Verbum Dei UK

The Gospel on Sunday is of John the Baptist asking us to 'prepare the way of the Lord'. After that Jesus will begin preparing the way for us!

John had lines of people confessing their sins to him –and getting forgiven by God. The dip in the Jordan river was simply a symbol of that ‘getting cleaned’ that everyone could understand.� The call to repentance is actually a tremendous inherent part of God’s Good News because it’s telling us that we can change and begin again. Even if we’ve made ugly mistakes in the past, we can ‘clean up’. That means that the love of Christ can actually get born in us. It means that Christmas is really coming!

The first reading has the prophecy of Isaiah of the coming of our Good Shepherd Jesus. The second reading is of St. Paul , the Jewish scholar, praising the fact that Christ has united Jew and Gentile. With regards to the conversion of advent, an important part is that we turn (convert) one to another as the family of God.

Jesus knows well what is the way for us to an Eternal Life of Love and joy. The world puts curves, divisions, obstacles and stones along the way, so John the Baptist goes ahead of Jesus and he asks us to clear up the ‘pathway’. We remember today the fact that God chooses messengers to ‘prepare the way of the Lord’ and today he also chooses you and I to be his messengers. It would be good to prepare the way for others who will themselves prepare the way for others who will prepare for others! The descendents of Jesus will be many!

The world tempts us with attractive riches, honors and pleasures, but they are often traps, and God wants to see us free of that. Think of how the rat-trap attracts the rat into the position where the blade can spring and finish with the life of the creature. That’s like the way this world may set traps and Advent is a time to renew our desire to avoid that and renew our fundamental option for the Love of Christ. God doesn’t want us to be ‘masochists’ but to be free!

The people saw clearly that this John wasn’t a slave to any mundane ambition. I’m sure that he wasn’t trying to sell shampoo for peoples’ dip in the Jordan ! His riches were the clothes made from the skin of camels, the food of locusts and wild honey in the desert and he’s shouting out to us that there is a different great richness on offer: to die to our selfishness and to be born to a life of Love. His baptism in the Jordan represents the way we’re all going to die and thereafter rise up again to a Life that’s totally new. Jesus later on clarified what that rising up means. We’re called today to revive our desire to be free of the selfish search for worldly riches, honors and pleasures. That’s the ‘true wisdom’ to which Isaiah is referring. Being free like John, we’ll prepare the way of Christ – and Love will get born this Christmas –in us!

It’s nice the way John didn’t seek peoples’ respect for himself, but he wanted to direct them to Christ. His finger pointing represents the role of the whole Church. To enter the queue for John's baptism would need humility, and that’s something that God loves. I hope my multiple sclerosis will make me more humble. We shouldn’t want to point to ourselves. St Paul says that we can be 'living letters communicating for the sake of heaven' (2 Cor 3:2-3 ). To Hope that Christ be born in today's human family may seem exaggerated, seeing humanity's tendency to do wrong, and it isn’t possible for us on our own, but God can achieve it in us. St John of the Cross wrote this: ‘How great is the work that Love can do in us, because with the good as well as the bad that there is, He transforms everything into a single flavor!’. The sister of St Thomas of Aquinas asked him what she needed to do in order to be very holy, and he answered “You need to want it!”. Do you really want it?����

The important thing now is to understand that we can begin again and we can end up being ‘living Christs’. We prepare the road for Christ so that he can then prepare the road for us! As St Irenaus said: 'For this the Son of God incarnated as a son of man, so that man, by joining with the Word of God, would reach adoption and end up being a son of God'. We are created with potencial to be born to his image and likeness, but we are still 'in gestation'. Because Christ became human, our humanity assumes immortality and we will then be able to be adopted.���

Some may think that once they have confessed a sin, the battle with that sin has finished, but Jesus says otherwise: "When a bad spirit leaves somebody, it wanders through arid regions looking for rest but when not finding any, it says, “I will return to the place from where I came”. But when returning, it finds it swept and cleaned and put in order, then it calls to other spirits to settle-in and live there, and that person's last condition is worse than his first one” (Luke 11:24-26 ). One thing is to leave the things of the world that don't help us, but another is to move on and follow the one who will really help us.�

We are not worthy of Christ, but neither was the stable in Bethlehem , and that is what God chooses! And He won't be born only in individuals but in the united family of mankind. St Paul says today that Jew and gentile have been united. Isaiah says this: 'Then the wolf will be a guest of the lamb; The calf and the young lion will work together, with a young boy to guide them' (Isaiah 11:6 )... and we will all be singing in harmony with one voice (Romans 15:5 , 6): Hopefully with the voice of Christ!

Dara.

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