“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.
For believers, there are times when it is good to “hear voices” and times when it is good to discover roadblocks or obstacles in our way. At this time of year and, really, at all times of the year, there are such people standing quietly, even nervously in line waiting to confess their sins to a priest. The authenticity of their faith in what they are about to do is a powerful testimony to the action of God in peoples’ lives. They are in line willingly and freely and they want to go through the pride-challenging process of making a good confession, of being reconciled with God.
There were similar lines of willing and waiting believers in the days of St. John the Baptist. How blessed they were to have the humility to hear his wild, from-the-wilderness, compelling and convincing message. Other people, no doubt, quickly dismissed John as a fanatic or worse. But the people who took his message to heart were glad to do what he called them to do. They waited in long lines beside the river to receive the baptism of repentance, which he was offering to them. In those moments, waiting for their turn to be washed by the holy man, they did what we do — they called to mind their sins, admitting their need to acknowledge all that they had done to offend God and disobey His commandments.
Did John require them to say their sins out loud so that everyone could hear? Would we be willing to do that? In our day, we shudder at the idea of being known for our sins. Yet, there is a need for us to recognize the real effect our sins have on others around us and on the community at large.
Sins always bring about a distance between us and God. He does not move away from us, but we say, by our actions, that we prefer to keep a distance from Him. This distance keeps growing as we keep sinning. It is easy to understand why we might fail to hear or recognize the voice of God (oftentimes spoken through His church and her priests and deacons, if not through the fraternal correction of our brothers and sisters in faith) calling out to us in our consciences.
The distance between sinners and God highlights the beauty and goodness of each sinner willing to repent. St. John the Baptist was a master at calling sinners to sincere repentance. One by one the people approach him, the voice in the desert. They add to his prophetic words their own sincere expression of repentance. Such an exercise of devotion and truth brings them closer to the firm foundation of God’s presence in their lives. As they submit to this public ritual they arrive at a new and better place in their friendship with God. He no longer feels so distant from them. He has called them through this mysterious preacher and they have responded freely. What is next for them? The voice tells them: I have baptized you with water; He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.
Sincere and honest admission of and repentance for one’s sins is a great indicator that one is in a good place spiritually. The believers who responded to St. John the Baptist’s preaching most certainly experienced a new interior freedom. With this freedom they were able to ponder the promise he gave of one already among them who would offer them another baptism, one of greater power and significance. We can imagine their excitement when they began to hear about what Jesus of Nazareth was saying and doing. They must have been among the first and the best in their response to Jesus.
Freedom from our sins is a tremendous gift from God. When a person hears God’s voice from within calling him or her to admit sinful choices, that person is experiencing closeness to God. Of highest importance is the next step of accepting that these same sins form a real obstacle to His love.
Of all the lines we can wait in this Advent, the (hopefully) long and devotedly nervous line of repentant sinners is one of the best. While we wait, we can reflect on the best bargain ever — freedom from sin by means of the sacraments of baptism and (continuing with) penance. It is always obvious that the weight of His Cross, willingly embraced for us, makes our relatively short wait altogether worth it.
Fr. Zuberbueler is pastor of St. Anthony of Padua Church in Falls Church.