What thresholds do you need to cross? (2 of 4)

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December 7, 2025 | 5:28am

Advent comes at the threshold of a new year. Advent this year, through the Sunday Gospel readings, invites us to consider crossing certain thresholds. Advent, our preparation for Christmas, is a season of “thresholding,” of threshing the old and holding the new. On this Second Sunday of Advent, we continue sifting through old perspectives and exploring new ways of seeing.

The threshold of the “I don’t know” was what we reflected on for the First Sunday of Advent. The context of the “I don’t know” in last week’s Gospel was not knowing when Jesus would come again.

As unsettling as “I don’t know” may sound, it carries profound wisdom. If we knew for certain that Jesus was coming five years from now, we might be tempted to prepare only at the last moment. Not knowing exactly when Jesus is coming compels us to always be prepared. But how can we prepare for Jesus’ coming?

In our Gospel today (Matthew 3:1-12), John the Baptist, the voice crying out in the desert and urging us to prepare, proclaims, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand!”

What words do you associate with repent? Sin? Guilt? Confession? Conversion? The Greek word for repent is metanoeo, which can mean to feel moral compunction. You can trace the root of metanoeo to two parts: meta, beyond, and nous, mind. So you can also translate metanoeo as going beyond your present state of mind and thinking about things differently. If we were to push it, I think we can also say metanoeo is about imagining something new. Repentance is not just moral change but cognitive expansion—enlarging the vessels of perception so we can receive a bigger God.

How can we prepare for Jesus’ coming? One way is by opening ourselves to new ways of seeing.

John the Baptist is the perfect figure to push us to go beyond our current views. He appears in the desert, calling us out of our comfort zones. His strange attire of camel’s hair and his uncommon diet of locusts and wild honey are already signs: this man’s ways are unusual—get ready for something different.

He confronts the Pharisees and the Sadducees: “Do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’” In other words: “Don’t think you are already saved just because of your lineage.”

For us today, the warning might go: “Don’t think you are already saved just because you are baptized. It is not enough that you attend Mass and pray novenas. Change your ways of thinking about salvation!” John the Baptist would then tell us, as he told the crowds then, “Produce good fruit as evidence of your repentance.”

He then prophesies about Jesus: “The one who is coming after me is mightier than I. I am not worthy to carry his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fan is in his hand. He will clear his threshing floor and gather his wheat into his barn, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”

This does not sound merry or Christmassy at all! We are probably expecting a cute baby we will shower with oohs and ahhs, but the one coming is also a judge who will make us gasp and groan. But here is where we need to repent again—to step beyond familiar expectations and embrace a different way of thinking. If your image of the Messiah is already that of a stern King who disciplines his subjects, perhaps it is the vulnerable infant who needs your care and compassion that you must contemplate.

No single image can capture the mystery of God. While we may cling to those depictions that comfort, we must also face those that challenge. Jesus is the long-awaited Savior, yet he is also the one rejected by his own people. The angels sing of peace and glory at his birth, but later he will bring division, and his death will be mocked as defeat.

He is this, and that, and so much more in between—a Messiah who resists being confined to any one picture, and who continually invites us to see him anew. He will baptize us with fire… and may these images of him not merely scorch us, but ignite us, set our hearts ablaze, and energize us for the work of his kingdom.

Can we see Advent as a season of a different kind of repentance, of going beyond our minds and enlarging our vision of God? Can we prepare for Jesus’ coming by stretching ourselves with new images of God? Maybe these are the thresholds we need to cross this Advent.

Your prayer assignment this week:

Take a short 5-minute journey and walk through the different images of God in Nichole Nordeman’s song, “I Am”.

The lyrics trace the life of a woman who, as a young girl, imagined God as a Superhero, the one who drove away the monsters lurking under her bed. As a teenager pushing against her 10 PM curfew, God became the Secret-Keeper and Heartbreak-Healer, present in the storms of rebellion. As a mother of two, a shepherd in her own right, she discovered God as the pasture-maker and Savior, the one she could cry out to at 2 AM. And finally, on her deathbed, God is revealed as the End who also promises a new Beginning.

Through every stage, God is the I Am, a presence too vast to be exhausted, too deep to be contained, too wondrous to be fully grasped. His love and mystery stretch across the whole of life, meeting us in every season with a new face, a new name, a new grace.

This year, what have been your go?to images of God—the ones that steadied you, the ones you reached for in prayer? This coming year, what images of God might you be invited to go to—the ones that might surprise you, the ones that might reach out to draw you closer to him? 

Fr. Francis teaches Theology, Education and Scripture at both the Ateneo de Manila University and Loyola School of Theology. As a classroom teacher, he is first and foremost a student. As a professor, he sees himself primarily as a pastor.