Saturday, December 6, 2014

Mark 1:1-3

The beginning of the gospel about Jesus Christ, the Son of God. It is written in the prophet Isaiah: Look, I am going to send my messenger in front of you to prepare your way before you. A voice of one that cries in the desert: Prepare a way for the Lord, make his paths straight.

Prepare Love’s way

What is the Lord’s way, if not that of Love that transforms the heart and sets us free?

We make the path straight by releasing all that blocks the flow of Love between God and ourselves … and between us and others. Sin is all that blocks the flow of self-giving Love that pours from the depth of God’s heart.

We are made to bask and revel, to know …sweetest communion, heart-to-heart, with the One Love who made us, the One who is the Heart of our hearts.

It is this communion that fulfills the human heart. All that stops the flow of grace and goodness is to be cleared away … as much as this is in our power.

Make straight the Lord’s paths. Remove the obstacles to knowing and reveling in the Love, the Life that flows from deepest mystery to the mystery of our hearts.

These obstacles are as diverse and manifold as the human race itself. What keeps us from receiving and giving, from knowing and sharing the Love of Holy One as it flows from secret depths of eternity?

Perhaps our resentments, angers and disappointments prevent the flow of love from penetrating calcified hearts.

Perhaps we are too busy to pray or even to feel what is in our hearts and offer it to God.

Perhaps we fail to see and return to the sacraments of God’s life in our lives, the people and places, the practices and moments that make us truly alive and filled … with the Love which completes us.

Make straight God’s paths. Prepare his way. Remove the negative thoughts that shut down the flow of love in you. Dwell no longer on the disappointments and resentments that sour the heart and turn it from love. Release the festering wounds at which you pick. Let go of the threatened ego’s need to win and be considered important. 

Turn your eyes to the Love who seeks you in every love, every grace and beauty. Run to the places where you know … the Love who comes to make you alive. Go there, and let it draw you into its gravity.

Your heart will open like a flower. Joy will so fill you that you can barely speak. Expectation and unfailing hope will open your eyes to the Love who is, the Love who comes to you again and again … because that’s the way Love is.

Make straight the path for the One who comes.

Pr. David L. Miller