Be A ‘Voice’ To Those Near You

Dear Friends,

I was thinking in the last few days that I already lived a few years longer than my father and many years longer than my youngest brother who died at thirty-two.  Clearly God is making straight the crooked ways of my life.  It is not complete but at least I am heading in the right direction.  It is not because of anything I did but from what he has done for me.  I can point to many others whose lives have been made more level since Christ has come to their soul.  Let us pray that Christ’s Advent take place in us this year so that we can say, in some small way, like St. Paul, “It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.”

Seven hundred or more years before Christ the prophet Isaiah says a ‘voice’ will cry out!  John the Baptist is only ‘a voice.’  He is so austere in all his habits that it appears his only mission is to be a voice.  He is a voice that calls people to repentance.  He eats practically nothing and wears camel hair and a belt for clothing, which must have been incredibly uncomfortable.  This voice makes the Word present for all who will go see him.  The voice will fade but the Word will remain.  Pope Benedict said something similar about priests who should be the ‘voice’ that makes the Word of God present for others.  It is not a voice that can say whatever it wants but one that make God present.  All of us can serve as a voice and through this voice the Word enters the hearts of others and can remain there.  The voice will disappear.

It is striking how the Gospel of Mark, which is the first one written, starts with the Old Testament, with the prophet Isaiah.  It shows us the continuity between the Old and the New and that one prepares us for the other.  The gospel says that all the people of Jerusalem went out to the dessert to see John the Baptist.  They turned away from the temple to go out to hear him.  It is like a preparation for Christ who will replace the temple as the way to the Father.  This is shown in a dramatic way by the tearing of the curtain of the temple at the moment of the death of Christ.  No human being could have done this.  Attentive Jews must have been blown away by this.

God is calling us to greater things during this Advent: to make straight our lives and confess our sins.  Small acts of self-denial help us to suffer a bit and to be awake for the Coming of the Lord.

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