Advent is a time of joyful anticipation – a time when we await the coming of the Lord and the beginning of the fulfillment of the new covenant with the birth of Jesus. With joyful voice, we hear that anticipation proclaimed over and again in today’s readings. We hear of God’s comfort and forgiveness, compassion and care and a deep, patient and resounding love.
In the Gospel, John the Baptist speaks of one who is mightier than he who will come after him – one who will baptize not with water, but with the Holy Spirit, which will pour out into the world.
As we prepare for the birth of Jesus, God’s magnificent outpouring of love into the world, we are invited to “prepare the way” – to purify our hearts - to level the mountains and fill the valleys, making a highway through the wasteland - and to proclaim from the highest mountain – God is near!
How do we prepare the way today? Worldly preparations for the Christmas season seemed to have started early this year, with decorations and carols making their appearance in stores and shops well before Thanksgiving. Yet I wonder if the real preparation, or perhaps the preparation for the preparation, doesn’t begin earlier, in the quiet moments of our lives; those moments when we are invited by God to know God’s love and compassion, God’s forgiveness and God’s overwhelming desire that no one be excluded from the banquet of the Lord. Advent is a time to prayerfully acknowledge our own mountains and valleys, and joyfully make even the inner-road. In our preparations, we are equally invited to turn our gaze outward as well. Just as the Israelites waited in eager anticipation for the coming of the Messiah, there are many in our world today who today also await in anticipation – those on the margins who look to be brought into the center, those who have suffered pain who look to be healed and those whose hearts cry out for God’s mercy, justice and love. God was welcomed into the world in a humble manger. As we prepare to welcome God into the world today, what kind of world do we prepare?
In the birth of Jesus we are invited to experience an outpouring of God’s love that is so generous, so powerful and so wholly gratuitous that the only truly appropriate response is to continue to pour out that love. In Advent we are invited to let God’s love pour into our hearts, our lives, our labor and our world and prepare the way for a world where God’s love reigns supreme. We glimpse that world in the today’s psalm:
Kindness and truth shall meet;
justice and peace shall kiss.
Truth shall spring out of the earth,
and justice shall look down from heaven.
Indeed Lord, we pray, in this time of Advent as we prepare the way, let us see your kindness, and grant us your salvation. Amen.
Conor L. O'Kane
Associate Director, Campus Ministry
Director, Interfaith Ministries
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