Prepare the way of the Lord

If we are not preparing it for others, we are deceiving ourselves.

Advent started yesterday. For Christians, our new year began yesterday. It’s notable that our new year begins not with celebration, but with preparation. It’s also notable that we are preparing for the Second Coming of Christ by preparing to celebrate his First Coming. Now is the time of mercy. When he comes again in glory, he will come with justice, righteousness, and judgement: but he is also coming as the Bridegroom for his Bride, a time of great rejoicing for some and weeping and gnashing of teeth for others.

Recall the Parable of the Ten Virgins. All were eagerly awaiting the arrival of the Groom, yet five were anxious because they were unprepared, and those five, who also loved the Groom, were not admitted to the wedding feast. Those five, who loved the Groom, who eagerly awaited his coming, suffered the same fate as the indifferent and the workers of evil: exclusion from the wedding feast that lasts forever, to be cast into the outer darkness forever. Sobering thoughts.

Advent is the time of John the Baptist, who urges us to prepare the way of the Lord, harkening back to Isaiah, and by telling us to “bear fruits that befit repentance,” for “every tree that therefore does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.” More sobering thoughts, and if one is not careful, anxiety and scrupulosity can come to characterize one’s spiritual life — or else their opposites, presumption and indifference. These thoughts paralyze us and cause us fever of mind and soul.

How, then, do we find the middle way, which is also, according to the Sermon on the Mount, the way whose entrance is narrow and whose path is hard? Today’s Gospel offers us an important clue. The centurion comes to Jesus begging healing of his servant, who is paralyzed and feverish. Jesus, the Great Physician, and ever merciful to the humble, tells the man he will come and heal his servant. The centurion demurs, declaring his unworthiness of the Lord’s presence in his house and asking only that the Lord speak the word for the servant’s healing. This parable is very familiar to us, as we recite it before receiving Holy Communion, and so we risk that its message becomes routine, presumed. Before telling the man to go, that the man’s faith has obtained from Jesus the healing he sought for his servant, Jesus tells those listening — us — that even sons of the kingdom will be thrown into the outer darkness for their lack of faith. Membership in the Church is not enough.

Jesus shows us that the wholeness we seek, the wholeness we need to enter the Kingdom of Heaven, is in his gift, and that He will give it when we ask for it in faith — and especially for another.

There is no true love of God and true love of self that does not issue forth in service to those in need of whatever kind, and especially of the paralysis and fever that excessive concerns with affairs of the world produce in our excitable souls. The first weekly Gospel of Advent begins with a call to faith that Jesus will free us of the paralysis and fever that stops us from bearing fruits fit for repentance. We can exercise that faith, taking action to place others before the Lord’s loving care. In its exercise, repentance and preparation begin. Then the miracle occurs: when we stop worrying so much about ourselves to attend to the needs of others, Jesus attends to ours, and he gives us the oil we need for our lamps as his gift for our acts of faith.