By Archbishop Thomas Wenski - The Archdiocese of Miami
Archbishop Thomas Wenski preached this homily Dec. 7, 2014 at St. Vincent de Paul Regional Seminary in Boynton Beach.
Our Gospel reading today introduces us to John the Baptizer. He is one of the great stars of the Advent season and Christmas season. The other, of course, is Mary, the Mother of the Lord, whose feast day we will celebrate tomorrow.
They both show us how to prepare the “way of the Lord” in the desert, they show us how “to make straight in the wasteland a highway for our God.”
We could understand the image of the desert or wasteland as descriptive of that place where God has not visited, where God is not to be found. And doesn’t our world – our secularized world — resemble a desert, lifeless and sterile because God has been exiled, marginalized, pushed,–as it were, to the far borders of our consciousness?
Yet, as Isaiah said in a reading we have already heard this Advent season, the desert will “bloom with abundant flowers” for God has come to dwell among us. “Comfort, give comfort to my people” expresses the hope that the Advent season brings us.
John the Baptizer – in proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins – witnesses to that hope. He wants to teach us that there is a way out of the darkness and sadness of the world and the human condition, and he points out the way – and that way is Jesus himself – the “one mightier than I whose sandals I am not worthy to stoop to untie.”
John understood that it wasn't all about him! It isn't all about us! He emptied himself of himself - and thereby became one who could reveal Jesus to others. As priests and future priests, and indeed as baptized Catholics called to be “missionary disciples,” we also are to reveal Jesus to others.
But we can do so only if we learn from the humility of John and that of the other star of Advent, Mary. And, we can only do so if we imitate the humility of these two stars of Advent. Both show us how to make straight a path for the Lord through their humility. Their humility opened a space within themselves – a space that made room for God to act in their lives, a space in which God could truly dwell.
Allow me to quote from a homily Pope Francis gave last year. I think he offers what we could call a plan of action to follow during these days of Advent — as we prepare for Christmas. “We have to empty ourselves” he says, “of the many small or great idols that we have and in which we take refuge, on which we often seek to base our security. They are idols that we sometimes keep well hidden; they can be ambition, a taste for success, placing ourselves at the center, the tendency to dominate others, the claim to be the sole masters of our lives, some sins to which we are bound, and many others.”
Idols that people worship are blind, deaf and dumb — and so are the people that worship them. As Pope Francis says, “the sin of idolatry stifles the truths of faith.” It would be naïve to think that idol worship has disappeared from human history – we just give new names to the idols and new forms to our worship.
These “idols” are what Pope Francis’ spiritual father, St. Ignatius Loyola, would call “disordered attachments”. (And you have an idea of what those attachments are for you.) These idols, these disordered attachments, crowd God out of the space he should occupy in our lives. Freed of those deaf, dumb and lame idols, we will be freed of the deafness that keeps us from hearing God’s word; the dumbness that keeps us from proclaiming his praises, and the blindness and the lameness that keeps us from walking in righteousness.
Again let me conclude with Pope Francis. Like I said, he proposes a plan of action for us to follow the Advent Season – a plan of action for us to “prepare the way of the Lord” and “make straight his paths”. He says, “…I would like a question to resound in the heart of each one of you, and I would like you to answer it honestly: Have I considered which idol lies hidden in my life that prevents me from worshipping the Lord? Worshipping is stripping ourselves of our idols, even the most hidden ones, and choosing the Lord as the center, as the highway of our lives.”
