Luke 3:1-6
The Greatest Gift
by Rev. Stanley Krempa
Reprinted with permission of "The Arlington Catholic
Herald"
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Luke writes to explain that
Christ came to save everyone.
Brothers
and sisters: I pray always with joy in my every prayer for all of you, because
of your partnership for the gospel from the first day until now. I am
confident of this, that the one who began a good work in you will continue to
complete it until the day of Christ Jesus. God is my witness, how I long
for all of you with the affection of Christ Jesus. And this is my prayer:
that your love may increase ever more and more in knowledge and every kind of
perception, to discern what is of value, so that you may be pure and blameless
for the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through
Jesus Christ for the glory and praise of God.
In
the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, when Pontius Pilate was
governor of Judea, and Herod was tetrarch of Galilee, and his brother Philip
tetrarch of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias was tetrarch of
Abilene, during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came
to John the son of Zechariah in the desert. John went throughout the whole
region of the Jordan proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of
sins, as it is written in the book of the words of the prophet Isaiah: A
voice of one crying out in the desert: "Prepare the way of the Lord, make
straight his paths. Every valley shall be filled and every mountain and
hill shall be made low. The winding roads shall be made straight, and the
rough way made smooth, and all flesh shall see the salvation of God."
Imagine
a motion picture that begins with a sweeping panorama of all the centers of
power in our society: brokerage houses, banks, government offices, huge
universities, skyscrapers, media studios and military bases. Then, it cuts away
to a desert scene where one man shouts out words whose saving power is heard at
first by only a few, but whose impact can transform even those mighty seats of
power.
This
is the setting of today’s Gospel reading. We are given an overview of the
corridors of power in Jesus’ time, but the word of salvation is found not among
them, but in the desert, in the voice of John the Baptist.
John’s
message is a call to repentance. But it is more than that. It is a message of
hope.
The
church is like John the Baptist. The church is called to speak to people of our
time with a message of repentance and of hope. Condemnations are a dime a dozen.
They have their place, but a more precious commodity that we all need is hope. A
clear diagnosis is important, but we really need to know about the cure. People
who run for office know that their effectiveness is based not only on a critique
of what is, but on a vision of what can be.
People
with hope live differently than people without hope. Without hope, life is flat,
pointless, lacking in vision. There is nothing to look forward to. People who
are mired in poverty see no way out. People drowning in excess see no exit.
People who have made mistakes in their life see no redemption. What is the
result? Despair, social combustion and a slow slide toward the bottom.
With
hope, however, people can find a way out. They can have dignity restored, they
can turn the page on the past. Hope says that a different future is possible.
This
is the point of Advent. It is not just a countdown of shopping days until
Christmas. It is a season of hope. However deep the darkness, there is still the
light. Advent reminds us that societies can change. A culture of death can
become a culture of life; divisions within a society can heal; justice can
become a concrete reality rather than an abstraction; and charity a component of
societal living rather than a hobby.
The
Old Testament prophet Baruch, in today’s first reading, speaks to the Jewish
people scattered in exile. He speaks of a different future that awaits them. In
a passage of splendid poetry brimming with hope, he writes, “Up, Jerusalem …
look to the east and see your children gathered from the east and the west …
rejoicing that they are remembered by God.”
The
message of Advent is that a different future awaits us as well. A different
future awaits our world. That new future is always ready and waiting to be born,
if we will take the concrete steps to bring it to birth.
The
church is the carrier of this message of hope. Years ago, when Pope Benedict
visited a halfway house for recovering drug addicts on one of his journeys, he
told the residents of that facility that they are “ambassadors of hope” showing
that freedom from addiction is possible. We too can be ambassadors of hope to
show that fidelity in marriage is possible; to show that we can stand for the
sacredness of human life and be compassionate as well; to show that we can
disagree on public policy and still respect our institutions of government; to
show that sexuality is a sacred power that makes us agents of the Creator God;
and to give to those who are dying the hope of an eternal life that awaits them.
We live in the real hope grounded in the Resurrection that, as St. Paul writes,
the good that God began in us will be brought to completion throughout the
world.
Are
we willing to be Advent people not in the sense of decorating for Christmas but
of being people of hope? Are we willing to be catalysts of a different future
that begins in us?
The
greatest gift we can give to a weary world and to the people we know is the gift
of hope.
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