Homily for 2d Sunday of Advent

Homily for the

2nd Sunday of Advent
Dec. 9, 1984
Isaiah 40: 1-5, 9-11
St. Joseph, Florida, N.Y.

Since I didn't have an "outside" Mass this weekend, I offer a homily from the archive.

“In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord” (Is 40: 3).

The wilderness is an important time in the Bible.  Isaiah speaks of the wilderness as what stands in the way of salvation.  Mark, on the other hand, turns Isaiah around to make the wilderness a place where salvation is announced.

The wilderness is both of these, and more.  The wilderness is part of the elemental chaos on which God imposes order by his creative and life-giving power.  The wilderness is the vast emptiness wherein mankind sees its need and opens itself to God.

Each of us has a wilderness in his heart.  There is a tangle of hostile thorns, mountains of dry rock, acres of barren sand:  all the imposing power of personal sin, of selfish ambition, greed, envy, lust, gluttony, anger, sloth and pride.  The wilderness tries to block out God’s call to us, tries to keep us from repenting our sins, turning to him, and being set free.  By repenting, tho, we fill in the empty valleys; we tear down the tall and jagged peaks; we allow God to move thru our hearts with the water of his grace and turn our desert into rich earth, like the good, rich soil around here, producing the fruits of holiness.

Each of us experiences a wilderness other than the one within our hearts.  We all go thru the desert periods in our lives.  Between the 2 world wars, Winston Churchill spent most of 20 years in political wilderness, observing events, formulating ideas, writing, speaking, crying out about that madman in Germany, and mostly being ignored as an alarmist.  The experience helped shape him into the valiant leader who rallied against the overwhelming Nazi odds, the man Time magazine in 1950 would call, not Man of the Year but Man of the Half-Century.

When we look at saints like Augustine and John of the Cross, or the influential Christian leaders of our time like Thomas Merton and Pope John II, we see that they have all walked in the desert and confronted themselves, confronted anxiety, loneliness, and evil.  They learned slowly to abandon themselves, not to the thorns and rocks and sand but to the living God of love.  They allowed him finally to speak to their hearts with words of comfort, tenderness, pardon, liberation.  They abandoned themselves to him who gathers the lambs in his arms, carries them near his heart, gently leads, carefully nourishes (cf.  Is 40:11).

The living God of love is calling us today.  His tenderness, his comfort, his healing are appealing to our hearts:  “In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord; make straight in the desert a highway for our God.”  Push aside, knock down, throw out whatever is in the way.  Fill up your valleys of emptiness with his mercy and his goodness.

And having heard the Lord’s voice, then go out into the wilderness of the world, the world that is chasing after the wind of fame, the world that is lonely in its pleasures, the world that is hungry for power and isn’t satisfied.  Go out into that desert, and be heralded of glad tidings.  Be a voice crying out, “Make ready the way of the Lord.  He comes with the power of the Holy Spirit.  He feeds you with mercy.  He satisfies your heart with love.”  After allowing God to heal our own hearts, then we too must be prophets crying out, must play the role of John the Baptist in the wilderness.

May the Lord open your eyes to his light, our ears to his voice, and our heart to the warmth of his healing touch.