Dec 8 Sun
How do I know the road ahead?
The prophecy of Isaiah, concerning the coming of the Redeemer, is fulfilled in Jesus Christ. He is our hope. The Savior's brightness, as He approaches, casts the first rays of light over a dark and arid world. “Lift up your heads and see; your redemption is close at hand." Our salvation is announced to us joyfully, like all good news: “Behold the Lord will come to save the nations."
We respond to this welcome news by pressing onwards faster, as we pray: “Remove the things that hinder us from receiving your Son with joy." We ask for the hope that soothes the traveler's journey. When tired, a traveler carries on in the hope of arriving at the journey's end. Take away his hope, and you will take away his strength.
Jesus is the road to salvation. Once we find the road, we must remain steady in it, and walk forward on it.
Thus, Saint Paul encourages us to go forward from where Christ began to work in us to its fulfillment: “I am confident of this, that the one who began a good work in you, will continue to complete it, until the day of Christ Jesus.”
Everyone who travels along a road needs energy. What is the energy one needs to travel this way? Saint Paul declares, “It is the love of Christ Jesus.” St. Paul had it, and it motivated him not just to travel the road himself but to help the Philippians do the same.
Everyone on the road needs directions, too, or else he will travel backward or get lost making a wrong turn. This is the map to avoid wasting time: “To discern what is of value, that your love may increase ever more and more in knowledge and every kind of perception, and choose what is of value, so that you may be pure and blameless for the day of Christ.”
For us travelers, truth is the adjustment of our minds to reality. Our love must be united to knowledge, perception, and discernment concerning what is really of value. In his letter to the Ephesians, St. Paul says the same thing in different words: “Speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the Head, into Christ.”
A good philosopher would say that we must desire to fulfill ourselves but in what is truly good, and this is written in our hearts. Yes: the natural law perfected by the law of Christ.
In the Gospel, John the Baptist appears as a prophet in the vein of the great Old Testament prophets: All flesh shall see the salvation of God. As announced by Isaiah, the Savior of the world is on his way.
Because the end times are upon us with the advent of the Messiah, people must prepare by reforming their lives.
One way to read John’s words about roadbuilding is the road inside our hearts, our choices. Every listener is urged to “straighten out” his or her life.
To respond to this call from God, the Chosen People received from John “a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins,” that is, a rite that symbolizes their desire to turn away from sin and to be cleansed of it. Now it is sealed with sacramental confession.
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