ADVENT II : BARUCH 5:1-9; PHIL 1:4-6, 8-11; LK 3:1-6

Three pastors got together for coffee one morning. Much to their surprise they discovered that all their churches had problems with bats infesting their belfries. The bats were making a terrible mess. "I got so mad," said one pastor, "I took a shotgun and fired at them. It made holes in the ceiling, but did nothing to the bats."  "I tried trapping them alive," said the second. "Then I drove 50 miles before releasing them, but they beat me back to the church."  "I haven't had any more problems," said the third.  "What did you do?" asked the others, amazed.  "I simply baptized and confirmed them," he replied. "I haven't seen them since."   You may laugh at this. But you will stop laughing when you hear that there are kids in our confirmation class who do not even know who Fr.Bolte is. When he visited the confirmation class one of the kids asked “who are you ?”. Fr.Bolte has been here seven and a half years now.  It is a shame to share it here, but hearing it would open at least some eyes. You leave your children for PSR classes, but they don’t get the opportunity to attend the mass often. Some times I see some kids at PSR staring at me as if what is this foreigner doing here.

Parents and god parents come to present a child to God at baptism. They make promises to bring up that child in the household of faith, and then they disappear. We rarely see them again. What did those promises mean? On this second Sunday of the New Church Year our lesson from the Gospels focuses our attention on the place of baptism in our lives.

John the Baptizer went into all the region around the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins, proclaiming: Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight. 

John was inviting people to be purified of the unholy elements in their lives.  Quoting the prophet Isaiah, John the Baptist declared, “Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways made smooth” (Lk 3:5).   If a king were planning to travel, work crews would be dispatched to repair the roads.  Ideally, the roads for the king's journey would be straight, level, and smooth.  John considered himself as the courier of the king.  But the preparation on which he insisted was a preparation of heart and of life.  "The king is coming," he said in effect.  “Mend, not your roads, but your lives.”  

We are called to examine our own souls on a regular basis, especially in this joyful but penitential season of Advent. We need to take some time to step away from the noise, from the hustle and bustle of our busy world. We need to look into hearts, to see where selfishness has put obstacles in our relationships with God and with other people. We need to see where habits of laziness and self-indulgence have worn away our self-discipline. All of us need to fill in some spiritual potholes and clear away some unwelcome debris, so that the graces God has in store for us this Advent will be able to stream unhindered into our hearts. The heart is the road God wants to follow so as to come into and transform our lives; it is up to us to do the necessary repairs to allow that to happen.

There is no better first step for doing that, of course, than preparing and making a good confession. The Fathers of the Church have called the Sacrament of Reconciliation our “second baptism,” in which we’re brought back to the Jordan and cleansed interiorly as we were on the day of our Christening.  Advent, like Lent, is a season given to us so that we may repent of our sins and be reconciled with God and His Church by receiving the Sacrament of Reconciliation. We have our parish advent reconciliation this Tuesday evening. You will have a choice of 6 priests you can go to make your confession to. Make use of the opportunity to straighten the path for the Lord- to fill in the “valleys” of our souls which have resulted from our shallow prayer life and a minimalist way of living our faith.  We have to straighten out whatever crooked paths we’ve been walking, like involvement in some secret or habitual sins or in a sinful relationship.  If we have been involved in some dishonest practices at work or at home, we are called to straighten them out and make restitution.  If we have been harboring grudges or hatred, or failing to be reconciled with others, now is the time to clear away all the debris.  If we have been pushing God off to the side of our road, if we have been saying to Him that we don’t really have the time for Him, now is the time for us to get our priorities straight.  

Without dying in Christ, without implementing the promises we made at the baptism we cannot live the life of Christ.

 A soap manufacturer and a pastor were walking together down a street in a large city.  The soap manufacturer casually said, "The gospel you preach hasn't done much good, has it?  Just observe. There is still a lot of wickedness in the world, and a lot of wicked people, too!"  The pastor made no reply until they passed a dirty little child making mud pies in the gutter.  Seizing the opportunity, the pastor said, "I see that soap hasn't done much good in the world either; for there is much dirt still here, and many dirty people are still around."  The soap man said, "Oh, well, soap only works when it is applied."  And the pastor said, "Exactly!  So it is with the gospel."

So, if we don’t grow in Christ, if we don’t see God’s saving acting breaking into our lives, it is because we haven’t taken serious the promise we made to God at Baptism.

Let’s pray that the Lord's coming this Christmas will be a heart moving experience leading to life-changing and world-transforming for us; helping us to fill in valleys by repentance, move mountains by faith (Mt 17:20), straighten the crooked ways by healing, and smooth the rough ways by forgiveness.