Luke is telling us that the story which he is sharing with us is not a myth or a legend. Luke is telling us that Christianity is an historical religion that makes very real historical claims. He is saying that the saving events that he is about to tell us are not divorced from everyday life. They don’t occur “once upon a time.” They took place in a very special time and place. The incarnation means that the Son of God became flesh and dwelt among us in a particular place and a particular time.

Today’s Psalm paints a dreamlike scene—a road filled with liberated captives heading home to Zion (Jerusalem), mouths filled with laughter, tongues rejoicing. It’s a glorious picture from Israel’s past, a “new exodus,” the deliverance from exile in Babylon. It’s being recalled in a moment of obvious uncertainty and anxiety. But the psalmist isn’t waxing nostalgic.

Remembering “the Lord has done great things” in the past, he is making an act of faith and hope—that God will come to Israel in its present need and that He’ll do even greater things in the future.

This is what the Advent readings are all about: We recall God’s saving deeds—in the history of Israel and in the coming of Jesus. Our remembrance is meant to stir our faith, to fill us with confidence that, as today’s Epistle puts it, “the one who began a good work in [us] will continue to complete it” until He comes again in glory. Each of us, the Liturgy teaches, is like Israel in her exile—led into captivity by our sinfulness, in need of restoration and conversion by the Word of the Holy One.

That’s the message of John, introduced in today’s Gospel as the last of the great prophets. But John is greater than the prophets. He’s preparing the way not only for a new redemption of Israel but for the salvation of “all flesh.”

John quotes Isaiah 40:3 to tell us he’s come to build a road home for us, a way out of the wilderness of sin and alienation from God. It’s a road we’ll follow Jesus down, a journey we’ll make, as today’s First Reading puts it, “rejoicing that [we’re] remembered by God.”

Today’s message of the Gospel is: Luke is telling us that John the Baptist is the curtain raiser to the rescue mission of Jesus the Messiah. Against the backdrop of one of the greatest rescue missions in Jewish history—the return from Babylon—God once again is decisively entering human history in this place and at this time, but now for the greatest rescue mission of all.

Love and Prayers,

Fr. Charley