Make Straight the Way of the Lord

Homily
SECOND SUNDAY OF ADVENT
10 DECEMBER 2006

Luke 3: 1 - 6

[Luke 3:1] In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod was tetrarch of Galilee, and his brother Philip tetrarch of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias was tetrarch of Abilene,
[Luke 3:2] during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiphas, the word of God came to John the son of Zechariah in the desert.
[Luke 3:3] He went throughout (the) whole region of the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins,
[Luke 3:4] as it is written in the book of the words of the prophet Isaiah:

"A voice of one crying out in the desert: 'Prepare the way of the Lord, make straight his paths.
[Luke 3:5] Every valley shall be filled and every mountain and hill shall be made low. The winding roads shall be made straight, and the rough ways made smooth,
[Luke 3:6] and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.'"
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Jesus Who is coming, is both King and High Priest. Gregory the Great points out that this is why the time of John's calling is reckoned in terms of four temporal rulers (Tiberius Caesar, Pontius Pilate, Herod, Philip, and Lysanias) and two high priests (Annas and Caiphas).

[Luke 3:2] ...the word of God came to John the son of Zechariah in the desert.

John is the last of the prophets of the old law. Like his predecessor prophets, there is an initial calling, expressed by the phrase "the word of God came to him". Because he was the last prophet, and unlike his predecessors, the word of God was also soon to come to him in visible form in Jesus.

[Luke 3:3] He went throughout (the) whole region of the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins...

John's baptism did not remove sin, rather, it was a "baptism of repentance" which leads to that forgiveness of sins to be won by Jesus' passion, death, resurrection, ascension, and sending forth of the Spirit. As manna was a type (that is, a symbolic prefiguring) of the Eucharist; so John's baptism was a type of the Sacrament of Baptism to be instituted by Jesus: that which would impart the divine life by the power of the Holy Spirit. In Luke 3, we read:

[Luke 3:16] John answered them all, saying, "I am baptizing you with water, but one mightier than I is coming...He will baptize you with the holy Spirit and fire.

The Old-Testament scripture cited in today's Gospel is found in Isaiah 40:

[Is 40:3] A voice cries out: In the desert prepare the way of the LORD! Make straight in the wasteland a highway for our God!
[Is 40:4] Every valley shall be filled in, every mountain and hill shall be made low; The rugged land shall be made a plain, the rough country, a broad valley.
[Is 40:5] Then the glory of the LORD shall be revealed, and all mankind shall see it together; for the mouth of the LORD has spoken.

Isaiah's words, applied to John, begin with:

Make straight in the wasteland a highway for our God!

These words are addressed to the Israelites--they are also addressed to each of us. One profitable way to prayerfully read and meditate on the Old Testament is for each Christian to regard himself as a "little Israel". Like the old Israel, each of us has been called to a covenant relationship with God. Again, like the old Israel, each of us has been unfaithful to his part of that covenant, through personal sin. As Isaiah says of John calling the Israelites to repentance, so the Holy Spirit says to each of us through John, to make straight a highway for God in the wasteland of our hearts. That is, turn away from all the impediments we have allowed into our lives which inhibit or even completely prevent the growth of grace God wills for each of us.

Verse 4 of Isaiah 40 states:

[Is 40:4] Every valley shall be filled in, every mountain and hill shall be made low; the rugged land shall be made a plain, the rough country, a broad valley.

Moreover, we read in Baruch 5:

[Bar 5:7] For God has commanded that every lofty mountain be made low, and that the age-old depths and gorges be filled to level ground, that Israel may advance secure in the glory of God.

On our journey to growth in grace in the wayfaring state, the journey is impeded by many obstacles:

the journey is impeded by valleys which are chasms which drop before us;

the journey is impeded by mountains and hills which rise in front of us;

the journey is impeded by the ruggedness of the terrain.

Every valley shall be filled in.

Valleys can be thought of as metaphors for despondency and despair. That "every valley shall be filled in" then refers to the action of God's grace to replace despondency and despair by a reasonable hope.

Every mountain and hill shall be made low.

The mountains and hills to be made low represent the pride which in our lives, which must be eliminated before any genuine progress can be made. The diminution of pride, which is often the work of an entire lifetime, is the result of a grace-empowered growth in the virtue of humility.

There is often confusion regarding the meaning of the vice of pride, and the corresponding virtue of humility. Pride is the wrongful orientation of a person to himself and to his own natural powers, rather than to God, as the empowering cause of what he considers growth. It is not growth at all, but decay, since it has as its goal only a natural beatitude which, far from being a perfection, is a profound perversion of the supernatural beatitude to which God has called us.

The sin of Lucifer, wherein he preferred his own natural perfection to the supernatural perfection of the Beatific Vision for which God had created him, is the archetypal paradigm of where pride can lead. In fact, hell can be thought of as the place where those who prefer to place themselves, rather than God, at the center of their universe dwell for all eternity.

Humility is the proper acknowledging to God that He is the cause of our growth in perfection through His freely-given gift of grace. As pride is the greatest vice, so its opposite, humility, is the greatest virtue.

The rugged land shall be made a plain, the rough country, a broad valley.

"Rugged land" and "rough country" represent the difficulties in our lives which are consequences of sin. We sometimes regard growth in virtue as "hard" and giving in to sin as "easy". This is of course an illusion presented to us by the enemy of our souls at the moment of the commission of sin. The sequel to sin is the rugged land of regret and sorrow.

Holy men and women of both the Old and New Testaments have fled to physical deserts, to be away from the moral desert of their contemporaries.

John, the last of the prophets of the old law, is likewise in a physical desert when he receives the word of God. Like other prophets, he is to call people away from their sins and depravity, back to serving the God Who had made covenant with them, back from the moral desert in which they had immersed themselves.

God did not create us to live in such a desert, as He tells us in Isaiah 45:

[Is 45:18] For thus says the LORD, The creator of the heavens, who is God, The designer and maker of the earth who established it, not creating it to be a waste, but designing it to be lived in: I am the LORD, and there is no other.
[Is 45:19] I have not spoken from hiding nor from some dark place of the earth, And I have not said to the descendants of Jacob, "Look for me in an empty waste..."

John calls us to grow in our resolve to practice virtue, so that the sequel will be following of the leading of the Holy Spirit, after the filling in of gorges and tearing down of mountains, on the level plain in the broad valley which is the precursor on earth of our heavenly home. As sung in Psalm 143:

[Psa 143:10] Teach me to do your will, for you are my God. May your kind spirit guide me on level ground.