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| St. John the Baptist of Quiapo Church |
Praised be Jesus, Mary, and
Joseph!
The 2nd Sunday of
Advent leads us into the desert to see St. John the Baptist, who was sent as a
messenger ahead of the Lord in order to prepare his way. The message of the
Baptist is clearly an invitation to conversion, an invitation to repentance:
Prepare the way of the Lord! Make straight in the wasteland a highway for our
God! Every valley shall be filled in, every mountain and hill shall be made
low; the rugged land shall be made a plain, the rough country, a broad valley.
This sounds very much like an infrastructure project for the DPWH but
seriously, it is a serious, no nonsense demand for conversion.
Prepare the way of the Lord! Make
straight his path: in geometry, we have a principle that says “the shortest
distance between 2 points is a straight line.” Thus, we have the call to make
straight a highway for God. How to we make a straight highway? First, we level
everything: valleys are filled in and mountains and hills are made low. Valleys
are depressions of land between 2 mountains or hills. Mountains and hills, on
the other hand, are excesses of land. There are valleys because mountains and
hills have taken more land than they should. Therefore, how do we make a
straight highway for the Lord? We have to level the excess land of mountains
and hills and use it to fill in the valleys. In other words, the excesses of
some should be given to augment what others lack. This is obviously a demand
for conversion that goes beyond sentimental devotions. This conversion brings
about social change.
Again, there are valleys because
mountains and hills have taken more than they should. In other words, there is
poverty because some of us have taken more of the share of the goods of the
earth. When the Lord created the world for man, he intended that each
individual should have an equal share of the goods of the earth. But when some
take more than their allotted share, this would mean that the others would have
to be deprived of what should have been theirs. When only a privileged few
enjoy the bigger share of the goods of the earth, the greater majority are left
to fight over the smaller share that is left. Therefore, if we want to build a
straight highway for the Lord, then we must trim our excesses so that we could
give the necessities to those who in need. Remember, the Lord blesses you not
to increase your wealth. Rather, he blesses you to increase your generosity. I
really think that this is the conversion that the Lord desires: trim our
excesses in order to address the hunger of others. Pope Francis himself
criticizes our culture of waste which is the very reason for the phenomenon of
world hunger. Executives have hefty bonuses while many rank and file workers
are not even paid what is fair. Some take more than what they can consume and
by doing so, they deprive many others of their bare necessities. Perhaps, the
strong typhoon in the middle of the holidays should be an invitation, or better
yet, a challenge to increase in generosity by cutting down on luxuries. We
should level the mountains of our excesses in order to fill the valleys. This
is the more meaningful conversion demanded of us in the Year of the Poor.
St. Peter tells us in the 2nd
reading: the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will
pass away with a mighty roar and the elements will be dissolved by fire, and
the earth and everything on it will be found out. Our old prayers used to say:
the Lord will judge everything with fire. This means that on judgment day,
everything that does not belong to Christ will be burned. And what are the elements
that do not belong to Christ? They are our excesses. Di ba we are always told
to burn our fats? Fats are our excesses. Therefore, if we want to withstand the
fire on judgment day, we should trim our “fats,” trim our excesses. How? By
sharing with those who have none. Ibigay ang hindi kailangan. Ibigay ang hindi
ginagamit. Conversion is a call to simplicity. Conversion is a challenge to
frugality. Level the mountains and fill in the valleys. Prepare a straight
highway for our God!
Jesus, I trust in you. O Mary
conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee!
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