Prepare the Way of the Lord

More than three thousand years ago, Isaiah prophesied the coming of Jesus in words foreign to a chaotic world in which he lived.  He looks forward to a time when God’s people will rejoice in a ruler on whom the Spirit of the Lord will rest. He will rule with justice, bring peace, and fill the country with the knowledge of the Lord.  

The utopian theme of Isaiah, where the wolf will be the guest of the lamb, and a child safely lie in a cobra den, hasn’t seemed to materialize after all of these years. The vision of a world free from corruption is the human heart’s desire. Isaiah set forth a vision of the progression of how the lofty ideal is realized. It sets out a progression: “On that day, a shoot shall sprout from the stump of Jesse, and from his roots a bud shall blossom. The spirit of the LORD shall rest upon him.”

It predicts a person who will come into the world who will effectuate the change, and that person is Jesus. A thousand years later, in the fullness of time, the prophecy of Isaiah came true, and Jesus was born of a woman.

A thousand years after the prophecy, St. John the Baptist spoke to God’s people, encouraging them to make straight the paths to God. An unassuming person living in the desert was the person God chose to prepare his people for his coming. A man surviving on locusts and honey would be the last prophet announcing Jesus’ entrance into our human condition. So important was St. John the Baptist’s role in salvation that Jesus called him the greatest man born of a woman to have ever lived.      

He encouraged his followers to repent, for the Kingdom of God is at hand. And if the kingdom is close at hand, so too is its king, the king promised long ago. In other words, the promises of old are about to be fulfilled. It was he whom the prophet Isaiah predicted, a man crying out in the desert, “Prepare the way of the Lord, make straight his paths.”

It isn’t the first time we have heard the exhortation of preparing the way for the Lord. Advent is a season set apart, allowing us to listen to these words in a new and fresh way. If willing, do we want to make crooked paths straight and prepare to receive grace this Christmas? This will be the first question we need to ask ourselves. In asking the question, it presupposed a level of work, and heaven knows we have plenty to do during this busy season. Or maybe we may think our relationship with the Lord is fine, but we would be wrong.

Making our paths straight is spiritual work happening during prayer. Perhaps, through the course of the year, our prayer has diminished, and the void has been filled with inane tasks.  By committing more time to prayer during Advent, we are already straightening some of our crooked paths.

By reflecting on our lives within prayer, something very powerful happens. We act on the words of St. John the Baptist to repent from our ways. Repentance means we are willing to change our hearts. And what is a change of heart? It is to realize we have, in some way, taken paths away from God instead of toward him.

From time immemorial, the human heart has desired a savior and an existence free from corruption. We join with the multitude this Advent season who longed for that life, but we must do our part and make straight our paths first.