Prepare the Way

Here we are in the second week of Advent and at the very beginning of Mark’s Gospel, where we hear the Good News of John the Baptist’s call to “Prepare the way of the Lord.” And as Scripture says, the whole Judean countryside and all the inhabitants of Jerusalem were going out to him to be baptized as they acknowledged their sins!

Two thousand years later, we continue to be called to repentance and to prepare the way of the Lord. That longing to follow Jesus took root in my heart at a very early age. My hunger for God led me beyond the parish to Scripture studies and eventually a professional degree in ministry.

My studies began at a Protestant theological school. In 1985, a course in homiletics required that a sermon be preached and recorded in my church. My teacher knew that it would be a challenge for me, the only Catholic in class, and he assured me that any pulpit would do!

When my pastor got wind of this, he told me, “You will preach here, where you are known and loved!”

The assigned Scripture passages were for the Second Sunday of Advent.

One day, while praying in a small Dominican chapel, I reflected on the meaning of the season: How could anyone adequately prepare for such a momentous inbreaking into human history as the birth of the Son of God?

I noticed a banner on the wall. It was made of white felt with a black silhouette of Mary, very pregnant and very great with child! I was stunned by such an unfamiliar image. And at the same time, I felt an immediate connection to how Mary must have felt as she shared her news with Elizabeth: all those hopes and fears of a future birth not yet born.

This is Advent. We prepare for an unknown future, a future known only to God. It is the “already but not yet” of the Reign of God. It is the reality of all who labor to give birth to Christ in the world!

But how could I preach such a sermon? As a woman, I would be breaking centuries-long traditions of prohibitions against women’s voices. And in literal terms of childbearing, speaking of such an intimate experience would certainly be considered scandalous.

When I brought my concerns to my mentors, they both encouraged me. In the words of my Baptist teacher, “Preach it, Sister!”

And so, with trembling knees, I went to the ambo, right after the Gospel, on that Sunday in 1985. I was a woman breaking open the Word of God!

Forty-one years have passed since that significant day for me. So when I received a request to prepare a homily for Advent, I didn’t hesitate to accept. And when I opened the Scripture for December 6, Year B, I was dumbstruck to see the same passages I had prepared so long ago. I felt a warm rush of affirmation flow through me. The years between then and now collapsed as the past was made present again.

Throughout those years, my desire to break open God’s Word in the context of the Mass has never waned. In fact, it has only grown deeper as more women’s voices are responding to the Holy Spirit’s call to diaconal ministry. As efforts for women preaching have expanded to the universal Church, my expectations have grown with them, not only for myself but for my daughters and sisters and all women everywhere to be seen and heard, especially in the Mass, where the Church, the Body of Christ, is most visible!

Have you ever wanted something so badly that by praying, and listening, and discerning, and hoping so hard you could make it happen?

Do we labor in vain as we respond to what we believe comes from the Holy Spirit?

What if the answer to our prayers is “no”?

How are we to answer that call to prepare the way?

In his second letter today, Peter asks, “What sort of persons ought we to be, conducting ourselves in holiness and devotion, waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God?”

The answer lies in Jesus’ words in Mark: “Repent, and believe in the Gospel.”

Jesus used the Greek word metanoia: “to be transformed,” “to reorient our way of thinking.”

“Prepare the way” has been the ground of my ministry and my desire to follow Jesus through these many years. I have been faithfully preparing the way for myself and for others!

But looking back, I see that all along, God has been preparing the way for me!

God prepares the way for us!

It eases my mind to change, to reorient my way of thinking. God’s time is not our time. With the Lord, one day is like a thousand years! And Peter reminds us, “The Lord does not delay his promise, as some regard ‘delay,’ but he is patient with [us], not wishing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance.”

There is comfort in accepting this and letting go of my need to know the outcome of my efforts!

The wisdom of the Trappist monk Thomas Merton assures me that although I think I am following God’s will, that does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I know that God will lead me by the right road, though I may know nothing about it.

Repent and believe!
This is our labor of love as followers of Christ!
Come, Lord Jesus!
Maranatha!

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