Homily from the 2nd Sunday of Advent (Liturgical Year C)
By Fr. Bartholomew Hutcherson, OP
After the three initial quotes, this homily was delivered in the manner of a beat poem...
“Up , Jerusalem, stand upon the heights. Look to the East and see your chi9ldren gathered from the East and the West at the WORD of the Holy One…” [Baruch 5:5 from the 1st Reading]
“The WORD of God came to John, the son of Zechariah, in the desert…” [Luke 3:2 from the Gospel Reading]
“And the WORD was made flesh and made his dwelling among us…” [John 1:14 from the Christmas Gospel]
WORDS – Air on vocal chords producing sounds full of meaning…
WORDS – Ink on pages producing symbols that point to meaning…
WORDS – Bits of information hitching rides on electrons transmitting meanings…
Ones and zeroes, ones and zeros, ones and zeroes – binary digits – BITS
Bits and bytes and kilobytes and megabytes and gigabytes and terabytes
“And the WORD of the God came to John, the son of Zechariah in the desert…”
Words –
Typing / Teletype
Telegraph / Morse code
Radio / amplitude modulating / frequency modulating
Vacuum tubes / cathode ray tubes / television / very high frequency / ultra high frequency
ENIAC/UNIAC / Electronic Random Access Memory / Read-only Memory / tapes
Key punch / punch cards / main frames / digital storage
Personal Computers
8086 processor with a keyboard, a monochrome monitor and a 5 ½ inch floppy disk drive (remember those?)
8086 / 80186 / 286/ 386 / 486
Basic / Fortran / Cobol / Microsoft Disk Operating System
DOS with a C Prompt
Graphic User Interface
3 ¼ inch floppy disk and a mouse
Apple Computers vs. IMB P.C.
Macintosh and Microsoft and Intel
Hardware and Software
1 Megabyte Internal Hard Drive!
Cable Television / Digital Television
Compact Disks / Digital Video Disks
Satellite TV – 35 Channels?!
Microsoft Windows
Pentium Processors / Pentium Pro (60 MHz) / Pentium II (120 MHz) / Pentium III (600 MHz)
Celeron – 1.5 Gigahertz of Computing Power!!!!
Intel Core / Duo Core
MPEG / JPEG / MP3 / IPod / Nano / IPod Touch
Killer Apps
Spread Sheets / Databases / Word Processors / Desktop Publishing / Computer Aided Design / Advance Computer Graphics and Video Games!!!!!
Pong / Atari / Asteroids / Space Invaders / Centipede / and PacMan
Donkey Kong and Mario Brothers / Sonic and Zelda / Doom / Grand Theft Auto and World of WarCraft
Nintendo 64 / Xbox / Play Station / PS2 / PSP / PS3 / and Wiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii
Desktop, Laptop, notebook / Macbook / IBook / netbook / Handheld and PDA
Cellular Technology
Mobile Phones / Cell Phones / My Phone / I Phone
CDMA platform / GSR Platform
Text Messaging / Smart Phone with a QWERTY keyboard / Instant Messaging
Satellite Radio / High Definition Television / 500 Channel Capability!!!
Information Super Highway / “The Net” / dot com / electronic mail / bulletin boards / chat groups / “Google” is a verb / mySpace / facebook / Twitter
I regularly update my facebook status via Twitter using my Blackberry Smartphne – O my goodness, I have become THAT guy…
Ones and zeroes, ones and zeros, ones and zeroes – binary digits – BITS
Bits and bytes and kilobytes and megabytes and gigabytes and terabytes
If the Word of the Lord comes to us in this desert as it did to John, the sone of Zechariah in that desert in the 15th year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, HOW WILL WE KNOW?
How will we be able to distinguish the WORD from all the other words?
How will we hear it beyond all the noise?
We think of Advent as a time of Waiting – but it is also a time of LISTENING.
Listening for The WORD.
Let us take time to be quiet this Advent (significant pause)
And if we do “The One who has begun a good work in you, will bring it to completion on the Day of Christ Jesus” [Philippians 1:6 from the 2nd Reading]
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