Gospel: Prepare the Way of the Lord

Today marks the Second Sunday of Advent and the Gospel will be read from the account of St Luke (click here for the Mass readings from USCCB).

This week and next, our Gospel readings invite us to consider St John the Baptist and his relationship to Jesus. St John the Baptist appears in the tradition of the great prophets, preaching repentance and reform to the people of Israel. To affirm this, St Luke quotes at length from the prophet Isaiah. St John baptizes for repentance and forgiveness of sins, preparing the way for God's salvation.

The three Synoptic Gospels -- Matthew, Mark, and Luke -- attest to the importance of baptism in preparing for Jesus. Only the Gospel of St Luke, however, extends the connection between these two men and their birth. The first two chapters of St Luke's Gospel contain the Infancy Narrative, which tells about the births of St John the Baptist and the Lord Jesus. These stories set the stage for the beginning of Jesus' public ministry in chapter three.

The evangelist St Luke is the author of the Gospel that bears his name, and he also wrote the Acts of the Apostles as a continuation of the story of Jesus and the Church. In these works, St Luke's sense of time and history emerges. He identifies three epochs of salvation history: the time before Christ, the time of Christ, and the time of the Church and the Holy Spirit. In today's Gospel reading, as elsewhere, St John the Baptist is presented as a figure who bridges the time before Christ and prepares the way for Christ's own ministry.

In today's Gospel, we also note St Luke's attention to political and historical detail. St Luke shows that salvation is for all people and situated in world events. Therefore, St Luke lists the political and religious leaders at the time of St John the Baptist's appearance in the desert. Salvation is understood as God's breaking into this political and social history.

St John's preaching of the coming of the Lord is a key theme of the Advent season. As St John the Baptist's message prepared the way for Jesus, we too are called to prepare ourselves for Jesus' coming. We respond to St John's message by repentance and reform in our lives. We are also called to be the prophets of Christ, who announce by our lives the coming of the Lord, as St John the Baptist did.

x------x

Picture from Pixabay.