My day job is as an accountant – a bean-counter
some would say, but I sometimes wonder if maybe I shouldn’t have been an
engineer. Whenever I’m driving through
mountains on a nice road or an expressway (and as an avid hiker I drive through
mountains a lot!), I find myself admiring the huge amount of work it took to
build that road.
As an example – driving down on what
used to be Route 15 through northern Pennsylvania – I recall a time when that
was a narrow two-lane road that wound up and down and around the mountains and
it seemed like it took forever to get through that state. Now it’s mostly expressway all the way from
Corning to Harrisburg. As I’m driving
that road, I’ll marvel at the sides of mountains that have completely dynamited
away, the deep valleys and gorges that have been filled in or bridged, amazed that
I’m able to drive through this mountainous region at 65 miles per hour.
That’s what
came to mind as I was reading and praying over our first reading and our
Gospel. Both the prophets Baruch and John
the Baptist are calling to mind the prophet Isaiah, chapter 40 – “Make straight
in the wasteland a highway for our God! Every valley shall be lifted
up, every mountain and hill made low; the rugged land shall be a plain, the
rough country, a broad valley.”
That’s literally
what the civil engineers who built Route 15 did, and it’s what our Lord wants
to do with each of us in this season of Advent.
You see, I
think it helps to think of the mountains as our sins. All the ways in which we turn away from the
Lord. All the ways in which we wound our
relationship with Him.
Might be the
rocky heights of our pride and hard-heartedness. Our obstinately refusing to open our hearts to
Him and submit to His will. Not being
open to the teaching of His Church.
Might be the
jagged peaks of our greed, our covetousness, our grasping self-centeredness.
Or the cold,
snow-covered pinnacles of broken relationships, of hearts closed off to
forgiveness.
We all have these
kinds of mountains in our lives, huh?
Perhaps lust, envy, greed or pride.
Maybe gluttony, wrath or sloth.
If you’re like me, you can probably check off more than one of those
boxes to be sure.
And Advent,
brothers and sisters, is a time of these mountains and hills being made low. Not by dynamite and earth-movers, mind
you. No, but by the tender mercy of Our
God. This is a time of examining
ourselves, coming to a realization of our sins, and by God’s grace being made
truly and deeply sorry for them, and humbly seeking God’s boundless loving
mercy.
His mercy, which
is more powerful than any dynamite, which can make soft and tender our hard and
rocky hearts. His mercy, which we will
celebrate beginning this Tuesday, the feast of the Immaculate Conception of
Mary, in a year-long Jubilee of Mercy proclaimed by Pope Francis. Sisters and brothers, this Advent season is a
time of seeking His mercy, of being washed clean by His mercy, and so invite
you, whether it’s been a week or thirty years, to avail yourself of His mercy
in the Sacrament of Reconciliation. Our
Lord waits for us there with open arms and so wants to let us know that our
sins are absolved and we are healed!
Now, if the
mountains are our sins, the valleys are all the missing virtues in our
lives. We speak of them in the Confiteor
– “in what I have done, and in what I have failed to do.” All the missing works of mercy that you and I
are called to do.
Just as Our
Lord will remove the mountains in our lives by His mercy, so too will He enable
us by His grace to fill in the valleys. As St. Paul writes to the Philippians in today's second reading, He fills us up with His love. He sends us forth, back to our homes and out into
the world and be merciful, to be His mercy. Pope
Saint John Paul II said "Jesus Christ taught that we not only receive and
experience the mercy of God, but that we are also called "to practice
mercy" towards others.
And how do we
practice mercy? By our doing the
corporal works of mercy –feeding the hungry, giving drink to the thirsty, clothing
the naked, sheltering the homeless, visiting and caring for the sick and
imprisoned, burying the dead, and giving to the poor.
And by doing
the spiritual works of mercy – instructing the ignorant, counseling
the doubtful, admonishing sinners, bearing wrongs patiently, willingly
forgiving offenses, comforting the afflicted and praying for the living and the
dead.
Whenever
we fail to live our faith, fail by our actions to be Christ in our world – in our
marriages, our families, our workplaces, communities and world – those are the
valleys and gorges in our lives that Our Lord so wants to fill in and make
whole.
Brothers
and sisters, the good news of the Gospel is that He, Jesus Christ, came into
the world to make low the mountains and fill in the valleys in our lives. During this beautiful and holy season of
Advent, and all during this Jubilee year of mercy, may we be bathed in His wondrous
tender mercy and love, and go forth to be in our world living signs of His wondrous
tender mercy and love.
