Saint John the Baptist is known as being the precursor of the Lord. Through this important role he calls people to receive Him into their life. He knows of this roll for he states that “I must decrease and He must increase.” From Saint Mark’s Gospel he invites, “Prepare the way of the Lord, make straight his paths.”
During this season of Advent we prepare the way for the Lord’s coming. He comes among us in the Eucharist, He comes at the Nativity, and He will come again at the end of time. For each and every encounter with Him we must be found prepared. This call to such preparation is important for us to heed for so often we encounter Christ as if He is one among many instead of being “the Way, the Truth, and the Life.”
Saint John the Baptist understood that Christ was the Messiah. He understood that Christ was the one to whom all of scripture and prophets had pointed towards. He called out to Him from the depths of faith, “Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world.” For this encounter that he had with the Lord and to which he directed others he lived his life with vigilance.
Through this vigilance we see a man who lived a life of mortification. Of this mortification we are told in the Gospel of Saint Mark, “John was clothed in camel’s hair, with a leather belt around his waist. He fed on locusts and wild honey.” Through acts such as these he was found completely free and detached to the point that he remained open to the will of God in all things.
Likewise, we must use this season to prepare the way for the Lord’s coming. Saint John the Baptist’s call to “make straight his paths” is a call which leads us towards such conversion to the point that we can also be free and detached to the point that we remain open to the Lord in all things.
With such a thought in mind we must take to prayer the ways in which we are led by something other then Christ. And ask, how can we use this season to attune our heart and mind in order that we may follow after the Lord? What must we strip away from our life if we are to more closely follow after Him? The Advent season’s purpose is to assist us in being able to celebrate fully with Christ as we move into the Christmas season.
Let us heed this call that comes to us from the mouth of Saint John the Baptist. By preparing “the way of the Lord” and making “straight his paths” we come to more clearly “Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world.” Let nothing get in the way of such an encounter with Him.
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