Linaioli
Tabernacle, St John the Baptist
Blessed Fra Angelico [Web Gallery of Art]
Readings (Jerusalem Bible: Australia, [England & Wales], Ireland, New Zealand, Pakistan, Scotland)
Readings (New American Bible: Philippines, USA)
Gospel Luke 3:1-6 (English Standard Version Anglicised: India)
In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, Pontius Pilate being governor of Judea, and Herod being tetrarch of Galilee, and his brother Philip tetrarch of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias tetrarch of Abilene, during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John the son of Zechariah in the wilderness. And he went into all the region around the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. As it is written in the book of the words of Isaiah the prophet,
“The voice of one crying in the wilderness:
‘Prepare the way of the Lord,
make
his paths straight.
Every valley shall be filled,
and
every mountain and hill shall be made low,
and the crooked shall become straight,
and
the rough places shall become level ways,
and all flesh shall see the
salvation of God.’”
This is Handel's setting of the last part of today's gospel.
Charles Kuralt was an American journalist who
worked for many years for the CBS TV network in the USA. He was especially
noted for his 'On the Road' features on the CBS Evening News. These started in
1967, the year I was ordained, and I became familiar with them when I went to
study in the USA the following year.
I vividly remember one particular story - they were never from the highways but from the byways of the United States - about a man somewhat on the older side who lived in a small town somewhere in the heartland of the country. I forget the particular state. The nearest town was only a few kilometres away but there was no road connecting the two. People had to take a very long way around to get from one to the other.
The residents of both towns tried for years to
persuade their politicians to build a road connecting them, without success. So
this particular elderly citizen decided he'd start to build a road himself,
using planks. When Charles Kuralt caught up with him he hadn't got very far -
but he had started.
Legion
of Mary AltarThis man was engaged in what the Handbook of
the Legion of Mary calls Symbolic
Action. The Handbook was written almost entirely by Frank
Duff, the founder of the Legion.
The Handbook says, It
is a fundamental Legion principle that into every work should be thrown the
best that we can give. simple or difficult, it must be done in the spirit of
Mary . . .
But sometimes we are faced with works
which are really impossible, that is to say, beyond human effort . . .
'Every impossibility is divisible into thirty-nine steps, of which each step is possible' - declares a legionary slogan . . .
Observe:
the stress is set on action. No matter what may be the degree of the
difficulty, a step must be taken. Of course, the step should be as effective as
it can be. But if an effective step is not in view, then we must take a less
effective one. And if the latter be not available, then some active gesture
(that is, not merely a prayer) must be made which, though of no apparent practical
value, at least tends towards or has some relation to the objective. This final
challenging gesture is what the Legion has been calling 'Symbolic Action.'
Recourse to it will explode the impossibility which is of our own imagining.
And, on the other hand, it enters in the spirit of faith into dramatic conflict
with the genuine impossibility.
The sequel may be the collapse of the walls of that Jericho.
I saw Charles Kuralt's broadcast some time between 1968 and 1971. In the autumn of 1982 I was working in a hospital in Minneapolis as a chaplain on a three-month Clinical Pastoral Education programme. Charles Kuralt came to town while I was there to give a lunchtime lecture in an auditorium near the hospital and I went along to hear him. When he invited questions from the very large audience someone asked him, What happened to that road the old man began to build? So I wasn't the only one who had remembered the story.
Mr Kuralt told us that the man had since died - but that the road between the two towns had finally been built by the authorities.
The chances are that the man featured in Charles
Kuralt's story, since he was from the heartland of the USA, was familiar with
today's gospel. St John the Baptist is quoting the Prophet Isaiah and asking
each of us to Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight. He assures us that Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill
shall be brought low, and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough
ways shall be made smooth; and all flesh shall see the salvation of
God.
Jesus asks for our cooperation. When he was faced
with the hungry crowds he asked the Apostles what food they had and then told
them to feed the people. Their cooperation with their feeble resources enabled
him to show God's bounty in a way they could not have imagined. At Cana Jesus
told the servants to fill the water containers - and changed the water into the
equivalent of about 600 bottles of the very best wine. (I once read a
commentary that advised the reader to take that in a symbolic sense. I really
don't see why we should diminish God's bounty! What Jesus did is indeed a
symbol of God's bounty precisely because it was an act of that bounty in a
specific situation.)
There is nothing further for him to say.
St John of the Cross goes on to write in the same passage, Consequently, anyone who today would want to ask God questions or desire some vision or revelation, would not only be acting foolishly but would commit an offence against God by not fixing his eyes entirely on Christ, without wanting something new or something besides him.
God might give him this answer, 'This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased; listen to him.' I have already told you all things in my Word. Fix your eyes on him alone, because in him I have spoken and revealed all. Moreover, in him you will find more than you ask or desire.
The writings of St John of the Cross and of other great theologians do not reveal to us anything new but rather bring us into a deeper understanding of the Word. Likewise, the messages that the Church recognises as having been received in such places as Lourdes, for example, do not reveal to us anything new but rather emphasise some aspect of the Word, usually a call to penance and to prayer, in other words, Prepare the way of the Lord.
God asks us to look to the future in active, sometimes symbolically active, hope like the old man in Charles Kuralt's story. Be ready to meet Jesus in whatever guise he comes and whenever he comes, each day, at the hour of our death, at the end of time.
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