As I drove around
yesterday running some errands, I counted dozens of cars bearing
Christmas trees. Some were tied down to the roof of the car; others
were jammed into the trunk. And, then, there was one SUV that had a
two‑foot tall tree anchored to its roof and lit with those little
Italian light bulbs. I'm not sure why they're called "Italian" light
bulbs; for all I know, they might be Polish or Chinese light bulbs.
But, people were toting their Christmas trees home so that they could be
set up and decorated for the Christmas holidays.
Forget shopping at
King of Prussia Mall. KWY said the Route 202 interchange was a
disaster. So, I went to Kohls in Blue Bell instead. It was
hard enough to find a parking space and, once inside, the store's aisles
resembled what reminded me my little brother's ant colony. People were
scurrying about pushing carts stuffed with a bonanza of merchandize just
waiting to be wrapped and, then, placed beneath the tree. I actually
had to be careful as I maneuvered through the aisles because people
weren't watching where they were walking; they were just plowing ahead
to the next department.
From the look of
things, lots of people are getting ready for Christmas and preparing to
celebrate the Lord's coming.
As I looked about at
people in Kohls , I noted many of them¾especially
the adults¾were
deadly serious about their preparations. They weren't, for the most
part, cheerful or smiling. No, they were more anxious and in a hurry.
Their pursed lips and furrowed brows indicated that they were tense,
perhaps because they had so many things to do and so little time to do
them in. There were other people, too¾especially
the kids¾who
were equally as serious as were the adults. But, in contrast, the faces
of these people were filled with excitement, happiness, expectation, and
wonder. As they would peruse all of the merchandise surrounding them,
it was easy to see that there was so much they wanted. But, there was
also a look of sadness, I think having to do with the amount of time
they would have to wait until they could feast their eyes upon the
"cornucopia of unbridled avarice" they envisioned awaiting them on
Christmas morning. "Oh the pain!" their faces seemed to communicate.
Contrasting these
experiences with the words of John the Baptist in today's gospel, we
have a sobering reminder that all of these preparations¾as
important as they are¾are
really misdirected because they have very little or nothing to do with
preparing for the advent of the Lord. Listen carefully to what John the
Baptist says: "Prepare the way of the Lord...make straight his ways." In contrast to
all of the hustle and bustle characterizing the weeks and days between
Thanksgiving and Christmas Day, preparing for the advent of the Lord is
a different kind of very hard work, namely, spiritual work. This work
has nothing to do with our hands or our feet. Instead, this work has to
do with our minds and our hearts.
Advent is the time
we prepare for the Lord's coming into our lives. This preparation
involves the very hard spiritual work of looking at ourselves, of
surveying the wreckage we've made of things, of examining the wasteland
we have created, and of uprooting the vestiges of evil and sin from our
heart. We do this work in order to prepare ourselves so that, when the
Lord comes, we can give Him the best gift of all, namely, the gift of a
pure heart.
Today's first
reading from the prophet Isaiah provides words of hope and solace as God
tells the prophet: "Comfort, give comfort to my people." In the midst
of all of the hustle and bustle, as we survey the "busyness" associated
with the holidays, isn't it just a bit of comfort what we truly desire?
At the end of a long day of making preparations for Christmas, don't we
all say, "Comfort, Lord, just give me some comfort!"
But, that is not
what John the Baptist is preaching about.
The Baptist is
quoting Isaiah the prophet who God instructed to prophesy those words
after decades of pain and destruction and only after overwhelming and
devastation had visited the Israelite people. Until the Israelites
could see the wasteland they had created by wandering away from God
could they, in turn, appreciate the fact that the only true and abiding
comfort they really needed was to be found in God alone.
Instead, the
Israelites stubbornly had refused to recognize this need and chose
instead to blind themselves by seeking comfort in the false allure of
ambition, power, greed, and domination. They had turned their backs on
the One who had created, sustained, and sanctified them. They had
hardened their hearts against the One in whom they would find their true
identity. The Israelites were God's people; they weren't free to
do whatever they pleased and whenever they pleased. No, in all that
they did, the Israelites were to make straight the way of the Lord, to
be the beacon of light on the hill shining in the darkness. Through
their freely willed choices, the Israelites had chosen to live in the
dark valleys as exiles.
Now, for forty
years, the Israelites were paying the price for their choices. They
were living subject not to God's authority in the Promised Land but
subject to the power of their Babylonian oppressors in a foreign land.
And, after forty years of refusing to recognize their exile as the
consequence of their freely-willed choices, the Israelites were
teetering on the verge of doubt and despair. Not blaming themselves for
allowing their country to fall into their enemy's hands, the Israelites
were blaming God. And, rather than admitting that they had abandoned
God, the Israelites were blaming God for abandoning them.
The experience of
the Israelites is not some obscure artifact or history buried deep in
the sands of the Ancient Near East. No, their infidelity and
captivity to the consequences of their freely-willed choices is just as
true for us today as it was for them in biblical times. All of us,
human beings that we are¾or
as Nietzsche wrote, "human, all too human"¾make
some very poor decisions through which we forsake our identity as God's
beloved. But, like the Israelites, it will not be until we recognize
that we have chosen the wasteland by wandering away from God that we, in
turn, can appreciate the fact that the only true and abiding comfort we
really need is found in God alone. Perhaps some of us have realized our
complicity with evil and, after many years, feel resigned to our
captivity. And, maybe there are others of us, like the Israelites, who
after decades of captivity to the consequences of sin are now teetering
on the verge of doubt and despair, blaming God for abandoning us rather
than admitting that we abandoned God.
In Hebrew, the word
"comfort" means "courage." Giving comfort does not mean "being
comfortable." No, it means acting courageously by facing the
consequences of the choices that we have made and the captivity into
which we've enslaved ourselves. Giving comfort does not mean looking at
and blaming others for the wreckage of our lives. No, giving comfort
means taking an honest and sober look at ourselves and making straight
the way of the Lord.
"Courage, give
courage to my people," says the Lord. The comfort that we seek, just as
the ancient Israelites did, the comfort we hope and long for, comes not
from the fleeing and momentary pleasure that Christmas gifts provide.
No, this comfort comes as we have the courage to enter the wasteland
we've created through our freely-willed choices, to realize the
overwhelming disasters we have wrought and, then, to make straight the
pathway of the Lord. Advent is the time for this arduous spiritual work
so that, when the Lord comes, we can give Him the gift of a pure heart. |