In today’s first reading, we hear from Baruch, the secretary of Jeremiah the prophet. He lived during the Babylonian exile over 500 years before Christ. When the Babylonians conquered Jerusalem, they destroyed everything and took most of its citizens to Babylon as captives. Our first reading has as its background the experience of the exile. Baruch speaks to the demolished city of Jerusalem and tells it to rejoice, because it will prosper again. If they look east (toward Babylon) they will see God gathering his people together to bring them back home. It is indeed a passage of hope. Another prophet, Isaiah, also wrote about this return of God’s people from exile and we hear that passage quoted in today’s gospel.
Baruch, in today’s first reading, tells Israel God is ready to bring the exiles back
home, and the return home will be a glorious event. By this time the people had lost
hope that Jerusalem would ever be rebuilt, and the exiles believed they would be
spending the rest of their lives as captives in a foreign land. The prophet saw beyond
their present captivity to a glorious future.
The Jews at the time of John the Baptist, 500 years later, were not a free people.
They had their Temple; Jerusalem had been rebuilt. But they were part of the great
Roman Empire. Rome made the rules, Rome collected their taxes (and they were
heavily taxed), Roman soldiers marched through their streets and as we are told at
the beginning of today’s Gospel, a Roman governor who was noted for his brutality,
named Pontius Pilate, controlled their land. But the prophet John the Baptist saw
beyond all their oppression as he quotes from the prophet Isaiah: “all flesh shall see
the salvation of God”.
In our own day there are enough things going on to depress us if we dwell on them
all. It might be world events, it might be the social and moral climate we live in, it
might be personal agonies or worries. Sometimes we need help to see beyond our
present woes, someone who can give us hope, sort of a prophet who can tell us
spring will soon be here and the trees will be in full bloom again.
This is what our readings are telling us. This is what Jesus’ birth is telling us. This is
what his presence with us today in the Eucharist is telling us. But today’s readings
are telling us one more thing. They are telling us we can’t just sit back and wait for it
all to happen. We have to prepare. Quoting Isaiah, the Baptist cries out to prepare
the way of the Lord. The springtime that we have to look forward to depends on our
willingness to open our lives to it through faith or we will remain in the cold and
dark. The new life we hope for comes to us only when we submit our lives to Jesus
as our Lord and Savior.
So when I say prepare, 1 want you to look into your lives more deeply than thinking
of decorations or parties or gifts or cards. Saint Paul today gives us an idea of what
we should be doing to prepare when he tells the Philippians what he prays for them.
He prays that their love for God and for each other may increase, that they keep a
sense of what is important in life and that they live pure and blameless lives filled
with good works. May this be our prayer for us today too. Let’s prepare the ways of
the Lord in our hearts. Let’s seek his Mercy in the Sacrament of Penance. Let’s
glorify God in our daily lives. En the manner of saint Ignatius of Loyola, let’s be
people of hope in God, and he’ll transform our Lives and fill our souls with his love,
his joy and his peace. Amen.
