Path to God

“We were created in the image of the Holy Trinity, needing the Holy Trinity – and Father, Son and Spirit have shown us Their eagerness to meet the need they gave us”

“A voice of one crying out in the desert… What is the prophet Isaiah trying to say to his people? For those of us who have had the opportunity to meet migrants and refugees who leave their homelands in hope for a new place to live, this reading speaks volumes.”

“John’s task was to place his finger on people’s weak spots and keep it there until they noticed”

“We can be the voice crying out to others who are lost in their own desert, showing them the light of Christ and that He is the answer, and He can bring them out of it”

“The modern mountains are made out of paper, or exist as ideas. They are immigration laws, passports, refugee allocation laws, employment regulations. Financial walls built up between countries, rules about the interchange of currency and debt policies, all these also act as our new mountains.”

“Get focused on the coming of Christ into your life. Build the highway that makes it easy for him to come into your life and that means 'knock down some mountains and fill in some valleys.'”

“The Lord has come, everybody, he's really arrived in history, adventus, and therefore everything is different”

“Friends, sometimes we need a keen sense of the finitude and futility of the world in order to grasp that it's God's steadfast love that sustains us”

“Our repentance is not the condition for God’s mercy. It is simply the way we grasp hold of the gifts that God is always holding out to us.”

“God has this grand design and plan for us. He has this great vision on what our masterpiece will be.”

“We are reminded that God’s reign of peace will involve all creation, a reign of right relationship between all created things”

“If we are to be preparing for Christ’s return at the end of time, this path of Christian growth must be our way of return to him now”

“So the primary problem of God’s people was not a lack of roads, or their distance from their ancestral land. The problem was their sins: their spiritual estrangement from God. For this reason, the “road” that John the Baptist offers is repentance, expressed through water baptism.”

“To say that when God comes, he will flatten mountains and fill in valleys is to speak of the majestic power of God”

“we are invited just now to step aside, be still, focus on what truly matters. We are to hear and receive the Word that we might bear it. From hearers we are to become doers of the Word, displaying God’s compassion in our lives.”

“Sadly, I think the penance, the preparation Advent most demands of us Christians these days is to learn anew to be joyful and to learn again to share our joy with others”

“But then along came Jesus, God living among his people on earth, showing us how we must behave if we are to bring about his kingdom, the reign of justice and peace on earth. We are to do, say and think as Jesus did.”

“If we live with faith in God and love for one another, we will really have all that we need—and that will bring us peace and lasting joy”

“we are all exiles, every one of us, in the measure that we sin, in the measure that we are stuck in the slavery of sin, we find ourselves in a distant land, lonely, isolated, alienated”

“So let's keep awake and alert, both to the message we carry and the message we may receive from others, God's unlikely heroes”

“John brings a message of repentance, a message that things must change, we must change if we are to see the salvation of God”

“It's time, John is saying, for a new mind, a new set of eyes, a new kind of expectation. God is about to act, wake up. God is about to act, be ready.”

“All of us are in our sin exiles, heart-broken, far from home. But what's the good news? In Jesus Christ we find the way back.”