Dear brothers and Sisters in Christ,
From the lips of John the Baptist comes the sound, “prepare the way of the Lord; make straight His paths.” John makes the sound, but the word he speaks is the Lord Jesus. John is the voice of the one crying out in the wilderness. John gives voice to the Word, that is, the Word sounds through John the Baptist. But a sound without a word makes little sense, if any. Therefore, the Word is one with the voice, and the Word gives meaning to the voice. When we hear the voice, we can determine the meaning and the message it conveys because of the Word that the voice speaks.
Moreover, John himself testifies, “I am the voice of the one crying out in the wilderness,” (Jn. 1:23). John is simply a witness, a testimony of the one who cries out in the wilderness. This implies that the Lord himself is crying out; “prepare the way of the Lord; make straight His Paths.” This cry comes to us not only in the voice of John the Baptist, but also in John’s visible actions. We are told that “John went throughout the whole region of the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.” And to show proof and the convincing power of his message, John appears at the river Jordan performing baptisms for the forgiveness of sins. Baptism is a clear sign of true repentance and a real conversion of life. John is fully involved and completely immersed into this work of “Preparing the way of the Lord; Making straight His path.”
“A voice of one crying out in the desert!” Now, we must ask ourselves, what is this wilderness from which the Lord cries out? We need not think of this wilderness as just a simple location of some place on earth, as for example, the Desert of Arizona, or the Sahara Desert of northern Africa. We ought to think of this wilderness to mean the estranged and depraved condition of our human life; the spiritual dryness and the unholy fiery desires of our hearts. For, it is in this our human condition that the Son of God descends. And it is from the deep poverty of our human condition, from the waywardness that is ours, from the depth of our human blindness, from our sins and rebellion against God, from our separation from God that the Lord Jesus cries out, through John the Baptist, “Prepare the Way, make straight the Path.” So great is this desert that a simple asking is not enough, not even a mere pleading would satisfy, but a cry. The Lord is made to cry to move our hearts to conversion.
And how do we prepare the way of the Lord? How do we make straight His Paths? It is by the Grace of God that we prepare the Way and make His Paths straight. By virtue of our baptism, we all have been made adopted children of God. We have received the gift of the Holy Spirit; we have God Himself dwelling within us, we have the great gift of God’s grace. We make the way straight for the Lord by our swift and prompt response to this gift of grace. Our disposition to allow the grace of God bring about a true and lasting change in our lives, our love of good holy habits, our love of prayer, our humility in dealing with God, and our generosity towards others, our exercise of justice and frequent reception of the sacraments, our attention to the needs of the poor, all these are clear manifestations of making straight the way of the Lord.
By our love of God and of neighbor, we can help reduce the scorching heat of this desert by allowing those streams of grace and love to flow from the Savior’s pierced side into the depth of our hearts, and by allowing ourselves to be channels of God’s grace and mercy reaching the ends of the earth like the waters cover the sea.
Let us, therefore, brothers and sisters in Christ, open wide the doors of our hearts to Christ, let us not be afraid of God’s transforming Grace, let us make Christ’s path easy and smooth by welcoming the Kings’ arrival, the King of kings, the King of our lives, the King of peace, our Lord, Jesus Christ, who lives and reigns forever and ever, Amen.
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