“Make ready the way of the Lord, clear him a straight path.”
When the pagans led the people of Israel into slavery and sent them as captives among the Persians and the Medes, after a long period of captivity, the good king Cyrus resolved to take them out of their enslavement and to bring them back to the Promised Land. With divine poetry, the prophet Isaiah broke into song with these beautiful words: “Comfort, give comfort to my people, says the Lord your God. Your consolation will neither be in vain nor useless. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem… for her sinfulness is complete. And because her iniquity has reached its peak, she will be forgiven.” And that is why that great prophet told the people of Israel: “Prepare the way of the Lord… Make straight … a highway for our God!” (cf. Isa 40:1ff.)
Why does God say that he will forgive the people of Israel their iniquity because they have reached the peak of their sinfulness? The ancient Fathers… teach that these words can be understood … as if God were saying: “When they have reached their greatest affliction and when they feel intensely the burden of their iniquity in enslavement and servitude, after punishing them for their evil ways…, I looked at them and I felt compassion for them. When they had reached the worst of their days, I was satisfied with what they had suffered. And that is why now their iniquity will be forgiven… When they had reached the height of their … ingratitude, when they seemed no longer to remember anything at all of God and his kindness, then their iniquity will be forgiven.”… When God in his providence desired to show humankind his goodness, it was admirable, for in doing so, he didn’t want to be motivated by anything. Without being prompted by anything other than his goodness, he communicated himself to them in a truly marvelous way.
When he came into this world, it was the time when humankind had reached the peak of its sinfulness; when the laws were in the hands of Annas and Caiaphas…, when Herod ruled and Pontius Pilate presided over Judea, that was when God came to the world to redeem us and to deliver us from the tyranny of sin and the servitude of our enemy.