As we light the second Advent candle today, we hear the famous cry of Isaiah echoed by John the Baptist: “Prepare the way of the Lord, make straight his paths.”
A highway or path, as we know, is a route that lets us go quickly from Point A to Point B. Back in the old days, highways were either built on land as roads that were relatively flat or were rivers that allowed for barges and boats to use. But as we know from experience, the best highways are those that are straight, where we can see what lies ahead and, as such, go as fast as we can. If the highway is curved, we need to be careful lest we crash and burn.
And that’s the question, isn’t it? When John the Baptist echoes Isaiah’s words, he isn’t talking about a physical or geographic highway. He’s talking about the highway of our hearts. Are our hearts straight and level so that the Lord God can speedily and eagerly come to us? Or are our hearts full of twists and turns that can make it hard for us to receive him?
Indeed, the “way of the Lord” implies that our hearts belong to the Lord God. It is his road. It is his highway, his way to get to us. But we ourselves cannot change our twisted hearts into straight roads.
That’s why Jesus Christ came to us. John the Baptist says that “one mightier than I is coming after me [and] he will baptize with the Holy Spirit.” Jesus comes to us not only at Christmas two thousand years ago, and not only in the future, but today and every moment of our lives. He comes to immerse us in the Holy Spirit so that our hearts may be highways for our God where his grace and presence may descend upon us easily and speedily.
In this time of pandemic, we can be impatient. We can be exhausted by the burdens of hearing bad news or of being far from the sacraments, and so be tempted to give up the faith, thinking that God neither hears us nor will come. But take heart. The Second Reading tells us, “The Lord does not delay his promise” but wants all to “come to repentance.”
We have no control over this pandemic, but we do have control over how we react. We can either let these worries and woes bend our hearts away from God and towards other things, or we can ask for the grace for the Lord Jesus, who lives in Mary, to live in us as well. For Jesus wants to live in us today if only we invite him to prepare his way to our hearts, hearts that are ready to repent and be the exclusive highway of our God.
Joseph Yuson – St. Joseph Seminary, Edmonton, Alberta
Fot. Richard Greif /Unsplash.com