christ”
BIBLE READINGS
Bar 5:1-9 // Phil 1:4-6, 8-11 // Lk 3:1-6
(N.B. Series 8 of BREAKING THE BREAD OF THE WORD: A LECTIO DIVINA APPROACH TO THE SUNDAY LITURGY includes a prayerful study of the Sunday liturgy of Year C from the perspective of the Second Reading. For reflections on the Sunday liturgy of Year C based on the Gospel reading, please scroll up to the “ARCHIVES” above and open Series 2. For reflections based on the Old Testament reading, open Series 5.)
I. BIBLICO-LITURGICAL REFLECTIONS
Each fresh beginning is a gift. Through the Advent season, the new liturgical year offers the gift of hope to a Church that needs strength for witnessing. The Advent liturgy delights Christian disciples with beautiful images of renewal and galvanizes them with appeals to spiritual renewal and transformation.
The prophet Baruch in this Sunday’s First Reading (Bar 5:1-9) consoles God’s chosen people – subjugated by the Babylonians and humiliated in their land of exile - with images of victory, e.g. robes of splendor, miter of glory, royal throne, etc. He likewise comforts them with images of peace, e.g. level paths, fragrant shade trees, divine light, etc. The prophet encourages the feeble hearted and the suffering with visions of glory when Israel is restored to the Promised Land. Baruch thus makes a decisive and radical statement about the glorious destiny of the people of God. He depicts a very optimistic picture of the Advent of God’s chosen people to their ancestral home.
In today’s Gospel reading (Lk 3:1-6), John the Baptist addresses a word of comfort to a distressed people, routinely victimized by the collusion of political and spiritual leaders. To these people, the Baptist transmits God’s all-inclusive promise: “All flesh shall see the salvation of God.” The fulfillment of God’s messianic promise through the Advent of Jesus Christ is manifested in nature images: the desert transformed, the valley filled, the mountain laid low, the winding roads made straight and the rough ways smooth. Graciano and Nancy Seitz Marcheschi remark: “These powerful images speak of more than the landscape: they announce the straightening of the human spirit, the filling of empty hearts, the smoothing of the way that leads to healing and reconciliation.”
In the Second Reading (Phil 1:4-6, 8-11), Paul acknowledges with a spirit of thanksgiving and joy the signs of hope that fill the early Christian community in Philippi. He likewise prays that they may have greater love, understanding and insight so that they may be pure and blameless for the Lord’s definitive Advent at the end time. It is absolutely necessary that Christian disciples advance upright and without stumbling toward the “day of Christ” – his final coming.
The biblical scholar Pedro Ortiz explicates on Paul’s Prayer of Thanksgiving (cf. Phil 1:3-11): “After the greeting Paul (following a general custom) adds a prayer of thanksgiving. He begins (1:3-6) by giving thanks to God for the solidarity the Philippians have shown with him in his apostolic work, a solidarity born of their participation in the same faith in Christ and the same Spirit (2:1) and concretely manifested in the help they have given Paul in his moments of need (cf. 4:14). Paul does not hide the sentiments of intimate affection he feels toward the entire community of Philippi (1:7-8). Now that he is in prison he feels in a special way that they are associated with him and his work, in their sending him Epaphroditus to help him and serve him in his need. In exchange for that Paul asks God (1:9-11) that the love they already have may grow more and more and that it may be enriched with the intimate knowledge of God and the capacity to discern and choose always what is best. Thus they will be kept pure in a world in which evil prevails. And when the Lord comes for the eschatological judgment, he will find them irreproachable, producing a harvest of righteousness, that is, the good works they have accomplished. Thanks to the help of Christ Jesus and all redounding to the glory and praise of God.”
In this Year for Priests, we continue to present portraits of excellent priests who “prepare the way of the Lord”. They witness to the reality of hope and sacrificial love and thus help us in this ad interim time “to be pure and blameless for the day of Christ”. Ted Wojtkowsi, as a young man, was privileged to witness one of the greatest acts of saintly heroism of the twentieth century. His encounter with Father Maximilian Kolbe changed his life and enabled him to be a man of hope (cf. Jay Copp, “Inspired by a Martyr” in Amazing Grace for the Catholic Heart, ed. Jeff Cavins, et. al., West Chester: Ascension Press, 2004, p. 26-29).
The year was 1939. In September, German tanks rumbled into Poland. The first village attacked by the Nazis was the home of Wojtkoswki, then a 20-year-old student. A patriot, Wojtkowski went underground. He and his buddies manned a shortwave radio to gather war news from London and then secretly printed leaflets to let villagers know what was occurring. Before long, Wojtkowski hopped on his father’s bicycle and headed toward Hungary. His destination was France, where he hoped to join the Polish army. The Nazis caught him at the border, jailed him, and sent him to Auschwitz on May 1, 1949.
Auschwitz was not a killing ground for Jews yet; the Nazis were using it for criminals and for foes of their regime, including priests and activists. Wojtkowski, living with eight-hundred men in a two-story barracks, was put to work building more barracks. The Nazis treated the prisoners brutally. Priests were especially singled-out for punishment – guards kicked them in the face and stomach and clubbed them over the head. When a prisoner escaped, all the others were ordered to stand in the sun for days, hands on their heads. After a second escape, ten prisoners were machine-gunned. The third escape occurred on or about July 28, 1941. One hundred members of Wojtkowski’s barracks were forced to stand in rows of ten. Ten of them would die. Wojtkowski stood in the eighth row. The camp commander ordered each row, one after the other, to step forward. He began a random selection. One, two, three were pulled from a group. Wojtkowski hoped that ten would be singled out before his row was reached.
A fourth, fifth, and sixth were picked. The sixth broke down. “My wife, my children …” he sobbed. “Who will take care of them?” A prisoner from the sixth row turned to the commander, “I will take the place of this man with the wife and children”, he said. Most remarkable of all was the volunteer’s demeanor. “His expression was so serene, so peaceful, not a shadow of fear”, Wojtkowski recalls. The commander, however, was not impressed. “You must be some kind of (expletive) priest”, he snarled. But he accepted him as one of the ten. The volunteer and nine others were locked in a bunker. The Nazis would not waste bullets on them. They would be starved to death. The man was indeed a priest, but not just any priest. He was Franciscan Father Maximilian Kolbe. Poles considered Kolbe a saint. His personal assistant Jerome Wierziba, once said of him: “He had something good in his face that emanated God. Just looking at him gave you peace of mind.”
Kolbe published religious magazines and newspapers read by more than one million Poles. He was widely admired, running the largest Catholic religious house in the world. Intensely devoted to the Blessed Mother, Kolbe supervised six-hundred-fifty friars at his City of the Immaculata, an evangelization center near Warsaw. The Nazis naturally regarded Kolbe with suspicion after they invaded Poland. When he resisted pressure to apply for German citizenship for which he was eligible, he was arrested on February 17, 1941.
When the guards were out of earshot, the prisoners shared information with one another about the fate of the ten in the bunker. Kolbe was leading the doomed in prayers and hymns, and a piece of bread had been smuggled in to be used in a Mass. After three weeks, Kolbe was the last to die. The Nazis, impatient to use the bunker to punish others, had a doctor inject poison into Kolbe to finish him off.
The more Wojtkowski thought about Kolbe’s self-sacrifice, the more astounded he was. Francis Gajowniczek, whom Kolbe had saved, was a peasant farmer. Kolbe, forty-seven, was one of the most accomplished men in Poland, a priest with many plans. Already he had begun a missionary center in Japan and was determined to open an evangelization center in each continent. And Kolbe, who possessed great drive and ambition, had given up all his dreams in a moment. He truly was a man of God, Wojtkowski realized. Kolbe saved not only Gajowniczek, but also Wojtkowski. Years of deprivation awaited Wojtkowski. There would be backbreaking labor and physical abuse. But Wojtkowski never lost his will to survive. “Father Kolbe inspired me”, he says. “After his sacrifice, I never thought I would die at Auschwitz. Someday I would be liberated and tell what happened.”
II. POINTS FOR THE EXAMINATION OF THE HEART
How do the words of comfort and visions of future glory enunciated by the prophet Baruch impinge on you personally?
What do we do to prepare the way of the Lord and thus promote the divine saving plan: “And all flesh shall see the salvation of God”?
Do we endeavor to increase in love, understanding and insight so that we may be pure and blameless for the day of Christ?
III. PRAYING WITH THE WORD
Leader: Loving Father,
we thank you for the promise of hope spoken by the prophets.
The visions of peace they depicted strengthened our faith.
Most of all, we thank you for the historical Advent
and the ongoing “coming” of Jesus Christ, your Servant-Son,
who incarnated your saving word
and brought it to completion.
In Jesus Savior,
our hope of salvation became a reality.
In your obedient Son,
your gift of peace became truly ours.
Make us attentive to his various Advents in our lives.
Let our love, understanding and insight grow ever more
so that we may be pure and blameless
for Christ’s definitive Advent at the end time.
Help us to be sacrificial in loving and generous in serving.
Teach us how to prepare the way of the Lord.
Make us ready for the day of the Lord.
We deeply yearn for the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ
and with our lives, we sing:
“Maranatha! Come Lord Jesus!”
We adore you, loving Father.
We give you praise through Christ our Lord.
Assembly: Amen.
IV. INTERIORIZATION OF THE WORD
The following is the bread of the living Word that will nourish us throughout the week. Please memorize it.
“And this is my prayer: that your love may increase ever more and more … so that you may be pure and blameless for the day of Christ.” (Phil 1:9, 11)
V. TOWARDS LIFE TRANSFORMATION
ACTION PLAN: In this Advent season, let us pray that our love for God and for one another increase more and more and that we may be ready for the day of Christ. Like Paul’s beloved Philippians, let us endeavor to share and live our Gospel faith. By our acts of generous charity, especially to those who lack the necessities of life and those who are in great need, let us prepare the way of the Lord and enable people to be ready for Christ’s definitive coming.
ACTION PLAN: That we may truly be people of Advent expectation and ready for the day of the Lord, make an effort to spend an hour in Eucharistic Adoration. Visit the PDDM WEB site (www.pddm.us) for the EUCHARISTIC ADORATION THROUGH THE LITURGICAL YEAR: A Weekly Pastoral Tool (Year C, vol. 6, #2).
Prepared by Sr. Mary Margaret Tapang PDDM
PIAE DISCIPULAE DIVINI MAGISTRI
SISTER DISCIPLES OF THE DIVINE MASTER
60 Sunset Ave., Staten Island, NY 10314
Tel. (718) 494-8597 // (718) 761-2323
Website: WWW.PDDM.US