Advent always seems short to me. I know it
doesn’t seem short to kids excited for Christmas, but it does to me. Too
short, really, for accomplishing the important work of Advent. And what
is the work of Advent? A look at today’s scriptures, with special
attention to John the Baptist, is a good place to find out. John the
Baptist is the great Advent preacher, the great Advent prophet. To
underline the Baptist’s importance, St. Luke introduces him with what
one commentator calls “a chronological drumroll.” He presents him right
alongside the great powers of the day, civil and religious, including
the Roman Emperor, Tiberius Caesar; the Roman Governor, Pontius Pilate;
Herod the Tetrarch; and the high priests of the Jewish faith, Annas and
Caiphas. It strikes me that John the Baptist, humble man that he was,
would have been quite surprised to find himself in that company, but
there he is!
Once he makes his appearance, we see John
traveling throughout the whole region of the Jordan valley preaching to
the people: preaching repentance, challenging people to be converted, to
change their lives. Something new is afoot, John tells them: God is
about to move among them in new and powerful ways, and to drive his
point home, he quotes the prophet Isaiah, giving contemporary urgency to
ancient prophecy: “Prepare the way of the Lord,” he says, “Make straight
his paths!”
In those few words, John gives us the work of
Advent – presents us with the perfect Advent ‘program’: we are to
prepare the way of the Lord. And how are we to do that? By
repenting, he tells us -- being converted, changing, turning our lives
around. Now I ask you: who of us couldn’t profit by that? Isn’t
conversion something we all need?
Conversion can cover a lot of different bases.
For some of us, conversion might simply mean reordering our priorities
by putting Sunday Mass at the center of our week. That’s not so easily
done, I know, given all the things that compete for our attention on the
weekends. And it’s not so easily done if the habit has been lost or the
commitment compromised over time, but it’s doable with God’s grace, a
willing heart, and some resolve. What would it be like, I ask myself, if
we had a “Twelfth Man” passion or a Kracken passion for Sunday Mass! So
there’s one possible conversion.
And there are others we might consider, too.
For instance, we need conversion if our work has become a greater focus
than our family; or if our relationships are more about ourselves than
about the other; or if our personal comfort blinds us to the needs of
the poor; or if we are so caught up with our own issues that we ignore
the great and pressing issues facing the human family: issues like
climate change, racial and economic injustice, the plight of refugees,
the epidemic of gun violence, the casual disregard for the value of each
and every human life, especially the most vulnerable.
You get the idea. Conversion can have
many faces and can take many paths, and true conversion cuts across the
entire landscape of our lives. In the imagery of today’s scriptures, it
involves hard work – hard as leveling mountains and filling in valleys,
making winding roads straight and rough ways smooth. Hard work, for
sure, but worthwhile work because, in the end, conversion leads to
freedom and liberation. And it leads to joy - the kind of joy that the
Prophet Baruch described so poetically in today’s first reading:
standing upon the heights, changing the robes of mourning and misery for
the glorious cloak of justice. So, no matter how hard the work of
conversion, it’s worth it because of the transformation it brings, the
liberation, the joy!
And, my friends, no matter how personal a
matter conversion is, it comes to life in community, the community we
call the Church. Our journey of faith, our path to conversion, is not a
solitary walk. We are in this together, and whenever we gather in
community to celebrate the sacraments as we have today, conversion gets
a jumpstart - or it gains momentum. It’s in community that we experience
what St. Paul, in the reading Philippians, called “partnership for the
gospel.” That’s a way of saying that the gospel, the good news, is
preached and lived in a partnership that involves us all – not just
people like me: the whole Church - all the baptized - all of us working
together and walking together in this imperfect but holy partnership
that is the Church!
Dear friends, it’s Advent, it’s conversion
time, and it all starts here – at the table of the Eucharist. Our
sharing in the Eucharist can wake us up to all the ways we need to grow.
It can disturb our complacency and take us beyond our comfort zone. The
Eucharist can change minds and hearts in ways nothing else can. That’s
true with regard to our personal lives, for sure, but conversion also
challenges us as members of a society that is torn apart by hatred,
violence, racism, injustice, and the selfish exploitation of God’s
creation. The power of the Eucharist is personal, for certain, but it is
also cosmic. So, in a few minutes when we pray together the words, “Only
say the word and my soul will be healed,” we will also be saying in
effect, ‘Only say the word and our world will be healed’ because we have
something to do with the healing of our world!
Father Michael G. Ryan
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