The Child Will Play At The Cobra's Den; The Wolf And Lamb Will Be Neighbors

Second Sunday of Advent 2025

Our entrance antiphon today is full of hope and expectancy: “O people of Zion, behold, the Lord will come to save the nations, and the Lord will make the glory of his voice heard in the joy of your heart.” Save the nations. That phrase should open up the minds of everyone who hears it. When Isaiah’s listeners heard that, they had to think beyond the next invaders of their little kingdom of Israel, or Judah. When we hear it today, we must take off our political sunglasses and realize God wants to save all of us from our common enemies: sin, rebellion, pride, death and hell. Our nationality and political aspirations don’t matter in the light of that promise. God wants to come to us and with us to write a new story to repair the damage humans inflicted on themselves beginning in the Garden of Eden.

Our Scripture from the Emmanuel oracles of the Book of Isaiah, chapter 7 to 12 paints a picture of a renewed creation freed from the curses of the Garden. Picture our ancestor Eve, who with the serpent-demon rebelled against God and dragged Adam into sin. She and all her offspring earned a curse: eternal enmity between humans and the serpent-devil. But Isaiah foresaw an age when God would reverse the curse. Mortal enemies would become friends. The baby would play at the cobra’s den, and the wolf and the lamb would neighbors be. Eve and Adam ate of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, and only learned of evil. But on that great day in the future, the whole earth would be full of the good knowledge of God, as water covers the sea. Jew and Gentile would be reconciled.

In our psalm, written by King David for his royal son, Solomon, we hear the yearning of all humanity for justice, and for fulfillment of the promise made ages before to Abraham and Sarah. For a brief period, David’s kingdom reached from the river of Egypt all the way to the river Euphrates. All the tribes of the earth were blessed in King Solomon—he was filled with the spirit of Wisdom. Even the Ethiopian queen, a gentile, came to hear his words.

That state of affairs didn’t last long; Solomon became a victim of his own success, being drawn by his many wives to the worship of false gods. But the promise stood. Jesus Christ was and is the king David proclaimed. He became a minister to the Jews, the circumcised, showing God’s faithfulness to the promises to Abraham and David. But the promise was also directed to the Gentiles—to all of us non-Jews—and His mercy was extended to all the world. That mercy is everlasting.

John the Baptist appears for the first time in Matthew’s Gospel today. Matthew appeals to the prophecy of Isaiah. Like the proto-prophet Elijah, who called for repentance from the apostate kings of Israel, John was a voice of one crying out in the desert to prepare the way of the Lord. John was the first of the “desert fathers.” In response to his asceticism and call to conversion of life, hundreds of men and women came to be baptized as a sign of their admission of sin and need to change their ways. His preaching was not a comfort to the elites of his day: “You brood of vipers.” He recognized the pride and mad pursuit of wealth and power that has afflicted humans since day one, since that first demon serpent tempted our great-grandparents. John challenged them to rise from the waters of baptism and produce fruits from their repentance. And he taught his followers what he was not. He was not the Messiah, but only one preparing the way.

We know that one for whom John prepared was his cousin, Jesus of Nazareth, who would baptize with the Holy Spirit and fire. We hear this in Christ’s ministry through St. Luke’s account. Jesus taught that we who follow Him must prepare to follow His example and be empowered by the Spirit. He said “I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled!” His Spirit, manifesting itself as tongues of fire, first empowered the Church gathered around His Mother, Mary, at Pentecost. For that story, pay attention through the remainder of our liturgical year. For now, repent of sin and recommit yourself to follow our Lord Jesus Christ.