The Church’s liturgical year has begun. This is the second week of Advent and it rings with the poetry of the prophet Isaiah. Focus on his word. Listen closely. You can hear noisemakers in the distance. And if you listen even more intently, you’ll hear the commotion of celebration and tear-filled shouts of joy.
“Jerusalem! Take off your robe of mourning and misery; put on the splendor of glory… Up Jerusalem! Stand upon the heights; look to the east and see your children gathered from the east and the west at the word of the Holy One, rejoicing that they are remembered by God.”
It was the year 539 BCE. King Cyrus of Persia had conquered the Babylonian Empire and freed the Jewish people who were in exile there. They were beginning their journey back to Jerusalem. They could go home.
The Church uses Isaiah’s message of hope to direct our vision as we begin another liturgical year. Throughout the centuries the Church has held this text close to its heart because it touches that place, deep within the human person, that somehow always feels in exile. It touches that longing we all have and struggle to verbalize. We long for peace. We long for security. We long for joy and happiness. We long for many things, but ultimately, we long for home.
The Gospel for today is taken from the third chapter of Luke’s infancy narrative. In one beautiful run-on sentence he announces the Good News that our hope is about to come to fulfillment.
“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 Zachariah, in the desert.”
The next two Sundays we’ll listen to the words of hope proclaimed by the prophets Zephaniah and Micah. We’ll listen to John the Baptist sharing his message of hope. We’ll listen to the message that the angel Gabriel brought to a young girl in Nazareth. We’ll listen to her response.
We begin the first weeks of the new year by setting our gaze on the path that leads home. “Every valley shall be filled and every mountain and hill shall be made low. The winding roads shall be made straight and the rough ways smooth, and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.”
