How Do You Prepare to Meet Jesus? (Advent 2c)

 Advent is a time of watching and preparing. Jesus is a real historical person. Luke connects Him to the time of the reigning Roman and Hebrew rulers. At the time people would prepare for the arrival of a king by fixing the roads to make a good impression. But how do you prepare to meet Jesus – either when you die or in the End Times! In the Readings:

·      John the Baptist called people to repent their sins and be restored to a right relationship with God.

·      Micah warned the ancient prophets and rulers God would not listen to them and hid His face because of their evil deeds.

·      Paul praises the Philippians for their right-relationship of love of God and neighbour.

 

1.   We prepare spiritually through self-examination and repentance

God, Jesus and the heavenly kingdom are holy. Just as Holy Spirit cannot live in us if we are spiritually polluted, we can not stand in God’s holy presence if we are spiritually polluted. Our spiritual pollution would burn up in the fire of God’s holy love. The First Step is self-examination:

·      Invite Holy Spirit to be with you and show you how you failed to love God and your neighbour self-sacrificially.

·      Go through each day in the past week slowly – morning, afternoon, evening; asking Holy Spirit to bring failures to love and obey to your attention.

·      Repent each failure in your heart by naming it and asking Jesus to take it to the Cross for forgiveness.

·      An alternative is to go through the 10 Commandments and ask yourself “In what ways have I broken this Commandment?” (We all break all the Commandments in some small way):

o   Gossip is murder in the heart

o   Criticism can be a curse

·      Baptism of Repentance comes when you name the sin, take it to Jesus through a priest or confessor to break the power of its secret, experience healing and accept Jesus’s forgiveness

 

2.   Mica Teaches Us the Consequences of Sin

The ancient prophets and rulers were often not in a right relationship with God. They had not experienced God in prayer or in their lives. They reduced God to an idol with rules. They did evil and destroyed God’s people.

·      Consequence was putting themselves outside the Covenant relationship of the 10 Commandments

·      God would no longer hear their prayers

·      They were separated from God – in Hell

 

3.   Philippians Loved God and Each Other

They had repented their sins and experienced the divine mercy and forgiveness of Jesus. 

·      They had been baptized in the Holy Spirit. 

·      They had seen miraculous healings and changed lived.

·      They had experienced the love, joy and peace of the Holy Spirit

·      They had already met Jesus and longed to meet Him again

·      This is the goal of our preparation for meeting Jesus at Christmas, at our death and in the End Time.