In other news, I (literally) just booked my flight for Guatemala in January. Didn't know that I was going to Guatemala in January? Well, I am! I'm going back for three weeks to do some intensive work on my Spanish and hopefully take it to the next level (...like the "I'm-ready-to-break-up-with-Google-Translate" level) :) I'll also get to travel to the village where many of our Guatemalan parishioners in Logansport grew up... during their patronal feast day (St. Sebastian)... That's right. It's party time ;)
Enjoy!
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Homily: 2nd Sunday of Advent –
Cycle C
Having grown up in a suburban area
southwest of Chicago , I’ve come to appreciate much of the wide
open spaces that I’ve often encountered since living here in Indiana . I
mean, we had parks and other open spaces where I grew up, but nothing like the
expansive farms of corn, wheat, and soybeans like we enjoy here in Indiana . And,
as I drive through different areas of the state, I enjoy taking in these great
open spaces that go on for as far as I can see and which often make me wonder
about just how much more there is that I don’t see.
Having grown up here in the Midwest , however, where the land is mostly flat, I
am unable to appreciate what it means to live in the midst of mountains and
valleys. Only by way of vacations or
other short trips have I experienced what it means to have to drive over or
around a mountain to get to the next town or city or to have to climb down into
the valley in order to find the road that will take you to the market. As a result, I am unable to truly appreciate
the difficulties associated with living in areas like these. Perhaps many of you are in the same boat. Thus, our ability to appreciate what the
prophets speak about in today’s readings is also, perhaps, somewhat limited.
In the first reading, from the
prophet Baruch, we find the people of Jerusalem in mourning for their children who have been
exiled by foreign invaders. As such,
they have clothed themselves in the traditional garb of mourners. The prophet has come to announce that, by
God’s mercy, the children of Jerusalem are about to return and so he joyfully
announces that the inhabitants of Jerusalem are to throw off their garments of mourning
and are to put on festival clothing.
Then, they are to go to the highest place and look off in the
distance. What they will find is that
every mountain has been flattened and every valley has been filled in in order
to make a straight and wide way for the triumphant return of their children,
thus signaling a bright future for their nation.
For those of you who may have lived
among mountains, I suspect that this image of mountains that have been
flattened and valleys that have been filled in would seem to be very vivid as
you imagine what life could have been like had the same happened in the area in
which you lived. Those of us who have
spent most of our lives in Indiana, however, are probably more apt to focus on
that image of a wide, flat space, and what that would look like from a high
place (though it wouldn’t have to be too high around here). Imagine how incredible it would be to see a
whole nation of people traversing some of these expansive farmlands as if they
were returning to their homeland. Well,
perhaps you’re not impressed, but nevertheless it is exactly these Scriptural images
that the Church gives us this week in order to help us understand what God is
calling us to do during this Advent.
What we see in that first reading is
that the prophet is calling for two movements: one, that the people must first
prepare themselves, removing their
garments of mourning and putting on festival garments, and two, that the way must be prepared for the one who is
coming, making it level and smooth.
Then, in the Gospel reading, John
the Baptist turns this call inward as he calls the people to a “baptism of
repentance.” As the herald of Jesus, the
Messiah who was about to reveal himself, John was calling the people to prepare
not only by outward appearances, but also by inward dispositions as well: thus
making their hearts ready to receive
the Messiah that they had long waited for.
A line from one of my favorite
Advent hymns states: “make straight the way of God within.” John was calling the people to prepare the
way for the Messiah to enter into their hearts.
Thus, it was not enough to cleanse their hearts from sin by a baptism in
the Jordan River, but rather they also needed to prepare a way for the Messiah
to enter into their hearts by true
repentance: that is, by truly changing their lives and leaving behind their
sinful ways.
My brothers and sisters, we recall
John the Baptist’s words today in order to remind us that God calls each of us
to prepare our hearts to receive him.
God wants to come to us and to dwell in us and to lead us to our heavenly
homeland, and, although we have already been baptized by water and the Spirit
in the Sacrament of Baptism, we are still constantly in need of a “baptism of
repentance” like the one John called for in the Gospel reading: for when we
examine our hearts we discover that the way into them is neither straight nor
smooth; rather it is obstructed by ‘mountains of sin’ and ‘valleys of despair’
and self-pity. Far from being straight
and wide, the way into our hearts is narrow as it twists and turns around these
mountains and valleys: a result of rationalizing
our behavior instead of correcting
it.
Our Advent task, therefore, is to
knock down the mountains of sin and fill in the valleys of despair and
self-pity, thus straightening the way for God into our hearts. The best way that we can do this is to return
to the Sacrament of Reconciliation, for it is there that we can face the
mountains that our sins have erected between ourselves and God as well as the
ever-widening valleys of despair caused by our broken relationships with those
around us. And then we can watch as the
power of God’s grace flattens the mountains and fills in the valleys, thus
making the way between us smooth and easy to pass. (Hmm, what a Christmas gift that would be:
reconciliation with God and one another…)
You know, it’s a shame for us that
we are unable to celebrate the feast day of St. Juan Diego this year, since
today, his feast day, falls on a Sunday.
It’s a shame for us because he can be for us a great example of one who,
with the help of God’s grace, was able to flatten the mountains of doubt and
fill in the valleys of fear in order to bring Our Lady’s message to the Bishop in
Tenochtitlan, thus making the way smooth for Christ to enter the hearts of millions
of people in Mexico and beyond. Perhaps,
in that same spirit, we, too, could “make straight the way of God within” and
do the same right here in Indiana .
Given at All Saints parish: Logansport , IN December 9th, 2012
Awesome! Enjoy Guatemala. One thing I learned there is that it's always party time!!
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