Oblates of St. Francis de Sales

New DeSales World Newsletter - Summer Edition

Preparing the Way

Taken from Pulpit and Pew: A Study in Salesian Preaching by Vincent Kerns, MSFS
Preached at Annecy on the fourth Sunday in Advent, 20 December 1620. (Annecy Edition, Vol. IX. pp. 442-446)
Prepare the way of the Lord, straighten out his paths. Every valley is to be bridged, and every mountain and hill leveled, and the windings are to be cut straight, and the rough paths made into smooth roads. (1)

These words of St John the Baptist awake an echo in a pilgrim's heart, fatigued by the gradients of the way, wearied by the twists and turns in the road. How well this fits our lives! Life is full of hills and valleys, full of tortuous paths; only penance can smooth them all out. Penance will bridge the valleys, level the hills, cut straight and smooth the roads. That is why St John advised: Come then, yield the acceptable fruit of repentance. (2) He means us to level our mountains of pride; he wants us to bridge our valleys of apathy and cowardice.

The valleys which St. John is anxious for us to bridge are our fears. Fear, when it is excessive, tends to discourage us with the memory of past sins. We are to bridge these valleys with hope and trust; the time draws near for our deliverance. (3) Fear and hope should always go together. Fear without hope is despair; hope without fear is presumption. So we are to bridge the valleys which fear has carved out in our lives: the uneasiness that results from our realization of the great imperfections and sins we have committed. We are to bridge them by a combination of trust and the loving fear of God.

Every mountain and hill, says St. John, is to be leveled. These mountains are presumption and pride, the great obstacles to our Lord's coming. God has a way of humbling the proud, (4) of searching deep into their hearts to uncover the pride that is hidden there. Are you full of pride and presumption like the Pharisee in the gospel? (5) Or do you take after the publican? The Pharisee was a mountain of pride; he boasted a few seeming virtues for which he took all the credit. "I thank thee, God, that I am not like the rest of men; for myself, I fast twice in the week, I give tithes of all that I possess. But God, seeing his pride, rejected him. The poor publican - in the eyes of men a rugged mount of sinfulness - abased himself in the sight of God. He would not even lift up his eyes to heaven, so serious were his past sins; he could not bring himself to cross the temple threshold, chastened as he was in spirit, humble of heart. Thus he found himself high in God's favor."

The windings are to be cut straight, St. John goes on. Winding paths can lead the traveler astray, so they need straightening for the Lord's coming. We need to cut straight our twisted motives, reducing them to a single aim: to please God by doing penance. It is no use putting it off until later. You will find people saying that God is good and merciful, that it will be easy to come to terms with him; a good act of contrition at the hour of death, and all will be forgotten. What is that but pride and presumption, wallowing in sin at the expense of God's goodness! Don't they realize that although God is infinitely merciful, he is also infinitely just; that when his mercy is exasperated, his justice is challenged? (6)

Finally, the rough paths are to be made into smooth roads. This means setting our moods in order by mortifying our passions, our likes and dislikes. Evenness of temperament is the most attractive virtue of the spiritual life, but it demands continual effort. How wonderfully attractive our Lord's life was! His perfect calmness in every eventuality is strikingly apparent. No one else ever showed such perfect serenity except our blessed Lady, who alone - besides her Son - was sinless. All the other saints worked hard to acquire this perfection. But, although they did their best, not a single one ever completely succeeded in achieving perfect evenness of temperament. There was always a trace of moodiness in them: even in St John the Baptist, for it is the opinion of some Doctors of the Church (7) that he committed venial sin.

How delightful it would be to find a person of completely even temperament! We are so far from being like that; we are so changeable, so unsettled. One minute we can be on good terms with someone and in the next minute we seem to be walking on their toes: we are serene today, and will bite someone's head off tomorrow. We are so fickle.

So, these are the "ways" that we have to prepare for our Lord's coming. If we are to be successful, we need to take St. John the Baptist for our teacher. Like his own disciples in the gospel, we shall find that he leads us to the Savior, whose herald he was. Our Lord, in his turn, will present us to the eternal Father, whose praises - together with the Son and the Holy Spirit - we shall sing for ever and ever. Amen.

1. Luke 3: 4-6.
2. Luke 3: 8
3. Cf. Luke 21: 28; Romans 13: 11.
4. Cf. Matthew 23:12; Luke l:52; 18:14.
5. Cf. Luke 18: 10-14.
6. Cf. Romans 2: 4,5
7. Eg., St Peter Canisius.