Christmas is always a joyful season. It is a family time. It is a party time. Time to give and receive gifts. By now, we already started buying or at least have in our minds the gifts to buy and to be given away on Christmas Day. Ninong and Ninang or parents are thinking of special gifts to be given to their children. That is why the Malls are overcrowded with people buying gifts or items for Christmas-decorations.

But why we are so busy with gifts? Or why do we give gifts? The only reason is because God has given himself to us a gift, wrapping his divinity in true humanity. And that is the cause of our joy that enable us to share joyfully. “If the Lord is our joy, our joy cannot be taken away. It cannot be lost.” If Jesus is the cause of our joy, then, we need to prepare a special place for him. 

Advent season is a time of preparation for the coming of God in our hearts. The gospel for this Sunday invites us to have a space for God in our lives. “Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.” This is the voice of John the Baptist who was sent by God to prepare the coming of the Lord. The voice from a hidden place of a hidden man. Sometimes, we need to go to our hidden place, our inner sanctuary, our hearts in order to hear better the voice of God.  John the Baptist did this and he invited us to go to our own deserted place, preparing God’s coming into our lives. 

Perhaps, a little silence in the midst of our busy-days would be a moment of going to this hidden place. As an author put it beautifully, “We are silent at the beginning of the day because God should have the first word, and we are silent before going to sleep because the last word also belongs to God… Silence is nothing else but waiting for God’s Word and coming from God’s Word with a blessing. But everybody knows that this is something that needs to be practiced and learned.” 

Another important message of today’s gospel is the courage of John the Baptist to convey God’s message of truth in the midst of a challenging society in his time. There was injustice, corruption which made people lived in suffering. It’s in this terrible situation that John the Baptist called all his people for conversion. John the Baptist was a great prophet who called people to return to God. It was not an easy mission. Indeed, John the Baptist, from his hidden place voice out God’s voice and challenged his people to return to God. 

This call to be a prophet become extremely important today when faith has become a treasure or wealth to be kept for a personal satisfaction. Briggs observes that, “religion has been satisfied, for the most part, to retreat into privacy to care for individual souls.” It is in this context that we need to rediscover our prophetic role in which God’s will far surpasses the search for personal wholeness and the gospel of wealth. Moreover, the call to be a prophet become relevant today because of the injustice brought by economic and political which promote the well-being of some and left the majority live in poverty and suffering. 

May this advent season help us to listen to God’s voice and be ready to be a channel of truth in making our society better. By doing so, we proclaim to the world that “The Lord is come and He is Joy to the world!”