How do we prepare our hearts for Christ?

Matthew 3: 1–12

In those days John the Baptist appeared, preaching in the desert of Judea [and] saying, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand!” It was of him that the prophet Isaiah had spoken when he said: “A voice of one crying out in the desert,‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make straight his paths.’” John wore clothing made of camel’s hair and had a leather belt around his waist. His food was locusts and wild honey.

At that time Jerusalem, all Judea, and the whole region around the Jordan were going out to him and were being baptized by him in the Jordan River as they acknowledged their sins.

When he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to his baptism, he said to them, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath?

Produce good fruit as evidence of your repentance.

And do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’ For I tell you, God can raise up children to Abraham from these stones.

Even now the ax lies at the root of the trees. Therefore every tree that does not bear good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.

I am baptizing you with water, for repentance, but the one who is coming after me is mightier than I. I am not worthy to carry his sandals. He will baptize you with the holy Spirit and fire.

His winnowing fan is in his hand. He will clear his threshing floor and gather his wheat into his barn, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”

Music Meditations

Each Winter As The Year Grows Older--Marty Haugen
Come Thou Long Expected Jesus--Chris Tomlin
O Come Emmanuel--Enya
The People Who Walked In Darkness Have Seen a Great Light--Handel

Opening Prayer

Lord, the world is such a mess, as it was when you first entered it. Help us to see beyond the chaos and despair of a broken world, a fractured political climate in our country, a sometimes divided church and our frequently divided hearts to find your presence, ever faithful, steering the barque of humanity into a safe harbor. Help us to pick up an oar and row with you towards the shores of eternal life.

Companions for the Journey

Spoiler alert: John the Baptist was not heralding the coming of Jesus into the world; he was heralding the coming of Jesus into His public ministry. Advent is less about anticipating the birth of Jesus and more about anticipating the birth of the Kingdom on earth through Jesus.

From “First Impressions”, a Service of the Southern Dominican Province, 2007:

If they had it MTV in Jesus’ day, John the Baptist would have been a star! He was the closest thing the first century had to a rock star. He dressed the part: camel’s-hair clothing and a leather belt. He ate exotic foods-locusts and wild honey. He was up front and in your face. He could not help getting people’s attention: kicking up the waters of the Jordan, putting his fingers in the face of the insincere, shaking up the comfortable by calling them names---” You brood of vipers!” He was an attention-getter because he had something to say. “ Repent ... straighten things up!”

Recently I had long car trip to make. I left the house at 5 in the in the morning, and drove two hours in the dark. After four hours on the road I realized I hadn’t been fully alert: I had traveled a couple of miles on “cruise control.” I wasn’t sleeping exactly, but I was almost in a hypnotic state. I was lucky that traffic was light. I was lucky that no fast responses were required during those couple miles. I pulled over and took a nap. You can’t travel at 65 m.p.h. and not be fully awake! It’s scary! And it is dangerous!

Life gets like that. We move along at 65 m.p.h. on cruise control. Maybe we haven’t crashed, but is that any way to go through life? What are we missing along the way? Where is our attention? Where is our focus? Have we been missing those people and parts of our life that count? Have we lost a sense of priorities? This time of the year, with all its hustle and bustle, we are especially prone to “cruise control.” We’re on automatic pilot, we put our heads down and plunge through the season. What we need is a wake-up call. And we sometimes get it. It can be as strident and in-your-face as John the Baptist was.

For example. A spouse stops us in our tracks in a gentle, or not-so gentle, way and gives us a wake-up call. In one way or another he or she reminds us that we have been traveling through life on cruise control; we have been absent from life, marriage or from our children. A friend confronts us; we have broken a promise or taken the friend for granted. The voice of John the Baptist comes like that in various modern disguises. That’s how our God speaks to us. In one way or another we hear the call, “ Repent.” “ Straighten things up!” Sometimes the voice is harsh. Sometimes it is gentle. But if we listen to the voice, we realize that it is speaking the truth to us.

Most likely our first response is sorrow. But what is there to be sorry about? As blessed as this season is, it does touch into certain compulsions we have. When we hear the summons to “repent,” we may realize that we have lived only on the surface of life. We have been searching for happiness in the wrong places, thinking that what will make us happy lies in the newest, fastest, cleverest device or the latest fashion. What new gadget or toy are they pushing on tv or on the internet this season that we just can’t wait to get our hands on? One recent survey said that the less time parents spend with their children, the more gifts they buy them. Our society desires more and more; but we seem to have less and less of what really counts. At this period of Advent we ask ourselves if we are investing a lot of our energies in the wrong places. We have to admit with sorrow that our quest for happiness has disappointed us. We have let others identify for us what will make us happy and we find it wanting.

Why else do we come here to celebrate Eucharist together week after week? It is not merely because we’re keeping a religious rule. It’s not just because we are concerned about the next life and we want to guarantee a place there for ourselves. No, it’s about this life: we are hoping to find meaning, sanity and balance in our lives. We want to see, in the dark that surrounds us, a way illumined by a lasting light. We want to focus on what is real for ourselves and for our families.

As harsh as John the Baptist sounded he did draw a crowd. He was popular because they needed help and he was a voice of clarity and sanity. They and we hear his promise: someone is coming bearing a fire for spirits that are chilled by boredom, aimlessness and routine. John promises that our spirits, which are bloated with excess, can be revived by a new spirit. What has been chilled and feels tepid in our spirits can be heated again by the fire of the coming Christ. He is coming, John tells us, with a baptism of the Spirit and fire. That must have been an exciting message to hear! We cannot revive our spirits on our own. We need what John promises us--- the gift of a renewed spirit. Unlike other gifts at this buying season, this spirit of renewal cannot be bought or charged to Visa. It cannot be owned and possessed only by the rich and powerful. It can’t be cornered and monopolized by any special religious elite. It is a gift that only God can give, a baptism, as John says, “with the Holy Spirit and fire.” Behind John’s voice is God speaking with love and concern for us. God has sent someone out looking for us to bring us home, the one mightier than John, who will baptize with water and the Spirit. With that Spirit guiding us we will not lose our way.

With that fire burning within us we will share what we believe with others who might still be on “cruise control.”

Weekly Memorization

Taken from the gospel for today’s session…

Prepare the way of the Lord; make straight his paths

Living the Good News

What action can you take in the next week as a response to today’s reading and discussion?

Keep a private journal of your prayer/actions responses this week. Feel free to use the personal reflection questions or the meditations which follow:

Reflection Questions

Have there been any "desert places" in the landscape of your memory? How were you affected by them? What did you learn? Have you known anyone who has come to a place in their life where they needed to make a real change in the way they were living that life? Was there an event that signaled/marked that person’s decision? Have you ever felt the love of another so deeply that you wanted to change your life? Can you remember a time when you felt a deep desire to have God come into your life? Would a public act of penance have been authentic? What do you think it would feel like to be that caught up in God’s love for you that you want to change the way you lived your life? Has there ever been in a time in your life when you felt that you were unworthy of God’s love and trust for you? How is public expression of repentance different from a private acknowledgment of personal sinfulness? What do you think would happen in your church community if every year even a few people would take on the role of sincerely publicly acknowledging their repentance for the past and publicly commit to changing the way they lived their life? At this time in history, most people looked upon the Pharisees and Sadducees with great respect. Why would they be coming to John? What did John see in them that caused him to treat them with such disdain? Who would John see as the Pharisees and Sadducees of our time? How does this text ask you to think about your preparation for Christmas? In what ways do you want to reform your life? What in your life needs to be improved to prepare for the coming of Christ? From Jude Siciliano, O.P.: What can I do this Advent to allow some time for reflection?

Meditations

A Meditation in the Ignatian Style/Imagination:

As I reflect on this gospel, I try to imagine John the Baptist preaching to the crowds about the beginning of Jesus' ministry: I see a small, wiry man, dressed in rags and tatters. His clothes are dirty and hang off his too-thin frame. They say he eats little--locusts and honey gathered from the parched land he and the other Essene inhabit in the hills. Stranger and stranger. But there is something about the man that forces me to stay and listen to what he has to say. His voice, his eyes, speak eloquently of the passion which drives him…..The conviction that time is short and the kingdom of Heaven is near rings out over the crowd. He makes us feel that we and the world we inhabit are at a crossroads. Something momentous is upon us. His name is Jesus. We must repent. Repent. Repentance-Metanoia--more than a confession of sins. More than guilt and anxiety. More than fear of the Lord's wrath. Metanoia. A complete change of heart. To turn one's very soul around. Away from self-centeredness, selfishness and self-aggrandizement. Away from meanness, from sniping at others to make myself more secure. Away from greed, clutching frantically at what I have, holding it close because of anxiety that there might not be enough. Enough time, enough money, enough attention, enough love. We are called to turn our minds and hearts Away from evil. From envy of what others have achieved or acquired, Envy fostered by the fear that someone might just have more of something than I do. Metanoia. A turning around. A turning back. Back to goodness. Back to kindness. Back to loving. Back to God.

How would I respond to John the Baptist if I were sitting listening to him? What does his life and message say to me? Would my heart be touched by the Spirit and would I experience the deep conviction that I must, MUST realign my will to God's a live my life accordingly? Do I realize the hardships this might entail? Do I realize what pleasures I might have to forgo or defenses I might have to abandon in order to be open to God's call, to God's living presence? I sit with this story, trying to integrate it into my own circumstances, my own life. I speak to Jesus about by my desire to change my heart, to forgive, to let go of resentments, to align my heart with his. I give thanks for this time together with him…..

A Reflection in the Dominican Style/Asking Questions:

The gospel section is not about repentance, although that is often how we translate metanoia. What John call us to is a complete change of heart, and change of priorities so that both align more closely with the heart of Jesus. Metanoia, then, is about letting go of the ME I do not want to be an becoming the ME I want to be. The ME I don’t want to be is weighed down with attachments to illusions about myself that keep me mired in a certain way of acting and reacting. What illusions about myself, about others around me, or the world at large am I clinging to because those illusions are so familiar? What are the temptations in life that I am prey to? If I could pick just one habit or knee-jerk reaction to work on this advent, what would it be? In what way do I want to be different at the end of Advent that I am right now? Does personal change require courage? Am I often discouraged because this will take a LOT of work on my part? What is the role of grace in this endeavor? What is the role of prayer?

Poetic Reflection:

How does Mary Oliver capture our need to get ready for the coming of Christ?
What is the role of compassion, of hope and joy in all of this preparation?

“Making the House Ready for the Lord”

Dear Lord, I have swept and I have washed but
still nothing is as shining as it should be
for you. Under the sink, for example, is an
uproar of mice—it is the season of their
many children. What shall I do? And under the eaves
and through the walls the squirrels
have gnawed their ragged entrances—but it is the season
when they need shelter, so what shall I do? And
the raccoon limps into the kitchen and opens the cupboard
while the dog snores, the cat hugs the pillow;
what shall I do? Beautiful is the new snow falling
in the yard and the fox who is staring boldly
up the path, to the door. And still I believe you will
come, Lord: you will, when I speak to the fox,
the sparrow, the lost dog, the shivering sea-goose, know
that really I am speaking to you whenever I say,
as I do all morning and afternoon: Come in, Come in.

Closing Prayer

Lord, I know that I want to change some things about myself, about my life. I know this is not easy. I know, too, that this cannot be done on my own. I need your grace and your care to be attentive to what I really want to be, how I really want to be in order to love others more and love you more through them. Help me to be aware of my own faults and more tolerant of the faults of others. Be with me on this Advent journey toward integrity and wholeness.

Weekly Reflections

Second Sunday of Advent, December 4, 2022