“Prepare the way of the Lord. Make straight His path. That’s the two common sentences in both the Gospel today and the first reading, the Old Testament and New Testament. Prepare the way of the Lord. Make straight His path and really that’s our job during this season of Advent to prepare ourselves for the coming of Christ our savior, but to prepare for a savior we have to truly believe and want and need a savior, so let me ask you: do you need a savior in your life? Do you want a savior in your life or are we just going through the motions because it is Advent and I should be preparing for the savior? Because it’s truly in our hearts that needs transforming not only in our homes with the decorations in preparing. The physical things we’re good at, but how about the spiritual preparing? Make way for the Lord. Make straight His path, but first starts with us needing a savior, us wanting a savior.
In the Gospel today it begins by saying, ‘The beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ the son of God.’ In this new liturgical year we’re reading from the Gospel of Mark, but the first sentence says, ‘The beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the son of God.’ What does that mean? It really means it’s saying the beginning of the Good News of our savior. Really, the Gospel of Mark is talking about how this is a story of freedom, of saving and that should excite us, inspire us because I think now more than ever we need a savior in our lives. We need freedom. Just think about what’s going on in the world. We feel bondage by the pandemic that we’re not free to do things. We’re not free to live our lives the way we know we should be living it. There is kind of a bondage to that. Not only that, it’s our anxieties, our fears. The thing about pain is that the world wants to numb out pain, but pain is there for a reason. Pain tells us there is something going on and if it doesn’t change then it just continues on. In the twelve step program they have a definition of insanity. The definition is insanity is doing the same thing over and over and over again expecting different results and sometimes I think we do the same. We live our lives exactly the same way and yet we complain about it. We want things to change, but yet we don’t change anything within ourselves, but it is hard because the culture’s against us. It doesn’t want us to know. It doesn’t want us to look within to change anything. This season of Advent is a time of preparation to wake us up to ask ourselves, ‘What’s going on in my life? Where do I need a savior? What needs changing?’ Once you have that answer, your hearts will start to open up for God’s grace and then you will prepare for the true coming of our Lord, the true freedom of your life, but how? How do we prepare the way of the Lord and make straight His path this season? There’s an analogy that I find very helpful in our relationship with Jesus, with God. Now imagine Jesus or God is a helicopter, okay? And this helicopter needs to land on your heart. (I actually talked to a helicopter pilot yesterday and he said this was a great analogy, so trust me on this one.) The helicopter can’t land unless he has confirmation from people on the ground or else it will crash. This helicopter pilot said that there’s so many times where the helicopter, the emergency people are there at the emergency, but they don’t have any signal from the people down that they can land, so they can’t. Jesus Christ and God are always trying to land in our lives, in our heart, always! We need to prepare the way for Him. We need to, if there’s valley and hills, we need to close down those hills and fill in the valleys meaning that if there’s a lot of noise, a lot of brush, not a lot of flat land, then we need to clear it away. Now what is the brush? What is the noise in your life? Oftentimes it is literally just noise, so this season do you take time in silence? Not only silence is good to receive the Lord’s grace and hear His voice, but also it lets you know what you’re truly thinking, what you’re truly feeling and that’s uncomfortable. Why do it alone? We have this great new adoration chapel. Sit in the chapel maybe once a week for an hour. Just try or maybe just 5 minutes to start, but we have to start to leave some silence not only to get to know ourselves, but to leave room for the Lord in our life to land, to make straight His path. Sometimes it’s even sin, the sin of our lives that hold us back. Maybe we’re just angry and we don’t know why or we’re just anxious all the time and we don’t know why? Examine your conscience. Come to confession because it’s in coming to confession and realizing our own sins, it’s not there to beat us up, but it’s actually truly acknowledging that we need God’s grace in our life, that we actually want it and so the sacrament actually frees your heart to receive the grace of God more fully in your life.
Prepare the way of the Lord. Make straight His path this Advent season, but first think, ‘Do I need a savior in my life? Do I want a savior in my life?’ As you come before the Lord today where Christ is truly present before you in the Eucharist, let us continue to have the strength and the courage to sit with the Lord in silence, to examine our conscience so that then we’re free to receive the Lord’s grace in our lives, our savior. Amen.”