December 4, 2022
My dear family of God,
Today we celebrate the second Sunday of Advent Year A, and our Gospel reading is from Matthew 3:1-12. In the Gospel reading, we hear of the preaching of John the Baptist in the wilderness. It was a message about conversion addressed primarily to two groups of people, the Pharisees and the Sadducees. These two groups of people were schooled in the Torah and boasted of their knowledge.
John the Baptist fearlessly denounced the social evils of his day and did not hesitate to rebuke the Pharisees and the Sadducees who presented themselves as custodians of the Law of God but had their hearts far away from Him. They had reduced the worship of God to ritualistic formalism and sought the praise of people in their self-righteousness. John the Baptist was very blunt in his rebuke of such attitudes. Perhaps in our day and age we would tag him as being “politically incorrect.” He did not care about political politeness. He had a message from God and presented it as God would have him say it and not what the people wanted to hear.
We are told in the Gospel that when John “saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to his baptism, he said to them, ‘You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath? Produce good fruit as evidence of your repentance. And do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’ For I tell you, God can raise up children to Abraham from these stones. Even now the ax lies at the root of the trees. Therefore, every tree that does not bear good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.”
John’s message was not just to denounce sin and evil but also to impress upon his hearers to live lives worthy of their calling as children of God. His message was to challenge people to be the best version of themselves. He not only denounces evil but also sets before people the highest good. He called the Pharisees and the Sadducees “brood of vipers” because they had become as it were the descendants of the ancient serpent, the arch-deceiver, who claimed to have knowledge but whose knowledge led to sin and rebellion. John, therefore, proposes to them the knowledge of God that leads to the conversion of one’s heart and mind.
Like John the Baptist, we are called to be that prophetic voice our world needs to hear so badly today. It is our prophetic mission to denounce evil and promote the good. May the Word of God that has come to us today encourage us to be truly converted and energize us to faithfully play our prophetic roles in the world.
God bless you and do have a grace-filled week.
Fr. James Ahenkora
