Many of us might admit that this Jubilee Year of Hope has passed quietly by. It is on the Church’s calendar, but not always on our minds. Yet the very idea of a Jubilee is to interrupt ordinary time, to shake loose the dust that settles over our faith, and to let God do something new within us.
Into that same kind of spiritual drowsiness steps John the Baptist. He does not arrive gently. He is rough, strange, even unsettling: camel hair on his shoulders, the dust of the desert on his feet, wild insects for food. God chooses this man precisely because he cannot be ignored. His very presence is a question: have you grown too comfortable in your faith?
John’s message can be captured in one simple line: “Prepare the way of the Lord, make straight his paths.” The Messiah is drawing near. The Lord desires to walk into our world, into our homes, into our hearts. But the way is often cluttered and blocked. John calls the people of his time—and us—to clear the road so that hope can actually reach us.
The Church has given us this Jubilee because the world is hungry for that kind of hope. We see poverty that never seems to end, wars that multiply, injustice that feels built into the very structures of society. We watch old certainties crumble. Promises of easy progress ring hollow. That can leave us with a heavy temptation: why bother? Why forgive, why serve, why try to do the right thing if nothing ever really changes?
Christian hope answers that temptation. Hope is not optimism, merely pretending everything is fine. Hope is the quiet certainty that God is at work, even when we do not see it yet. Hope says: my choices matter because the Lord is already on the road toward me. My small yes can meet his great mercy.
Look at the signs here in our own parish. The Holy Spirit is at work in those preparing to enter the Church; our OCIA group is larger than we have ever seen. Hearts are awakening. Questions are being asked. Lives are being reordered around the Gospel. God has not abandoned us. He is very near.
Yet we know there are obstacles. Old grudges, habits of sin, constant noise—these crooked and cluttered places are where the Lord wants to walk. He is not afraid of them. He simply asks us to start clearing.
So in this second week of Advent, let the Jubilee Year of Hope become personal. Ask: where is the road to my heart blocked? Is it a broken relationship? A sin I excuse? A wound I refuse to bring to prayer? Then, with hope, take one concrete step. Seek reconciliation. Make peace at home. Reach out to someone lonely. Support the hungry in our own town.
When we do this, we are not just improving ourselves. We are making straight the path of the Lord. We are saying, with our lives: Lord, there is room here. So come and dwell with us.