Make Straight a Path for
Him
Isaiah
11:1-10 Romans 15:4-9 Matthew 3:1-3
To
the church in the diaspora[1]
&
to the church of the unchurched[2]
First reading
On that
day, a shoot shall sprout from the stump of Jesse,[3] and from Jesse’s roots a bud shall blossom. The
spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him: a spirit of wisdom and of
understanding, a spirit of counsel and of strength, a spirit of knowledge and
of fear of the Lord, and his delight shall be the fear of the Lord. Not by
appearance shall he judge, nor by hearsay shall he decide, but he shall judge
the poor with justice, and decide aright for the land’s afflicted. He shall
strike the ruthless with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips,
he shall slay the wicked.
Justice
shall be the band around his waist and faithfulness a belt upon his hips. Then
the wolf shall be a guest of the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with young
goats; the calf and the young lion shall browse together, with a little child
to guide them. The cow and the bear shall be neighbors, together their young
shall rest; the lion shall eat hay like the ox. The baby shall play by the
cobra’s den, and the child shall lay his hand on a snake’s nest. There shall be
no harm or ruin on my entire holy mountain; for the earth shall be filled with
knowledge of the Lord, as water covers the sea. On that day, the shoot sprouted
from the stump of Jesse will be a banner raised on high for all the nations to
see.
Isaiah 11:1-10
Alleluia, alleluia.
A reading from the holy Gospel
according to Matthew
Glory to you, Lord.
John
the Baptist appeared preaching in the
Matthew 3:1-3
The Gospel of the Lord.
Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ.
----------------
Introduction
Advent old and new
Before
Vatican II, Advent used to be a penitential season, which put the damper on all
parties and gift giving until Christmas Day. There was even an unwritten law
that the Christmas tree was not to be brought into the house and decorated
until Christmas Eve. All that has changed quite drastically. Christmas now begins
with a vengeance with the start of Advent and even with Thanksgiving. By the 24th
Christmas has been worn out even before it has arrived. By the 24th,
we’ve been exhausted by and even bored with Christmas, and it’s not rare to see
trees defrocked and cast out on the curb by the 26th.
In
the old days, Christmas began with a vengeance on the Christmas Eve and not
before. When Christmas did finally arrive, we would hold on tightly to it and
wouldn’t let it go. We held on to it beyond the 26th until the
octave of Christmas -- New Years Day. Then we held on to it some more -- until
the arrival of the Three Kings, January 6. Then even still more -- until the
feast of the Purification, Feb 2, when Mary
was purified in compliance with the Law of Moses (Num 18:15), and when her
first-born, who belonged to the Lord (Ex 13:1-2),was presented to God and was
redeemed or bought back by an offering of five shekels made to the sanctuary
(Num 3:47; Lk 2:22-24). With February 2, the curtain finally came down on the
Christmas season, and we knew it was time to dismantle the tree.
The promises of Advent
With
Vatican II that has all changed. What has not changed, however, is Advent’s
traditional division into a first and second part. The first part, also called
Early Advent, runs from the beginning of Advent to December 17. It gazes forward to a glorious future awaiting
the human race at the end of time. The second part, also called Late Advent or
the Novena of Christmas, runs from December 17 to Christmas Eve. It gazes backward
to a joyful past when Jesus was born of Mary in Bethlehem of Judea in the days
of Herod the King.
In Early Advent, the
first readings at Mass are from the prophet Isaiah. Gazing into a glorious future
at the end of time, the readings abound with a litany of promises of what is to
be. All Isaiah’s verbs are in the future tense because that’s the tense of
promise. He promises there won’t be any more wars like the one in
Isaiah
promises there will finally be justice. “And in those days a shoot shall sprout
from the stump of Jesse, and he will judge the poor fairly and defend the
rights of the helpless. And justice shall be the band around his waist and faithfulness a belt upon his hips” (Is 11:5). He
promises also an expedited arrival of God’s glory in our midst. “In those days
every valley shall be filled in and every mountain shall be leveled off and the
hilly lands shall be made smooth. Then the glory of the Lord shall be revealed,
and all mankind shall see it. The Lord himself has promised this” (Is 40:3-5;
Mt 3:3).
The impatience of Advent
This litany of promises of Early Advent builds up to an impatience which cries out, “Oh, you heavens, hurry up and rain down the
Just One” (Is 45:8) It has the church impatiently crying out at Vespers on the
19th , “O Radix Jesse,[4]
veni ad liberandum nos! Iam noli tardare!” ”Oh Shoot sprouted from the
stump of Jesse, come to free us! Stop now your delaying!” The Latin of the antiphon does not gently
invite this descendant of Jesse and King David to come; it strongly commands
him to quit his delaying and hurry up! The antiphon bursts with an impatience
that cries out, “What in the world is keeping you!”
The potholes impeding the Messiah
There
is, indeed, something in the world that’s keeping him. The Messiah is already
en route but the going is rough. He has no hefty Hummer to drive in or
super-highway to ride on. The roads
dwindle down at times to mere trails cluttered by fallen trees and rolling
stones. There are potholes all along his path.
His coming needs our help. We are the facilitators of it. So John the
Baptist stands before us today as a voice crying in the desert, beseeching us
to enable the Messiah and hasten the day of his
coming. “Get the Lord’s road
ready for him! Make a straight path for him to travel on” (Lk 3: 3)!
Years ago, Rabbi Tsvi Schur wrote me saying,
If more people in the world were filled with
love and compassion and tolerance we would enable the Messiah to come so much
sooner. I often kid my synagogue that I
visualize the Messiah about to be sent down to the world by God, but looking at
all the violence, hatred, inhumanity, especially in the name of religion, the
Messiah beseeches God not to send him down to this world of ours.
A Samaritan enabling the Messiah
The
potholes along the Messiah’s path are many. One day a man was going from
The
Good Samaritan had leveled off the mountains and filled in the valleys, and had
made a straight path for the Messiah to travel on. He had enabled the Messiah to come to a
victimized human being. Restored to health, the man made it a point to go to the
A morality enabling the Messiah
The potholes along the Messiah’s path are
many. There are 37 million adults and 2.5 million children living with HIV, and
half of them will be dead before they are 35.
There are 40,000 new HIV infections diagnosed every year in the
Not
too long ago the Anglican Communion had its foundations shaken with the consecration
of a gay bishop. That ruffled also the Russian Orthodox Church. One Anglican
Church leader said, “The church will never be the same again.” By going on record for being strong on sexual
moralism, the Anglican and Orthodox Church (and all the other churches as well)
were simply doing what they always do, and what they do best.
Had
those churches put themselves squarely and ardently behind those millions of adults and children living and
dying with HIV and those 40,000 new HIV infections diagnosed yearly, they would, indeed, “never be the same again”!
They would, indeed, become a shining city built upon a hill for all to see (Mt
A justice enabling the Messiah
There are many potholes
along the path of the Messiah who wears “justice as a band
around his waist and faithfulness as a belt upon his hips” (Is11:5). On
the road from
Barbara Horn is a feisty
lady from
The
beauty of the music, the power of the liturgy and the ancient tradition of the
laying on of hands, at moments left me breathless. The palpable joy and strength sweeping
throughout
However,
I must say that a great sadness arose in my heart; a feeling of how wrong
everything was amid the beauty, the power and the strength. The procession of male clergy across the
altar reverberated throughout my body, the visible reminder that the oldest,
deepest exclusion and injustice -- the one we are all too accustomed to -- is
alive and well in the bosom of my faith community. Here in our wonderful
archdiocesan cathedral, where the most fundamental of expressions is uttered,
the place where we give praise and thanks to our loving Creator for our very
lives, here a line is drawn and we your sisters in Christ are to stay behind it….
This grieves me greatly.
Horn
is not speaking about getting her hands on a share of power in the church. That
would not patch up the pothole. Nothing would be changed; it would still be
about power. She is speaking about the injustice
of depriving woman of her baptismal inheritance. That deprivation is a deep
pothole in the Lord’s path. Patch up that pothole, and the church would
smoothen the path before the Messiah and hasten the day of his coming. Patch up
that hole, and the church would lead the way for all religions and all cultures
to give woman what is her birthright. Patch up that pothole, and the other half
of the human race would give thanks for having, at long last, seen the
salvation of the Lord. Patch up that pothole, and Rabbi Schur’s reluctant Messiah, seeing that
justice now flows like a river on earth and especially in the church, would tell
God that he is now, indeed, ready to be sent down to the good earth. The church, especially, must be an enabler of
the Messiah.
Conclusion
The peal of the bells of Christmas
Though
the new Advent isn’t a penitential season anymore, it is not a cakewalk. It
still demands something of us. John the Baptist is still there in the desert
crying out, “Get the Lord’s road ready for him; make
a straight path for him to travel on!” Facilitate the Messiah’s coming to those
waylaid by robbers or by HIV infection or by injustice or by anything else.
Though
the new Advent isn’t a penitential season anymore, its traditional division into
Early and Late Advent still remains. From the beginning of Advent until the 17th
there are mountains to be leveled off and valleys to be filled in order to
hasten the Messiah’s coming. That’s a big job. That’s the somber and serious
facet of Advent. To neglect it, to turn the season into an unmixed orgy of joy,
is to pervert the new Advent, and at the end of the day, such joy crumbles into
depression on the 26th of December.
Some years ago a
spokeswoman for Target Stores notified the public that it was banning the
Salvation Army’s kettles and its bell-ringing in front of their stores. “We
have adopted this policy in order to ensure a distraction-free shopping
environment,” she said. Distraction from what? From hot pursuit of ourselves
and our superfluous needs at Christmas time? Distraction from what? From the uncomfortable
reminder that there are people who, through no fault of their own, are much
less fortunate than ourselves? Distraction from what? From the unpleasant fact that there are mountains
to be leveled off and valleys to be filled before it is Christmas Day?
If we toll the
bells of the Salvation Army in Early Advent, then on December 17,
when Late Advent begins, the toll of the Army’s bells will start to turn into
the peal of the bells of Christmas.