Of
course, Santa Claus isn’t the only figure whose annual appearance heralds the
coming of Christmas. As she always does on this 2nd Sunday of
Advent, the Church today introduces us to the mysterious figure of John the
Baptist, who comes out of the desert each Advent proclaiming: “Prepare the way of the Lord” [Luke 3:1-6]
.
John’s
message may be timeless, but Luke the Gospel writer went to great length to
pinpoint precisely when in historical time John made his first appearance to
announce the arrival of the salvation of
God. What one notices immediately is the special solemnity
of the story's language - the style of an official imperial proclamation,
complete with the names of the reigning emperor and his representatives. That's
Luke the historian, telling us who, what, when, and where - situating John's
message in the larger sweep of human history.
The
point is that, while the message itself may indeed be timeless, God’s grace and
mercy come to us in real time, in the specific circumstances in which we happen
to find ourselves. That was what the Prophet Baruch was explaining to the
people in the sad and troubled time that followed the Temple’s destruction and
Israel’s exile to Babylon [Baruch
5:1-9]. Baruch invited the
people to put aside their mourning and contemplate the exiles’ return at the
time of the fall festival when the autumn rains bring new life to the parched
land. He portrayed the return of the exiles as if they were on a pilgrimage, a
pilgrimage brought about by God alone, who is revealed in his mercy and justice.
Some
25 centuries later, we read and hear this prophecy in a world which once again
is witness to a seemingly endless procession of exiles – refugees from Syria
and other places where war and chaos currently destroy lives and families and
the very fabric of society itself. Unlike in Baruch’s prophecy, the exiles
don’t all end up in the same place. But wherever they come from and wherever
they go, our obligation, as the United States’ Bishops at their November
meeting have just recently reminded us is “to care for and stand with newcomers,
authorized and unauthorized, including unaccompanied immigrant children, refugees
and asylum-seekers, those unnecessarily detained, and victims of human
trafficking” [Faithful Citizenship, 81] .
The similarities between then and now remind us that the stage on
which John's solemn pronouncement is being proclaimed is not just some far-off
1st-century desert oasis but every time and place, including notably
our own. As Paulist founder Isaac Hecker famously said, in the middle of
another terrible war in 1863: "Our age lives in its busy marts, in
counting-rooms, in work-shops, in homes, and in the varied relations that form
human society, and it is into these that sanctity is to be introduced." ["The Saint
of Our Day']
And
that is why God’s gift of grace and message of mercy are so central to our
experience here and now, which is why Pope Francis has challenged the Church to
take a pause from business as usual and go on pilgrimage, like Baruch’s exiles,
through the Holy Door of Mercy in this Extraordinary Jubilee, this Holy Year of
Mercy, which will begin in just two more days.
For most of
us, preoccupied as we inevitably are with our narrow here-and-now concerns,
this Holy Year of Mercy reminds us what Advent and Christmas are actually all
about - God's active movement of grace and mercy into our world. Isaiah
prophesied that all flesh shall see the salvation of God, but John wants us to
recognize how that future is already happening here and now in the present.
And, as in Isaiah's day and as in John's, there are certainly plenty of valleys
to be filled and mountains and hills to be leveled by God’s grace and mercy in
our world.
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