Ready?

"Last Sunday, John the Baptist appeared, barreling down like a spiritual steamroller: 'Prepare the way of the Lord!  Make straight his paths!'  One week later, we might ask ourselves how well we have heeded his warning, how well our inner road crew has done.  Have we leveled the mountains of our pride?  Have we filled up the low places where love has started to sag?  Have we knocked down our forest of superfluous commitments or burned the brush and scrub of our thousand entangling distractions?  In a word, have we managed to clear a space in our lives for Christ to come and abide?  Probably not too well.  What a strange surprise, then, on this Gaudete Sunday when the Church insists that we rejoice.  'The Lord is near!' the antiphon says, and the prophet Zephaniah calls out, 'Fear not, O Zion, be not discouraged!  The Lord, your God, is in your midst!'  We rejoice today that Christ does not wait until we're ready--if he did, he'd surely never come.  The baptism of John was only water, a garden hose against our hearts of stone.  But Jesus happily comes as one mightier than John.  He comes in burning fire, blazing his path and blasting us open to place his Holy Spirit within our melted hearts."
                                                                                    Anthony Giambrone, OP