7 December 2025

7 December 2025 - Second Sunday of Advent

Transcript

Reading:  

Matthew 3:3

Write:  

A voice of one crying out in the desert,
 Prepare the way of the Lord,
 make straight his paths.

Reflect:   

Isaiah 40:3 has a different punctuation for this, and it makes a difference:

A voice proclaims: 
 In the wilderness prepare the way of the LORD! 
 Make straight in the wasteland a highway for our God!

In our reading from Matthew, John the Baptist is speaking from the desert but in Isaiah, he is saying that we need to go to the desert, or the wilderness.

Let me explain some more. The 30 years that Israel spent in the desert after leaving Egypt was seen by some prophets as an ideal time where Israel encountered God and was faithful to him… after a few initial problems. (Remember the Golden Calf?) So, when the nation settled in the cities, some prophets believed that they started losing their touch with God. Along with Isaiah, Hosea was probably the one who mentioned this idea the most. The desert was seen as a place where Israel could focus on God and his sustaining grace as opposed to living off the land and the world around them. A recurring theme in the prophets was that Israel needed to return to its first love, who was God.

So, for Isaiah, the best thing for Israel to do would be to make a path back into the desert. They needed to reform themselves in the way that God had formed them in the desert.

John the Baptist took that idea to heart, as did other Jewish believers in that day. They formed a group in the desert in their day called the Essenes, and many scholars think John the Baptist came from them when he began his preaching and calling for repentance. So, our gospel verse does not have a punctuation in the phrase at the beginning leading us to think that John the Baptist came from the desert, came from a time of reflection that led him to preach the way he did and have the effect he did because of his experience in the desert.

So, while these ideas are not exactly the same, they do add to one another in the way we think about the events of John the Baptist, and of Jesus in his Incarnation.

Apply:   

Consequently, how do we live in these two different… presentations of being in the desert? They are connected, but they have different purposes in the spiritual life of each believer, and in the church as a whole.

This is what I want to get to. Before he retired, Archbishop Lucas said that parishes should become missional communities. This is what Chad was mentioning a couple weeks ago with his comments on metanoia. (Have you filled out a prayer commitment card and placed it in the basket at the front of the Church?) In order to engage metanoia, we need to engage the desert. What do I mean by that? Every one of us needs to have a type of an experience of the desert, where we hear the voice of God calling us. This can happen in so many ways. A good place to begin, or continue, the process of your own journey through the desert and into of a life filled with faith in Jesus Christ is through the Sacrament of Reconciliation. There is also the value of experiencing a retreat. Our world has become so busy that people find it difficult to slow down enough to listen to the voice of God. This is the version of the process that coincides with the phrase from Isaiah. There is a need for us, me included, to find times and places where we can draw away from the busyness of the world to reflect on the magnitude of God’s grace and mercy.

As we discover that grace and mercy, we are called to share that with others – to be like John the Baptist. This is the goal of every Christian. John the Baptist cried out from his experiences in the desert. He had learned that time alone with God was necessary for his own spiritual life. He had learned the call to holiness that transformed his life, and led to his own martyrdom. Now, I am not saying we are all called to martyrdom – well, wait. Yes, we are all called to martyrdom. Martyr means witness! It does not matter whether our martyrdom is one that means our death, or if it just means our ability to speak about Christ in the world today.

Being vocal about our faith, about our desert experience, about our understanding of the universal call to holiness (which is a cry from the Second Vatican Council) is the way to transform the world around us for the sake of Christ.

In 1971, there emerged in the entertainment world something that received mixed reviews among Christians. Some people thought it was sacrilegious. I enjoyed it when I saw it on stage performed with only seven actors. What was this phenomenon that had more performances than any other Broadway piece until the show “Cats?” It was “Jesus Christ Superstar.” Why am I mentioning this?

The refrain of one of those songs in that “rock-opera” is appropriate for the season of Advent, and for the commission that John the Baptist received to introduce Jesus to the world, and I think also for our own lives as we struggle to become disciples and then apostles of Jesus to the world. That refrain is really quite simple: “prepare ye the way of the Lord, prepare ye the way of the Lord.”

So, whether you are still needing God to heal you through your own time in the desert when you can rediscover his love for you, or whether you are ready to begin bringing others to the faith that you already have, “prepare ye the way of the Lord” is a great reminder that we need to prepare ourselves to receive Christ – not just at Christmas, but in our hearts in a way that leads us to long for his return in all his glory.

May this Advent help you to prepare for the Lord in your own way and to the fullness of what you need. The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches us that ALL of us have a responsibility to share the faith. It is not an option! Be ready. Be prepared. Be willing to go through your own desert, so that you can teach people how to come out of the desert wastelands that are their own lives.

“Prepare ye the way of the Lord” – in your own life, and in the lives of those around you. And, because the tune is stuck in my head, let me close by repeating that refrain: “prepare ye the way of the Lord, prepare ye the way of the Lord.”

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