December 9^th 2018.  Second Sunday of Advent

GOSPEL: Luke 3, 1-6

Translated from a homily by Don Fabio Rosini, broadcast on Vatican Radio

Don Fabio’s reflection follows the Gospel reading . . .

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GOSPEL: Luke 3, 1-6

In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar,
when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea,
and Herod was tetrarch of Galilee,
and his brother Philip tetrarch of the region
of Ituraea and Trachonitis,
and Lysanias was tetrarch of Abilene,
during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas,
the word of God came to John the son of Zechariah in the desert.
John went throughout the whole region of the Jordan,
proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins,
as it is written in the book of the words of the prophet Isaiah:
A voice of one crying out in the desert:
“Prepare the way of the Lord,
make straight his paths.
Every valley shall be filled
and every mountain and hill shall be made low.
The winding roads shall be made straight,
and the rough ways made smooth,
and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.”

The Gospel of the Lord: Praise to you Lord Jesus Christ

Kieran’s summary . . . The word of the Lord comes to a strange man living in the desert, a place where there is no-one around to listen to him! The word does not come to the great and the mighty political and religious leaders mentioned in the Gospel passage. Maybe it is only in the desert that there is enough silence to hear the word of God? We are told then that John’s message is to prepare the way of the Lord, filling in the valleys and levelling the mountains. Is this our task? Are we to fill in valleys and level mountains? No, our task is to “prepare” the way of the Lord, which means to place ourselves in front of the Lord and his ways. Our task is to cease following our own ways and open ourselves in humility to his ways. Once we do that, then the Lord will fill in our valleys and level our mountains. Our valleys are the dead-ends and blind alleys that we follow, in which we debase ourselves and forget our human dignity. Our mountains are the ways in which we exalt ourselves and consider ourselves and our projects to be all-important. The path of the Lord is different to these two paths. It is straight and is the only path grounded in reality. When we place ourselves before the ways of the Lord, then he will lead us out of our arrogance and false autonomy into humility, and he will draw us out of the blind alleys and help us to realize our true dignity.

The word of the Lord comes to a strange man in the desert. It does not come to the great and mighty of this world. It is only in the desert that we can hear the word of God.

In this second Sunday of Advent we read the invitation of the prophet Baruch to leave aside the robe of mourning and to dress ourselves in the splendour of the glory of God: “For God has commanded that every lofty mountain be made low, and that the age-old depths and gorges be filled to level ground.” The Old Testament speaks often of the various returns from exile, these important stories of the liberation of Israel. The principal cases were the Paschal event of the exodus from Egypt - the transformation from slavery to freedom – and the return from Babylon when the people rediscovered their faith in God after a period of purification and correction. In the first reading Baruch is referring to the return from the humiliating exile in Babylon. Baruch speaks of the action of the Lord in bringing the people back, and, as we shall see shortly, Luke refers to this action in his Gospel passage for Sunday. The appearance of John the Baptist is described by Luke in precise historical terms. The various political rulers in power at the time are catalogued, as are the high priests. We are told then, that while all of these men were in power, the word of the Lord came to John in the desert. Wouldn’t it have been great if the word of the Lord had come to Tiberius Caesar or Pontius Pilate? What great influence they might have had! And we would have been satisfied if the word had come to Annas and Caiaphas, the high priests of the time. But, instead the word of the Lord comes to a man in the desert, an “outsider”. At one point in John’s Gospel, Jesus says, “My word does not find a home in you”. Maybe the word of the Lord is given no place by these great political and religious leaders. How does it arrive? It comes to this strange man who is living in a place where, in theory, there is no one to listen to him. Sometimes the word of the Lord needs to be spoken in the desert, because it is only when everyone else is silent that we can listen to God! Who will hear the word of the Lord in a noisy city?

Who prepares the way of the Lord? Is it up to me to level the mountains and fill in the valleys?

Luke’s Gospel gives a strange translation of the words from Baruch. In Baruch, the prophet was speaking about the work of the Lord, but here it seems that John is calling on mankind to carry out the task: A voice of one crying out in the desert: “Prepare the way of the Lord, make straight his paths. Every valley shall be filled and every mountain and hill shall be made low. The winding roads shall be made straight, and the rough ways made smooth, and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.” Must mankind carry out these operations? No. The original meaning of “prepare” (as in “prepare the way of the Lord”) means to place oneself in front of something. Thus we are being asked to place ourselves in front of God’s ways, his word. The “ways” of the Lord are another name for his laws. In Scripture we hear regularly that the ways of the Lord are straight and they gladden the heart. The longest psalm, Psalm 119, speaks repeatedly of the laws of the Lord as a lamp that lights the steps along our way. To place oneself in front of the ways of the Lord and to make those ways straight means that we must cease obstructing and twisting his ways. Once we place ourselves before the Lord in the proper way, then the filling in of the valleys and the levelling of the mountains are carried out by him.

The Lord will lead us out of arrogance into humility – thus he will level the mountains. But he will also lead us out of the valleys of abasement to realise our true dignity

The valleys are the places where humanity falls down and become degenerate. We follow paths that are obscure, leading nowhere except to unhappiness. We lower ourselves to the ground and slither like serpents, losing our dignity. Humanity also has the tendency of erecting towers that seek to make ourselves independent. So on the one hand we underestimate our true dignity, and on the other hand we overestimate our independence and autonomy, living as if everything depended on us, taking ourselves and our projects and preoccupations too seriously. These are the two poles of our self-deception and they prevent us from finding the path that is straight. This path of the Lord is the only one that is firmly grounded in reality. Whoever denigrates his true dignity betrays himself. However exalts his own ego betrays himself. No-one who follows either of these paths can ever be happy.

The Lord restores our dignity and leads us to have an authentic and humble knowledge of ourselves. He wishes to transform the geology of our hearts. Let us prepare his way by placing ourselves before him in the right manner.

The mission of John the Baptist is to announce this work of the Lord in straightening our hearts, challenging us to allow our hearts to be questioned, placing ourselves before the word of the Lord, so that his word can correct us, console us in our desperation, and lead us out of our arrogance into humility. The Lord comes to us because we are the ground that needs to be worked. The geology of our hearts must be transformed. The way that we have formed ourselves up to now must be challenged and changed. The word of the Lord comes to reform and regenerate us. We must not give in neither to sadness nor to self-exaltation. Let us be disobedient both to the promptings of depression and those of self-glorification. Whatever causes us to become discouraged, on the one hand, or to over-estimate ourselves, on the other hand, let us ignore. The Lord knows who we are. Let us look to him in order to understand ourselves.