Father Tim Lemlin
The prophet Baruch is writting during a very difficult time - ironically - in Jewish history. It is ironic because one would think that it would be a time of rejoicing. The Jewish people who have been in exile are free to return to their former homes in Israel. The difficulty is they have grown accustom to their new home (in exile) and no matter how easy it has now become to return to their homeland, they don't want to return!
We are a people of progress. We tend to approach life with the expectation that everything will get better and better. When I was in grade school the vaccine for Polio was being widely used. There was a feeling that scientists would soon wipe out all disease - even the common cold. We thought it might be arrogant to speak of becoming perfect, so we substituted the word whole, but it really meant the same thing. The general feeling was that life, if we worked hard enough at it, would get better and better.
This feeling of courage is not new to our century. It has been part of Western Civilization in particular, since the time of the Greeks, and part of the human psyche, it seems, since the beginning of creation. It, in many ways, can be recognized in one half of what we call Original Sin. It is our need - our drive - to become a hero, to become better than everyone else, and to prove to God that we deserve Heaven.
The other half of the doctrine of Original Sin is Grace - the unearned, undeserved, freely given unconditional love that God gives to us. We usually have more difficulty accepting this half of the doctrine than we do the first half. It feels too easy. We are more comfortable, and more familiar, with a way of life where we need to be courageous - to be heroic. We are more comfortable believing that we can present to God a perfect person - a whole person - than we are to be loved in our imperfection. (If we are perfect then how can God reject us?) This doctrine of Grace also causes us to admit that we are flawed and no matter how heroic or saintly we become our flaw never goes away.
John the Baptist is introduced in our gospel reading this week. The gospel writer, Luke, purposely surrounds his introduction of John with historical events. He wants us to know that John is part of our history. He is real. Much like Baruch, John has a difficult task facing him. The people are comfortable living a lifestyle in which God is inaccessible and we can only win God's favor with a heroic effort. Quoting the prophet Isaiah, John refutes this way of seeing life. He tells the people that God is filling in the valleys and leveling the hills so that they have a direct highway to God.
This message is received well by those who have experienced and accepted their incurable brokenness. It is refuted by those who are still very much more comfortable with the dream that they can earn their way into God's Presence. ("Anything that is easy isn't worth having.")
John's message is the same message given by the prophets before him and it is the same message that Jesus will give after him. It is a message that tells us that our minds need to be reformed. Our way of thinking is flawed and needs to be renewed - healed. The path to God is not an ascent. It is not a path of heroic and courageous efforts to earn Heaven. (This is okay for the first half of our lives. It is even something that is necessary, but eventually it needs to be proven to be flawed.) The message of John, the prophets and Jesus is that the path to God is one of descent, the path of Grace in which we experience God's love only when we acknowledge and accept our flaw. We don't go up to God. God comes down to us.
Hence, like the alcoholic who begins the journey of healing by announcing before others that he or she is an alcoholic, we enter our journey of healing each time we begin Mass with the acknowledgement that we are sinners.
