Paul makes a beautiful, and revealing, prayer
in today’s second reading and
I am confident this is also Pope Francis’ prayer for us today,
It speaks directly to the way Pope Francis asks us to prepare for the Synod. We too can pray it, now, for our parish.
My prayer is
that your love for each other
may increase more and more
and never stop improving your knowledge
and deepening your perception
so that you can always recognise what is best.
Turning to today’s gospel –
in introducing John the Baptist, and Jesus’ ministry
Luke deliberately contrasts John with the mighty,
with Tiberius, Pilate, Herod and so on,
for God works in the lowly.
So ‘the word of God came to John.. in the wilderness’
This is the calling of a prophet,
because a prophet is one who speaks God’s word:
words of challenge and words of reassurance.
John prepares people for Jesus’ ministry.
He is the last in a long tradition,
that includes Moses, Elijah, Isaiah, Jeremiah,
and the authors of the books of the Old Testament;
John is the last of many voices speaking God’s Word,
preparing the way.
How does John prepare the people?
He proclaims God’s forgiveness, God’s love,
and, he calls for personal conversion:
a redirection of life in response to God’s love and forgiveness.
The English word ‘repentance’ has become a rather weak translation of the radical change the original suggests.
There is more on John’s call to conversion next Sunday;
but today, before giving those details,
Luke opens up the enormity of what is unfolding,
– the wonder that John is heralding –
through Isaiah’s image of the Lord’s highway.
Let’s think about that image.
Every time I catch the train,
or drive any distance, particularly on the motorways,
I experience directly straight, level ways through difficult terrain.
Not only that, but I often see the work in progress,
with vast earth movements reshaping the landscape.
So, we all know something about the image Isaiah offers
and Luke takes up.
But the highways we are familiar with,
though they would surely have amazed Isaiah,
are still well short of what Isaiah actually imagines:
every valley… filled in, every mountain… laid low.
now that really would make the journey to Manchester easier.
Luke adopts the Isaiah’s image to communicate
the immensity of the Lord’s coming to all humanity
and the radical upheaval this entails.
The image of a flattened terrain for a straight highway
was, on a physical level, an unattainable dream.
Isaiah and Luke both know this.
The work of highway construction that they imagine
cannot be done by human hands.
It is the Lord who constructs the Lord’s path.
All we are to do is some modest labouring.
The earth-shifting news is that:
God comes to us to save us in the person of Jesus Christ;
in Jesus, God’s love, God’s forgiveness, God’s mercy,
come down to us, to lift us up.
How are we to respond to this gift?
What modest labouring must we do?
We are to recognise the gift, ponder on its immensity,
allow our hearts to fill with gratitude,
and then let the fire of the Holy Spirit burn through us.