Urgent!

Today's readings: Isaiah 40, 1-5.9-11; 2 Peter 3, 8-14; Mark 1, 1-8.

It is always difficult to proclaim God's sovereignty to people who are sure of themselves or who are in denial. John the Baptist "appeared in the wilderness" not in the temple, where people may take so much for granted. Unless we are well prepared, it is difficult to see reality objectively and to have the right perspective. We need to be pilgrims in the land of the spirit because it is the desert perspective that provides us with a different standpoint from where to see and judge reality.

The Baptist's voice, today like yesterday, is the voice of the prophets whom God always gives to society and to His Church. The prophets always speak out to disturb the people, because they point fingers and call to conversion by calling things by name. They are never complacent. In this sense, the Gospel is disturbing and Advent should be destabilising.

Even for us today, the city does not help us listen to God's word. The way we live as Christians in the city is no longer credible because we've tamed the Spirit and we feel at home with all sorts of iniquity around us. We are becoming a defeatist people on many fronts. In Peter's words, we accuse God all the time of "being slow in carrying out His promises". But in actual fact, the problem is ours.

We need positioning. God's sovereignty can break the hard, barren soil of our lives. It's a promise the Lord renews regularly with us: history can be regenerated at the point where our historical projects are exhausted, where our explanations of the past are silenced. His voice cries in the wilderness, which in daily life stands for doubt, failure, fear and suffering. It is there, in the wilderness, not in the temple, that the regenerative manifestation of the Lord occurs. People come from Jerusalem to the margins to be baptised. This contradicts our logic and our ways.

The Gospel refers to Isaiah and speaks of preparing the way, straightening His paths, even "making a straight highway for our God across the desert". Isaiah is here referring to what is known as the second exodus of Israel, the return home from exile. But like the Israelites, even in exile we can settle down and feel at home. Religion does not offer magic solutions or recipes for the transformation of reality. It is only the force behind the possible change. But it is a radical force. People like Martin Luther King, Bishop Romero and Mother Teresa illustrate the changes this force can bring about.

John the Baptist is a radical voice and he simply refuses to subject himself to our type of logic. Faced with the sense of urgency with which the Baptist speaks, we are too slow in coming to grips with God's sovereignty in our lives. Experience shows we cannot expect people to change just because we tell them to change. Exhortations do not animate people to radical change. Advent is not a time of exhortation. But unfortunately, our proclamation is many a time toned down to exhorting people, particularly at this time of the year, to be good, to do some good deed because it's Christmastime. But real life issues go beyond that.

In today's second reading, Peter says that God is patient, "wanting nobody to be lost and everybody to be brought to change his ways". On the contrary, we are impatient. We have no time for our children, for aging parents, for ourselves, let alone for God.

The little time we have left we call 'quality time', pretending thus to make up for our losses and failures. But we can't live like that. We're losing too much. Many come to realise this only when it's too late.

God's time is all quality time. Today, John the Baptist invites us to come to terms with decisions to be taken and choices to be made. What is being asked of us this Advent season is conversion, a change of mentality and life that can demonstrate to the world the difference that faith in God can bring about. And there is a sense of urgency in the Baptist's voice.