Gospel reading: Luke 3:1-6
Jesus was the victim of Big State and Big Church of the time. There were the tetrarchs and the hierarchs. The tetrarchs were Pilate, Herod, Philip and Lysanias, while the hierarchs were Annas and Caiaphas (v.1-2a). Just as Big State and Big Church conspired at the time to kill Jesus, today liberals of the Big State and modernists of the Big Church are acting in a way that is killing the Church of Jesus.
What liberal Catholics and modernist clerics miss today is the basic call to repentance. John the Baptist “went throughout the whole region of the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.” (v.3). Even Jesus, when he started his public ministry proclaiming the gospel of God, as we read in Mark, he said, “repent.” Repentance is the initial element of response to the gospel. One cannot bypass repentance and just look to the love, mercy and forgiveness of God.
This is what is today missing with liberals and modernists. They look to the physical and emotional well-being of man, but without proclaiming repentance for sin. In fact, by their pronouncements and false teaching, they keep sinners in their sin, making them comfortable in it with their acceptance and embrace. What they show is false love and false mercy. And Catholics continue living in sin, and the Church continues to lose Catholics by the day.
What are we to do? Like John, we are to be “a voice of one crying out in the desert: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make straight his paths.’” (v.4). Today’s environment is parched and many are not listening, do not care, or have already made up their minds to live according to the ways of the world. But we need to proclaim the gospel anyway. This is despite Church hierarchs telling us not to proselytize or make converts. We do what we can to prepare for the second coming of Jesus. And we do what we can to make straight the crooked paths of many.
We continue to work and pray such that “all flesh shall see the salvation of God.” (v.6).
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