The Attainable Kingdom:
The Second Sunday in Advent 2025
December 7, 2025
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Isaiah 11:1-10; Psalm 2; Romans 15:4-9; Matthew 3:1-12
In our readings, we hear from the two great Advent figures – Isaiah and John the Baptist - each asking us to have right relations with God and neighbors. In the Gospel, the Baptist encourages us to properly dispose our minds and attitudes before God. We have the opportunity to reorder our values and change course if we need to do so. The prophet Isaiah lays out a vision of a peaceable world in which harmony exists among neighbors, including former enemies. This idyllic world is the vision of life within the kingdom of God.
We wonder: Is this vision possible? I like to think “yes.” That is the goal and hope of every parent, especially around the holidays. Parents want their children to like each other and to get along well. They want them to hang out and to spend time together. They want them to develop a strong friendship based on genuine affection. It causes so much pain when family members do not speak or pull themselves apart from family events. Too many people upon their deathbeds want to reconcile with those whom they have hurt or have been hurt, and they miss the fruits of reconciliation during this lifetime. The peaceable kingdom is “now.” It happens whenever people reconcile, and it is far better to do it now than at the hour of one’s death.
Reconciliation restores right relations. Reconciliation works when we invite God into the process because it calls both people to be more open than they previously thought possible. It means taking big risks and making oneself vulnerable to further hurt, rejection, and unjust persecution. It means being the only adult in the room – once again. It means trusting in the already battered, elusive wings on hope, while hanging onto the last glimmer of possibility. It means possibly living with an eternally broken heart and a perceived sense of blame and failure. And, yet the attainment of reconciliation remains worthwhile.
God’s heart must be broken every time we hurt one another. God holds out the best for us because we can be better than we show. God wants us to see each other the way that God sees us – virtuously, as deeply caring souls, as redeemed persons with hearts formed by a mercy that is not deserved. I like to speak of God’s love as the love of a grandparent to a newborn. A fundamental change happens to the grandparent. Life and energy are rekindled, and the person holds that infant in one’s arms, marveling at the new life, cherishing the child with all of one’s senses, letting one’s breath be taken away, and gazing deeply into the mystery of life and love before them. The grandparent simply infuses love into the child and gets lost in hours of embracing and gazing and bringing the infant to one’s heart. All that one sees is beauty, magnificence, and perfection – just as the child is. The child does not do anything to earn one’s love; the child just has to exist, and love is born. This is how our God looks upon us – with wonder, appreciation, and stunning amazement, so much so that we take God’s breath away. This is the kingdom. This is the vision of Isaiah. We simply need to look at each other with the same astonishment.
God wants us to try out love. It is hard work, and this love is the threshold to another universe. It is the most tremendous and most mysterious force in the world, and it is often the most untested. When we give love a chance, we birth into the world the peaceable kingdom, a kingdom of right relations, a world of peace and harmony. This world, this time, this space, is worth every bit of our love. You are worth it too.
Scripture for Daily Mass
Monday: (Isaiah 35) Here is your God, he comes with vindication. The eyes of the blind will be opened; the ears of the deaf will be cleared.
Tuesday: (Isaiah 40) Give comfort to my people. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem and proclaim to her that her service is at an end, her guilt is expiated.
Wednesday: (Isaiah 40) Lift up your eyes on high and see who has created these things. Do you not know? Have you not heard?
Thursday: (Genesis 3) After Adam ate of the tree, God called to him, “Where are you?” I heard you were in the garden, but I was afraid because I was naked, so I hid myself.
Friday (Isaiah 48) I, the Lord, will teach you what is for your good, and lead you on the way you should go. Hearken to my commandments.
Saturday (Sirach 48) A prophet named Elijah appeared whose words were as a flaming furnace. By the Lord’s word, he shut up the heavens and brought down fire three times.
Gospel:
Monday: (Luke 5) After Jesus healed the man on a stretcher, he forgave his sins. The scribes and Pharisees protested and asked, “Who is this who speaks blasphemies?”
Tuesday: (Matthew 18) If a man has a hundred sheep and one of them is lost, will he not leave the ninety-nine in the hills and go in search of the stray?
Wednesday (Matthew 11) Come to me all you who labor and are burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble of heart.
Thursday (Luke 1) The angel Gabriel was sent to a virgin betrothed to Joseph to announce that the Holy Spirit would overpower her and she would conceive a son.
Friday (Matthew 11) How shall I consider you? I played a dirge for you and you would not mourn; I played a flute for you and you would not dance.
Saturday (Matthew 17) As Jesus came down the mountain, the disciples asked, “Why do they say Elijah must come first?” Elijah has come and will indeed come to restore all things.
Saints of the Week
December 7: Ambrose, bishop and doctor (339-397) was a Roman governor who fairly mediated an episcopal election in Milan. He was then acclaimed their bishop even though he was not baptized. He baptized Augustine in 386 and is doctor of the church because of his preaching, teaching and influential ways of being a pastor.
December 8: The Immaculate Conception of Mary is celebrated today, which is nine months before her birth in September. The Immaculate Conception prepares her to become the mother of the Lord. Scripture tells of the annunciation to Mary by the angel Gabriel. Mary's assent to be open to God's plan makes our salvation possible.
December 9: Juan Diego Cuauhtlatoatzin (1474-1548) was a poor, simple, indigenous man who was visited by Mary in 1531. She instructed him to build a church at Guadalupe near Mexico City. During another visit, she told him to present flowers to the bishop. When he did, the flowers fell from his cape to reveal an image of Mary that is still revered today.
December 12: The feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe is celebrated to remember the four apparitions to Juan Diego in 1531 near Mexico City shortly after the Spanish conquest of the Aztecs. Mary appeared as a native Mexican princess and her image is imprinted on a cloak that was presented to the bishop.
December 13: Lucy, martyr (d. 304), was born into a noble Sicilian family and killed during the Diocletian persecution. In the Middle Ages, people with eye trouble invoked her aid because her name means "light." Scandinavia today still honors Lucy in a great festival of light on this day.
This Week in Jesuit History
- December 7, 1649: Charles Garnier was martyred in Etarita, Canada, as a missionary to the Petun Indians, among whom he died during an Iroquois attack.
- December 8, 1984: Walter Ciszek, prisoner in Russia from 1939 to 1963, died.
- December 9, 1741: At Paris, Fr. Charles Poree died. He was a famous master of rhetoric. Nineteen of his pupils were admitted into the French Academy, including Voltaire, who, in spite of his impiety, always felt an affectionate regard for his old master.
- December 10, 1548. The general of the Dominicans wrote in defense of the Society of Jesus upon seeing it attacked in Spain by Melchior Cano and others.
- December 11, 1686. At Rome, Fr. Charles de Noyelle, a Belgian, died as the 12th general of the Society.
- December 12, 1661. In the College of Clermont, Paris, Fr. James Caret publicly defended the doctrine of papal infallibility, causing great excitement among the Gallicans and Jansenists.
- December 13, 1545. The opening of the Council of Trent to which Frs. Laynez and Salmeron were sent as papal theologians and Fr. Claude LeJay as theologian of Cardinal Otho Truchses.
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