PRAISED BE Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!
St. John the Baptist is known to us as the voice crying out
in the desert because it was in the desert that he preached “Prepare the way of
the Lord.” Somehow, the desert seems to be a strange venue for preaching.
After, there is virtually no one living in the desert because its circumstances
make it inhabitable. The desert is the place of death. Perhaps this is the
reason why John preached in the desert. Being the place of death, the desert
has become the image of the world of man after the fall. “Through the
disobedience of one man, sin entered into the world and together with sin
entered death.” Man used to live in paradise because he used to live in
communion with God. But turning away from God in whom is found life, man found
death. Paradise became a desert.
The Holy Father speaks of a similar situation in our times: “Recent decades have seen the advance of a spiritual
‘desertification’. In the (Vatican II) Council’s time it was already possible
from a few tragic pages of history to know what a life or a world without God
looked like, but now we see it every day around us. This void has spread.”
(Benedict XVI, Homily at the beginning of
the year of Faith, 11 October 2012) (This week, the congress rejected the
amendment that would require the government to respect religious belief. Is
this not a manifestation of the advance of a spiritual “desertification”?) The
world we are living in is increasingly becoming a world without God. And the
Church must lead people out of this desert.
The Holy Father speaks of people of faith in the
middle of the desert: “And in the desert people of faith are needed who, with
their own lives, point out the way to the Promised Land and keep hope alive.
Living faith opens the heart to the grace of God which frees us from pessimism.
Today, more than ever, evangelizing means witnessing to the new life,
transformed by God, and thus showing the path.” John the Baptist is an example of the people of
faith we need to see in the desert. He provides the way out of the desert by
“proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.” John the
Baptist tells us that we must accept the Savior who comes into our desert. He
tells us to take away all hindrances that prevent the Lord from entering into
our world: the valleys of our negligence and the mountains of our excesses. We
must make up for the good have failed to do and repent for the evil that we
have done. Let us “discern what is of value”: “In the desert we
rediscover the value of what is essential for living; thus in today’s world
there are innumerable signs, often expressed implicitly or negatively, of the
thirst for God, for the ultimate meaning of life.” (Homily at the beginning of the Year of faith) Let us thirst for God, let us thirst for the
ultimate meaning of life. In this thirst for the true living water, let us make
straight all winding roads and make smooth all rough ways “and all flesh shall
see the salvation of God.”
Jesus, I trust in you! O Mary conceived without
sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee!
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