Rev. John Campoli, i.v.dei
His Love Ministries

Have you ever thought, “This is not how it’s supposed to be”?

We watch the news or read the paper and wonder, “Where are we heading?” We look at ourselves and remember the latest family gathering that ended in shouting. Maybe it was the stupid thing I said when I should have kept my mouth shut. “This is not the way it’s supposed to be.”

If you have ever felt this way, you understand the biblical concept of sin. You know it’s wrong because you know what is right. In the biblical tradition, the vision for how things ought to be is called shalom. We translate this word as “peace,” but it means much more than an absence of warfare or a calm state of mind. Shalom or peace in the scriptures means universal flourishing, wholeness, harmony, and delight.

How do we find this peace?

We can learn from the annoying voice of GPS in our cars. How often do we hear the voice say “recalculating” when we take a wrong turn? Then, it usually tells us to “make a U-turn.” This was the message of John the Baptist – a message for his time as well as a message for ours.

We need to recalculate.

John the Baptist went about the region of the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance, which led to the forgiveness of sins. He cried, “Make ready the way of the Lord; clear him a straight path.” Hearing John’s cry, people were able to fill the valleys of their dark despair with the light of hope.

We are beset with the valleys and mountains of moods. We build mountains out of the molehills in our moods. People we know don’t attend Mass because they don’t feel like it. Some stay away from Church because they feel that it’s filled with hypocrites. We let our moods, feelings, and emotions block the way of the Lord, and we refuse repentance and conversion toward a new attitude and a new version of life.

Neither the Christian faith nor the Bible is about “pie in the sky.” They insist on our involvement with God in everyday life activities. We are to be Christ-like, and that likeness is in terms not of what we believe but how we act. Later, the disciples of John the Baptist went to Jesus to ask him, “Are you the one for whom we wait?” Jesus answered them by describing what he was doing – “the lame walk, the blind receive their sight, and the poor have the good news preached to them.” These are all calls to concrete action in our real world, and they are not calls to having an appropriately orthodox theology.

Every Advent, we are called to recognize our sinfulness, failures, and self-righteousness not in the abstract but in the concrete daily acts of our lives. Only when we know the reality of our need to recalculate and make a U-turn can we be prepared to understand the reality of Jesus coming into the real world, into flesh exactly like ours.

God comes to us as we are, where we are, and being who we are. He came to Abraham, Moses, Isaiah, indeed, all the great figures of the Hebrew scriptures, and they all recalculated and made U-turns in their lives. Yet, people didn’t follow their example. Things were still not the way they should be. So, finally, he sent his own Son into the world to show us how things should be.

Recalculate. Make a U-turn. Seek peace and follow it. Go into our world and be his witnesses, not in words alone, but in actions and deeds of love.