Preparing the way

The words of the baptist must have made a few people scratch their heads and wonder.  Perhaps more than a few in his day thought that he was just a reed blowing in the wind, but one by one, more and more people listened, and came to believe.  Today, we too may choose to let these words pass us by, but if we stop long enough to ponder them, we may discover a truth that speaks to our hearts, and calls us into a new relationship of love.

Prepare the way

Twice this past week, I was woken up in the early hours of the morning by snow plows passing by.  Throughout the summer months, I’d forgotten the fact that in the downtown core, these machines pass by (sometimes quite regularly) during the winter months, and they often work in the pre-dawn hours of the morning, clearing away the debris left by an overnight snowfall, and preparing the streets for the morning rush hour traffic.

Long before the advent of snowploughs, there was another means of waking us up, of preparing us for the day ahead.  The prophet Isaiah spoke during a time when the Israelite people would have known only too well what it was like to have weathered a storm or too.  They had been exiled from their homeland, and been subjected to captivity for so long that they perhaps had almost forgotten what it was like to be free.  In the face of such desperation, the prophet’s words speak of promise, of a time when the ravages of captivity will come to an end, of the hope of a better tomorrow.  Even as this new dawn was looming, Isaiah also challenged God’s people to prepare the way of the Lord.

Throughout the centuries that have since passed, these words have been repeated by the Baptist and by others, as a reminder that we must always be on the lookout, always preparing the way for a better tomorrow.  The question is, How exactly do we prepare the way? and What will this better tomorrow look like?  Will we recognize it when we see it?

To answer the first of these questions, perhaps we should borrow a page from the ancient Lenten practices of fasting and prayer.  Together with almsgiving, these are the disciplines most often spoken of during the season of preparation for Easter, but there is room for them to help us live the Advent period too.  The discipline of fasting allows us to identify the excuses we make up in order to convince ourselves that we’re too busy for God.  It’s about admitting to ourselves that we’re our own worst enemies when it comes to admitting that we often surround ourselves more with the tasks of life than leaving room for living life to the full.  One might say that the discipline of fasting allows us to identify the debris in our lives that needs to be cleared away in order to make the path straight again.

Making the path straight is where the discipline of prayer comes in.  Over the past number of weeks, we’ve been preparing for the introduction of the revised Roman Missal, and last week, for the very first time, we used this new text for our time of prayer.  It will still take some time for all of us to get used to this new language, but I think that we did pretty well, considering how many changes there are.  I was also pleasantly surprised to see that we’ve started to implement most of the changes in posture, but I’m sure that there are still some who are wondering what’s going on.  For those who may not have heard the news, Bishop Plouffe issued a set of directives about the implementation of these changes back in September.  One of the changes he’s called for is that during the distribution of communion, the assembly should remain standing (if possible) until all have received the Blessed Sacrament.  After Communion has been distributed to all the assembly, ‘as circumstances allow’ the members of the assembly may sit or kneel while a period of sacred silence is observed.

While we may still be asking why such a change has to be implemented, consider for a moment that this is all part of preparing the way.  A better tomorrow begins to take shape when we all recognize that the prayer we offer during the Mass is about giving praise and thanks to God.  This sacred space allows us to utter private words of supplication and also to join in the common prayer of the Eucharist.  Even as we speak these words, our prayer makes us keenly aware that there are aspects of our lives that need to be cleared away in order to make the path straight for the coming of the Lord.  When he comes there will be a new heaven and a new earth.  I for one can’t wait to see what that will be like.