Homily for December 7, 2025

Isaiah 11:1-10
Romans 15:4-9
Matthew 3:1-12

II Advent Sunday (A)
12/7/25

There are so many stories of Padre Pío and his spiritual gifts and, e.g., how he used the in the confessional.   That, when someone came to confess their sins but withheld one b/c they weren’t really sorry or were embarrassed,   Padre Pío had the gift to see that sin and he convicted the person to confess it.   ‘What about that time you denied God?,’ he said to a soldier.   The penitent was moved to contrition, confessed it, and received God’s forgiveness.   Sometimes we need that extra “push” and an invitation to repent from the heart!   Padre Pío would do this gently but firmly.   The saints will always lead us to what is true and good!

That’s also why St. John the Baptist is one of the greatest saints.   The cousin of Jesus, 3 mo. older than Jesus—he chose humility and makes himself lower b/c John humbly accepted that his vocation was to prepare the way for the Messiah.   When John baptized, it wasn’t a baptism of salvation/it was a baptism of repentance—preparing people for the true salvation by water and the Holy Spirit!   John’s job was to help people come to repentance/to contrition for their sins/to firmly decide on living a new life.   Jesus later baptized Baptism and made it the external sign of the inward reality of salvation/of the cleansing of sins!

But why did Christ’s Baptism need preparation? Why John the Baptist?   Much like Padre Pío, John was not shy to call out those who hadn’t fully repented of their sins.   For Padre Pío, there were (apparently) long lines taking 2-3 weeks to have Padre Pío hear your confession—that they had a ticket system. A story says that a man came back to Confession 8 days after Padre Pío had already heard his confession,   but he cut in line so he didn’t have to wait again/he lied saying that he had waited for several days.   Padre Pío drove him out of the confessional for lying!   Not b/c his sin was unforgivable, but b/c the man wasn’t sorry for it. He had lived his life lying to others to get his way—but you can never lie to God/and the Holy Spirit gave Padre Pío the ability to confront the man.   In a similar way,   John the Baptist saw the Pharisees and Sadducees coming … but there was no firm purpose of amending their lives.

You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath? Produce good fruit as evidence of your repentance.    Those are the (not-so) gentle but firm words of John the Baptist.   It’s not enough to show up to church then do whatever I want out there!   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.   What God wants is a contrite heart. You might be able to lie to your co-workers/to your family/even to the priest in the confessional—but none of us can lie to God.

And sometimes we need that gentle but firm reminder to repent from the heart. Not repentance by words only but by our actions—producing good fruit as evidence!   Meanwhile, we see sin in our society.   Domestic terrorism, agents causing terror on entire communities for the sake of following orders.   This isn’t somewhere in the Middle East—it’s in our own state!   I realize most of us are not directly responsible with causing terror on our own brothers & sisters in Christ who are immigrant, but,   if we have the possibility of calling any-one person to repentance,   and we don’t,   then we become an accomplice.

Obviously, I am using a current example of sin in our country,   but you can fill in with many others.   If I see my brother gossiping and I say nothing—no, but I feed with more, I’m not convicting him to repentance.   If I know my close friend is being unfaithful, yet I turn a blind eye,   what kind of friend am I?   If I say that I love my spouse, yet I encourage a debilitating habit (when I could stop it),   I may be an accomplice/not a John the Baptist/not a Padre Pío. 

But we know we cannot do this all on our own.    Even if some of us are stronger than others when confronting sin and evil,   we have no power had it not been given us from above.   The powers that we have as Baptized Christians is the same Holy Spirit that hovered over Jesus at His Baptism. A spirit of wisdom and of understanding, a spirit of counsel and of strength, a spirit of knowledge and of fear of the LORD.   We cannot convict one of our loved ones to repent from their sin    if we don’t do it from a spirit of wisdom and understanding/from the fear of the Lord that leads us to put all our trust in Him.   We have to always convict others in the spirit of God, lest we ourselves be judged unjustly by others, too!

The Lord gives us the gifts of the Holy Spirit in our Baptism, strengthened at Confirmation, that we may use them!    Their purpose is for us to help advance the Kingdom of God! That’s what John the Baptist was preparing for    b/c we can’t just stumble upon the Kingdom. We need to prepare our souls by repentance/that the Lord may take away our sins and He may come in.   And, unlike the Pharisees and Sadducees, we don’t go through the motions of being a Catholic Christian,   but we repent from our sins/we amend our life/and (most importantly)   the Holy Spirit bears fruit in our lives—fruit that will last!