Read­ing Time: 2 minutes

Introduction

John, in his own style and lan­guage, presents fur­ther guide on how to pre­pare for the cel­eb­ra­tion of the com­mem­or­a­tion of the birth of Jesus the Christ – the Anoin­ted One of God hence, the saviour. The Phar­isees needed to know with pre­ci­sion the iden­tity of John the Bap­tizer so as to ascer­tain if he is the Mes­si­ah they are await­ing. The Jews who sent people to inter­rog­ate John the Bap­tizer are the Jew­ish author­it­ies mostly con­cerned with ritu­al puri­fic­a­tions. The Phar­isees became more con­fused when John the Bap­tizer declared he was neither the Christ, Eli­jah, nor the Proph­et. In fact, the Jews expec­ted more people to be asso­ci­ated with the advent of the Mes­si­ah. This Sunday Gos­pel is the Johan­nine ver­sion of Mark 1:1–8, the Gos­pel for the Second Sunday of Advent (B). It is a fur­ther present­a­tion of John as the fore­run­ner of Jesus. Gaud­ete Sunday. Gaud­ete Sunday is the third Sunday of Advent.…..

The mission of the Light

The First Read­ing from Isai­ah out­lines the func­tions of the mes­si­ah. In Luke 4:16b-20, we read that as Jesus entered the Syn­agogue, as his cus­tom was, on the Sab­bath, “he stood up to read and he was giv­en the book/scroll of proph­et Isai­ah and unrolling the book he found the place where it was writ­ten. The Spir­it of the Lord is upon me, for this he has anoin­ted me: to bring the Good News to the poor he has sent me, to pro­claim liberation/freedom to the pris­on­ers to the blind the recov­ery of sight, to send the oppressed away/free, to pro­claim the year accept­able to the Lord. he rolled up the book. And gave it back to the attend­ant he sat down. And the eyes of everyone.….

Like John the Bap­tizer, we should all be wit­nesses to the light who is God him­self. The verb to bear wit­ness (Greek: mar­tureō) means to see or know by per­son­al pres­ence; to have dir­ect cog­niz­ance of some­thing or someone. There­fore, we are wit­nesses to the God who is Light because we have all seen, known and exper­i­enced this Light in vari­ous ways. Dur­ing this year, God mani­fes­ted his light to us in vari­ous forms and in vari­ous cir­cum­stances. We all exper­i­enced this Light in our fam­il­ies, places of work, as indi­vidu­als and as a com­munity. We have many reas­ons to thank God. We must always speak for the Light in sea­son and out of sea­son. John the Bap­tizer says.……

FOR DETAILS, GET YOUR OWN COPIES OF THE BOOK “THE WORD OF LIFE: SUNDAY REFLECTIONS” (vols. I and II)!! The reflec­tion for the 3^rd Sunday of Advent, Year B is found on vol. II pages 18–24. Happy reading!

For details on how to get it, con­tact the author on this link: https://m.me/uchennabiblia?fbclid=IwAR2yeg4a6sDGBp9QGkIvKj6FSADumMokN6lshdE0zuo-JHs6qOmlhA7jyHo or email me at: postmaster@uchennabiblia.com or simply send an SMS on 08116100926, and I will get back to you.

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