The following is Bishop Caggiano’s homily for the Second Sunday of Advent
My dear friends, the very first time in my life that I looked upon the desert with my own eyes was the very first time I went to visit the Holy Land. And it was the desert that we hear described in the Gospel, the very desert that John the Baptist entered and invited others to follow to seek conversion of life. There are many ways to describe that experience. It is really impressed in my memory, but perhaps these are the sort of words that can best describe it. Certainly it is a formidable place, the desert.
I could not imagine being lost in it, because if one were lost in it, you would surely perish. But it is also beautiful in its own way. In a very strange sort of a way. It’s beautiful, eerily so. There’s almost a fascination with the desert which needs to be tempered.
And of course, above all else, it is silent. I was with a group of priests and I found my way drifting off, and so I was on my own. One could say the silence was deafening.
And it seems to me if we were to speculate as to why John the Baptist preached this message of conversion in the desert, in fact, it is precisely the silence that may have been part of the motivation, because John’s message to his people and to you and me is one of conversion. And if we wish to convert our life literally, as we say in Greek, metanoia, to change one’s face, to change its direction, to seek radical holiness in life, that’s not possible unless you and I devote ourselves to prayer, to deep and profound prayer. And what I’d like to suggest is, if you and I are serious about praying, then we need to rediscover the power of silence, quiet in a very busy and frenetic world.
The truth is, my friends, many of us struggle with that to find, if I may say, our personal desert in the busyness of our lives, a place where we can lay aside all of the concerns and anxieties and worries and thoughts that you and I have that kind of impinge on our lives, that kind of motivate the things we do. It’s very hard to take the demands of life away for a bit and to sit in silence.
It is in that silence that you and I need to remember that prayer is not time to seek things from the Lord. It is also a time to seek the Lord. And they are not the same thing for many times when you and I sit to pray, if we can carve that silence for very good intentions, we have a long list of things we ask the Lord for, for ourselves, for our spouses, for our children, for our friends and neighbors, for the world and the needs of the world, which are so many. And all of that, my friends, is good.
But what about the Lord himself?
What about entering into the silence with nothing to say and nothing to ask for, except for Him to sit before Him? So what can happen? So that, like a gentle mirror, the Lord could hold the mirror up to you and me, and we can see reflected back not only the good that we have done and the good people we strive to be, but also with His mercy and gentleness, to begin to glimpse where we have failed, where we have sinned, where we have compromised, where we have become mediocre, where we have become lukewarm, where we have become no different than the world out there. And many times, my friends, we fear that the Lord will judge us. But the truth is, the Lord does not come first and foremost to judge us.
He comes to invite us to new life, to invite us to begin again in Him. And He will provide his mercy and grace so that we can admit in honesty our faults and failings and begin to turn our lives where it is necessary to walk a path of conversion that will take our life to reach its destination. But if we do not seek Him, then I’d like to suggest we cannot truly seek a road of conversion, for it’s not something to do. It is something to be. And we must find Him so he may lead us to ever greater holiness of life.
So may I ask you a question? In the second week of Advent, and this advent, as you know, is very brief.
Where is your desert? Where is mine? Where do you find in your life the intentional decision to go into a place that is beautiful, formidable, and profoundly quiet? Are you and I ready to find that place, to carve out the time whenever it may be, and to enter into that place and not ask things of the Lord, but to seek the Lord, to have the courage to run into that space and not worry about what will happen. Not worry about, I’ll be okay.
Not worry about. Could I get lost in it? Just go in. And to find him, the gentle, loving, merciful shepherd who will take us by the hand, reveal to us our faults and failings, grant us the grace of his mercy, and walk with us in life, to eternal life.
My friends, this coming April, I was to visit the Holy Land. But unfortunately, that pilgrimage has been canceled because of the terrible war that is going on in the Holy Land. It is so deeply paining for all of us to consider that the very land the Lord walked, the Savior Redeemer, is marred with so much violence and destruction, so much hatred and bitterness. We pray for the prince of peace. We pray that peace will find its way in the Holy land for all those who are suffering.
But please God, peace will be restored. And please God, we will be able once again for those who have the opportunity to go back to the land that is holy, because the Lord walked there. And I think to myself that the very first place I want to go to when I return, if it is God’s will to return, is back to the desert.
