Prepare the Way

The film version of the famous Broadway play, Godspell, opens with John the Baptist preaching in New York City today. Among his listeners are eight young people. One is pushing a garment rack. Another is a parking lot attendant. Two are students carrying their textbooks. The other four are pursuing high paying jobs in finance, advertising or theater. They are all dissatisfied with their lives, fed up with the noise and phoniness that surrounds them. John captures their attention. They walk and then run and dive into a pool at the fountain in Central Park that is topped by a magnificent stone angel. It is all high energy and good fun, but completely impractical.

The message of the opening scene of Godspell is the message of today’s Gospel. God is certainly not calling us to stop what we are doing, leave our jobs and abandon our responsibilities to go off on a glory trip. The episode in the film is a metaphor. During this Advent season God may be calling us to pause and shake ourselves loose, get out of our comfortable ruts and look for and listen to God. God is not likely asking us to leave our jobs, but we might do better at them — be more attentive to and supportive of our fellow workers. We might find that family and friends are where God’s grace is experienced and help pass it on. Advent is not so much about looking back to Jesus’ coming in the manger at Bethlehem — it is that, but it is so much more than that. It is primarily about acknowledging and responding to God’s presence among us now. It is about, as St. Paul says in the second reading, “welcoming one another for the glory of God.”

Advent is primarily about acknowledging and responding to God’s presence among us now.

God created us out of nothing. We did not create ourselves, but in receiving God’s creative grace we can continuously remake ourselves. As St. Augustine said, “God who made you without yourself will not save you without yourself.” God gifted every one of us with the capacity to “prepare the way of the Lord” in our hearts and in our world. The impulse to goodness lodged deep in our hearts, the call to be bigger that echoes in our conscience, the spark that fires our Spirit can ease the darkness of our world. We are a blessed people, chosen by God — not for our own sakes, but “for the life of the world.”

John the Baptist’s call to “make straight the pathway” of the Lord is not to be taken literally, as if it were about highways and bridges. The Gospel challenge is to eliminate all that prevents God from entering more fully into our lives and, through us, into our world. It is about what Pope Francis called “mountains of indifference” in the face of millions of refugees fleeing violence and starvation and the fears of undocumented families here in our country. We are not called to fill the potholes on our streets, but the hollow stomachs of millions of starving people in sub-Saharan Africa and lives emptied of hope and joy. The “rough ways” to be made smooth are the harsh and ungenerous attitudes we may harbor against those who are different from or less advantaged than we — immigrants, Muslims, gays, homeless. The “good fruit” we are challenged to produce is generosity over selfishness, kindness over cruelty, compassion over indifference, hope over cynicism — then GOD comes more fully within and among us.

During Advent, we focus on the God who comes into our hearts and our world to the extent that we allow God to do so. God is knocking at the door of our hearts; we need only open up and let God’s grace move us to do our small part in smoothing out rough spots in our lives, our families and our world. God has begun this good work within us. Let us resolve to let God bring it to completion, so that this world may become what God created it to be: a place where the hungry are fed; the naked, clothed; the immigrant, welcomed; the vulnerable, cared for; and all human beings know themselves to be the beloved sons and daughters of a compassionate and caring God.