Gospel Reading: Matthew 3:1-12 (Prepare the way of the Lord)
Two roads diverged in a wood, and
I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made the difference.
Do you remember a road that you walked down before,
a road that made a difference in your life?
Perhaps, it was
a road in the woods you took -- like Robert Frost whose lines I quoted -– one that led to a surprising discovery.
Or, it was a road to that first day at school or to a new workplace, and with it, a hopeful beginning.
Or, it might have been the road to new friendship marked by love and laughter,
or marriage, with the happiness of a new life shared.
May be, you are looking ahead to 2011 and hoping to take new roads in your life:
from suburban Burlington to exotic Singapore;
from economic uncertainty to steady income.
New roads from suffering to healing, from hatred to forgiveness,
from a year that hasn't been great to the hope of a brighter new year in 2012.
The road we take and walk on.
The road that gets us from here to there.
The road. This is the image today’s gospel invites us to ponder on.
John the Baptist cries out,
Prepare the way of the Lord, make straight his paths.
This way, these paths are
the road Jesus takes to meet us.
They can also be our Advent road to Jesus.
What kind of a road will this be?
We have a clue in John the Baptist’s call to repentance.
John the Baptist challenged all he called
to repent, to have a change of heart,
to walk the straight and narrow path that leads to Jesus
who will come to baptize with the Holy Spirit.
Jesus who is “Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace" (Isaiah 9:6).
He who is the long awaited Messiah,
God's Word made flesh and splendor of the Father.
Jesus who comes to save us
and to bring us into God's marvelous light.
John the Baptist’s message of repentance is difficult to hear;
they confront; they challenge; they call his hearers to make their lives right.
He calls them, and us, to nothing less than taking and walking the road less traveled to God.
But his words are hope-filled.
The road to Jesus is the road to peace.
A peace in which opposites unite, differences are reconciled.
As the Prophet Isaiah tells us in today's First Reading
this is an extravagant peace where
“the wolf and the lamb together eat,”
“the leopard and the kid lie down side by side,”
“the calf, the young lion and the little child play.”
With three more weeks to go before Christmas,
John the Baptist’s challenge is timely for all of us,
and perhaps, necessary for some of us.
He is inviting us to pause and to ask ourselves,
“What is the quality of my Advent journey, my preparation for Christmas, the road I am taking to meet Jesus?
Am I too fixated on shopping for presents and gifts?
Am I too preoccupied with baking cookies and gathering ingredients for the Christmas meal?
Am I simply wallowing in the feel-good Christmas lights and carols I see and hear?
Or, am I not even bothered that Jesus comes to meet me this Christmas time?
If we are honest, we might recognize in John the Baptist’ message
inviting us to change our lives,
to take the road less traveled this Advent.
How can we begin to walk this road?
We can start by re-imaging Advent anew.
More than preparing for Christmas festivities and merrymaking,
this is the season of joyful expectation:
the joyful expectation of coming home.
To prepare the way for the Lord
is to prepare for Jesus’ coming home,
coming home to the one place God wants to be --
with you and me,
Jesus, Emmanuel, God-with-us, is coming home.
He is coming home to us by doing something so inconceivable of God:
by emptying himself of his majesty and might to become one like us, human.
And Jesus does this by taking the road less traveled.
And now, we are being invited to take a road less traveled to meet him.
I believe all of us here look eagerly with hope to Christmas,
to Jesus’ coming, to his radiant light dispelling the darkness in our lives.
We can do this because we know Jesus has come,
and we believe Jesus will come.
We know and we believe because we experience Jesus in our everyday life:
in our laughter as the goodness of life;
in our tears as consoling comfort;
in our pain as healing balm;
in our mistakes as words and embrace of forgiveness.
We have these experiences of Jesus through our family and friends.
Indeed, these make our exclamation of reliving again Jesus' birth at Christmas a joyful song like Simeon's:
“My eyes have seen the salvation of our God.”
Now, if the gift we wake up to on Christmas morning
as we're snuggled up in our warm beds, with snow falling around us and the first yawns of our family waking us up,
is Jesus, God's most wondrous gift:
is it not worth then for you and me
to take a walk this Advent to Jesus by transforming our lives?
And wouldn't our first steps be to take the road less traveled?
photo by d l ennis
This homily was preached earlier today at the Vigil Mass for the Second Sunday of Advent at St Malachy Parish, Burlington, Massachusetts.
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