Advent Reflection Process

This process may be used, adapted, ignored, or read as a suggestion

for engaging and moving a little more deeply into the content of the
material. If it helps, great. If it doesn’t, please move on.

1) Spend a period of time recalling the Holy Presence of God and becoming
aware of how that Presence is accessible to you right here, right now.

2) Read the Gospel reading with deliberation and thoughtfulness, allowing

time to absorb both what is said and what is meant. Sit with it in reflection
and then read it once more. Move on only when it feels appropriate.

3) Think about and express – through speech, the written word, or simply by
intentional internal expression – how this Gospel is related to Advent, from
your point of view.

4) Watch the video, making note of anything that strikes you as important or
interesting; perhaps something that you disagree with.

5) If in a group, talk about what you picked up, what you’re thinking about, or
how this makes any connections with your thoughts, experiences, or the
things that you do.

6) Close with the recitation of a prayer (Our Father, Hail Mary, etc.) and the
Lasallian invocations.
• St. John Baptist de La Salle – Pray for us.
• Live, Jesus, in our hearts – Forever.

Lasallian Resource Center 2017 Br. George Van Grieken, FSC

 Second Sunday of Advent
Gospel

MARK 1:1-8
As it is written in Isaiah the prophet:
Behold, I am sending my messenger ahead of you;
he will prepare your way.
A voice of one crying out in the desert:
"Prepare the way of the Lord,
make straight his paths."
John the Baptist appeared in the desert
proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.
People of the whole Judean countryside
and all the inhabitants of Jerusalem
were going out to him
and were being baptized by him in the Jordan River
as they acknowledged their sins.
John was clothed in camel's hair,
with a leather belt around his waist.
He fed on locusts and wild honey.
And this is what he proclaimed:
"One mightier than I is coming after me.
I am not worthy to stoop and loosen the thongs of his sandals.
I have baptized you with water;
he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit."
 Lasallian Resource Center – www.lasallianresources.org

LASALLIAN REFLECTION – Second Sunday of Advent

The Gospel for the Second Sunday of Advent is the story of John the
Baptist, who came out of the desert wearing a camel’s hair outfit held
together with a leather belt and proclaiming that people’s sins –
anybody’s sins – were forgiven simply by a baptism with water, a
cleansing of the inner soul by a symbolic cleansing of the outer body.
But wait, there’s more. He said that somebody would come after him
who would do even greater things, who would cleanse them on a whole
new level. I’m sure that people of the time didn’t quite know what to
make of it all, but they did go to have their sins forgiven, and if that
meant having to be plunged into a cold, flowing river, so be it. All they
had to do – and this was probably the hardest part – was to
acknowledge their sins; to name them, to recognize and come to own
all the ways that relationships and trusts had been broken or hurt.
It may be that it was through his own desert experience – in the
stark, empty simplicity of desert life – that John the Baptist came face
to face with his own sins, his own limitations, his own false inner
stories. Having experienced God’s mercy by moving through his own
emptiness into an appreciation of God’s presence and fullness, when he
emerged from the desert, he was compelled to share the benefits of his
experience with all those whose burdens were so similar to his own.
The poet Robert Frost wrote the line: “The best way out is always
through.” 1 It’s a similar good way to think about and deal with personal
sins, challenges, difficulties, or just the minor inconveniences of life.
Don’t try to go around them. Simply move through them, acknowledge
what’s true, step forward, and step beyond their potential to skew the
way that you see and encounter the world around you.
1
Poem “A Servant to Servants” (1914)

Br. George Van Grieken, FSC Advent 2017

 Lasallian Resource Center – www.lasallianresources.org

Goodness and mercy best come to the fore surrounded by a cloud of

difficulties. Indeed it is this that helps them emerge in stark relief. The
Indian philosopher Rabindranath Tagore once wrote: “The dark takes
form in the heart of the white and reveals it.” 2 Mother Teresa, for
example, stood out as a small light in an ocean of dark poverty. Because
of her example, she revealed to the world both poverty and the power
of God’s goodness and mercy. She also was a voice crying in the desert.
John the Baptist invites us to follow his example and come to know
what the advent of Jesus Christ might mean for us and for others. In his
meditation for the Second Sunday of Advent, St. John Baptist de La
Salle applies his example to the ministry of teaching. He writes that by
living in the desert, John the Baptist was able “…to dispose his own
heart to receive the fullness of the Spirit of God in order to make
himself fit to carry out his ministry properly.” Then he says, “Because
you have to prepare the hearts of others for the coming of Jesus Christ,
you must first of all dispose your own hearts to be entirely filled with
zeal, in order to render your words effective in those whom you
instruct.” (Meditation 2.2)
This is why De La Salle so often recommended prayer and meditation
to the teachers. We cannot give what we have not received ourselves,
especially when it comes to the depth of our conviction, or care, or
commitment to our students and school community.
The time that we take for prayer, for reflection, for quiet presence;
these are the desert that is available to us for our personal renewal,
insight, and the inner alignment of our priorities. And it is also these
that will, like St. John the Baptist, best prepare our receptivity to the
Good News of the incarnation when Christmas arrives.

2
Book: Unending Love (1940, Pg. 26)

Br. George Van Grieken, FSC Advent 2017