Advent Talk 2023: Prepare a Way for the Lord

Introduction: When I was doing my reading for this spiritual conference, I put ‘prepare a way for the Lord’ into google and I was given advice on how to enter the House of Lords; perhaps I could be the new Foreign Secretary!

Purple marks out both the seasons of Advent and Lent, and yet, there is a marked difference between the two. Some even suggest that the Lent purple has a ‘reddish’ tint to remind us of the passion, whereas the Advent Purple has a more ‘blueish’ tint to remind us of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

That may be taking it too far, but certainly Lent has a great sense of penitence, whereas Advent is more focused on our preparation to receive the Lord.

And now, at this point of Advent, we hear the Prophet Isaiah, who declares:

‘a voice crying in the wilderness, prepare a way for the Lord’.

To ‘prepare a way for the Lord’ is to create a favourable environment or to make it is easier for Jesus to come and operate. As we might know, the word ‘Advent’ means ‘to come’ or ‘an arrival’, so the aim of this conference this morning is to consider how we make it easier for the Lord ‘to arrive’ in our hearts this season.

This Advent, then, we might ask what steps can we take to better prepare ourselves for the advent of Christ? Here, we consider a few possibilities:

• listening,
• rejoicing,
• praying,
• testifying,
• and being.

Listening: Living in a mainly urban environment the image of a wilderness is, perhaps, less obvious to us. In a more modern translation, we might say, ‘a voice crying in a noisy or busy or crowded place’ or even all three. For faithful parishioners, it may not be a case of an unwillingness to hear God’s call, but that we are so distracted by the world, we just struggle to hear it, but with two ears and one mouth, perhaps, we are to do twice as much listening as speaking.

Advent is a favourable time to make space to listen to the Word of God, providing, of course, we have not, like many, become carried away with an early celebration of Christmas. It takes courage to actively listen to God’s Word because it can have some challenging things to say to us; in fact, it may initially present to us areas of our spiritual life that need attention.

If we can stick with it and not be upset, we can see beyond our shortcomings and allow the Word of God to be transformative. Indeed, the promise of the ‘voice crying in the wilderness’ is that repentance leads to righteousness, the prize for which St Paul was striving for his entire apostolic life. As such, listening to the Word is an essential part of our Advent Preparation. If we are to welcome Christ’s arrival into our life, then, we will want to know as much about Him as possible, so that our encounter is life-giving, as fruitful as possible.

After listening to the Lord, we are opened to an attitude of obedience. If we want the Kingdom to come in its fulness, we pray with conviction the petition from the Lord’s prayer, ‘thy kingdom come, they will be done, on earth as it is in heaven’.

St John the Baptist is an inspiration to us. He did not listen to the world and did not allow himself to be carried away by it. Today, many people, Christians included, can be very unstable, and materialistic, being as far removed from a prophetic lifestyle. Many, today, move around aimlessly, trying to enjoy life, but our true blessedness comes from knowing that God is Emmanuel, God with us.

Rejoicing: As St Pauls says,‘Rejoice in the Lord always, and again, I say rejoice. The Lord is near!’ Knowing the ‘Lord is near’ is a source of great joy.

Although Christmas is a wonderful time in the life of the Church, we should always have an eye on Christ’s Second Coming, for this is the time when God will live with his people, and we shall see him as he really is! Even though we profess He ‘comes to judge the living and the dead’, a faithful Christian sees this as a day of great rejoicing, for we will be ushered into our eternal reward.

And so, I hope that Advent is for all a time of joy, a season of expectation that the Lord will come; as has been said ‘Jesus is the reason for the season’, everything else, the rich food, the lights and the presents are only a symbol of our celebration that the Lord is near to us. And we experience tangible moments of his presence in the liturgical and sacramental life of the Church; indeed, we speak of a ‘third coming of Christ’, into our hearts especially when we receive Him in the Sacraments of Reconciliation and the Eucharist both of which renew the grace of his presence in our vocation such as marriage or Holy Orders.

Knowing that ‘the Lord is near’ to us is all the encouragement we need to make mission our priority. As the Bishop says, our mission is the fruit of our prayer and formation, both of which ensure that our focus is on the building up of the Kingdom of God, which on the Feast of Christ the King we heard was a ‘kingdom of truth and life, of holiness and grace, of justice love and peace’. This same goodness and mercy we receive from the Lord is not to be held onto, it is to be shared in our application of the ‘Corporal and Spiritual Works of Mercy’.

Joy communicates that what we believe is true. As the Servers pray before Mass: ‘go before us, O Lord, in this our sacrifice of prayer and praise, and grant that what we say and sing with our lips, we may believe in our hearts, and that what we believe in our hearts, we may show forth and practice in our daily lives.’

Praying: I am not sure anyone would believe the Christian message if they did not see us as people who pray. Prayer is beginning of everything we say and do. In the ‘morning offering’ we pray to God offering him all our prayers, works, joys and sufferings of the day in union with the Holy Mass (even if we cannot be present), which we offer for the intentions of Christ’s Most Sacred Heart, for the salvation of souls, in reparation for our sins and the unity of all Christians.

Prayer is never a wasted activity; it takes nothing anything away from our own activities nor prevents us from fulfilling our apostolic mandate. In fact, prayer nourishes, supports, and enhances everything we say and do. Prayers is the beginning of our relationship with God. For a faithful Christian, prayer is a constant companion, a trust that God provides all the necessary strengths and graces to live a holy life, including that joyful witness just mentioned.  

We are encouraged to pray without ceasing, asking the Holy Spirit to refresh, reinvigorate and make us fit for the kingdom: ‘Come, Holy Spirit fill the hearts of your faithful and enkindle in them the fire of your love. Send forth your spirit and they shall be created, and you will renew the face of the earth’.

Prayer brings humility, reminding us that everything is about God and his plan for us. What should we ask God for in prayer? Many and varied things, but more of what we need, rather than what we want or desire. Above all, we pray for the grace to conform our life more fully to Christ, which, like him, involves the acceptance of the cross in our life, so we may ‘pass-over’ with him to life eternal.  

St John the Baptist, the Saint of Advent, demonstrates humility. He recognized that he was ‘preparing a way for the Lord’: ‘I must decrease, so that Christ may increase’. John recognized that what he offered was symbolic (an attitude of repentance) that is only achieved in Christ, the reality of forgiveness. He even lets go of his own disciples, saying to them to ‘Behold the Lamb of God.’

Testifying: We move, perhaps, to the most uncomfortable part of our Advent Mission! Many of us are naturally ‘introvert’ when it comes to our faith, and consider it a private affair, even to the state that when we come to Mass, we sometime sit away from others and keep our heads low. Imagine, then, having to engage with the world! This may cause us some significant anxiety.

However, at the end of Mass, we receive our commission: ‘Go and announce the gospel of the Lord’, but if we do not tell people how the Lord has manifested his presence in our life, they will merely be words. We are to tell people ‘What marvels the Lord has done for us’, and indeed we are glad. We are to share that The Lord ‘has done mighty things for me. Holy is his name’. And while I might be mixing my metaphors, the psalms and Our Lady have the same message: God makes promises to us, and we have seen the result of them in our lives.

The age we live in desperately needs to hear the good news of salvation. We live in a society that needs Christians to give testimony to truth and virtue. In this way, we truly imitate Christ who says to Pilate: ‘yes, I am a King, I was born for this, I came into the world for this, to bear witness to the truth, and all those who are on the side of truth listen to my voice’. There is a strong implication that if we are not on the side of Truth, then, we are on the wrong side of Christ!

May we be courageous is answering people’s questions. But we must pray for wisdom, for it is not easy to speak ‘truth to power’ or ‘speak the truth with love’, especially to our families, who may, at this time, be distant from the Church.

Perhaps, there is an initial step which we find even harder, admitting the truth of our own situation. In Advent, we ask St John the Baptist to pray for us. He was a fearless servant of the Lord, refusing to follow the crowd in doing evil. He stood out, becoming a catalyst for conversion. He confronted Herod, and challenged the people, calling them in their diverse situations, to repentance. 

Being: Finally, we consider what it means to be a Christian. With good intentions, we often ask sincere questions, but do not quite get to the bottom of the issue. For instance, we ask ‘what is a Christian?’ or ‘what is a priest?’ but a better question might be ‘who is the Christian / who is the priest called to be?’

We are to be an ‘Alter Christus’, another Christ to the World. I was discussing something similar with a baptism family. Some families members were saying, ‘we are here for a baptism’ and some were saying ‘are we in the right place for the Christening?’ Of course, they were asking the same thing. Or were they?

Baptism is the ‘action’, the immersion into the waters, where ‘we die with Christ and rise with him to new life’, the washing away of original sin and the pledge of eternal. Whereas, we might say that in a Christening, we ‘put on Christ’, and in the anointing share in the three-fold office of Jesus: ‘priest, prophet and king’.

As Christians we receive our new identity, the old person is washed away, and we are reborn to a new spiritual life as children of God. The word Messiah (Hebrew) and Christ (Greek) mean the same thing, ‘the anointed one’, the return of the King, sent to save us and bring us home to the Promised Land.

This is one of the possible draw backs of separating Confirmation from Baptism. Confirmation completes and makes our baptism stronger. Think back to our Confirmation, when the Spirit of the Lord rested upon us, commissioning us to ‘bring glad tidings to the poor, to heal the broken hearted, to proclaim liberty to captives and release prisoners, and announce a year of favour from the Lord’.

Being called into being is the first cause of our gratitude: if we can perceive the goodness of God in our life, we will want to thank him for all we received from him each day. Having already celebrated the Eucharist together, and having received him in Holy Communion we renew that grace with Christ’s Benediction.

Fr Simon Dray, Parish Priest

9th December 2023.