Repent and believe in the Gospel is a message we hear often, especially in lent. Today, we hear it in all of the readings. Isaiah, in chapter 40: 1-5, 9-11,reminds us that a voice cries out: "In the desert prepare the way of the Lord! Make straight in the wasteland a highway for our God!" St. Peter says to us in chapter 3: 8-14, of his second letter: that the Lord "is patient with you, not wishing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance." And finally, in today's Gospel, Mark 1: 1-8, St. Mark brings to our attention John the Baptist, who appears "in the desert proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins."
God waits, as He does not want any one of us to perish! And for God, St. Peter tells us in today's second reading that, "one days is like a thousand years and a thousand years like one day." God waits, the prophet Isaiah tells us, as every "valley shall be filled in, every mountain and hill shall be made low; the rugged land shall be made a plain, the rough country, a broad valley." What are those mountains, hills? What is the rugged land that shall become a plain, the rough country that shall become a broad valley? Our sinfulness, our wickedness, our abandonment of God, our removal of God from our collective consciousness, the removal of any religious symbolism on public lands; our denial of moral codes, of truth--everything is relative in our country! Repent! Believe in the Gospel! Bring God back into our government, our schools, our public lands, our homes, our civic life, our entertainment--all of life.
"Then the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all people shall see it together; for the mouth of the Lord has spoken."
Come, Lord Jesus, Come to save us. And Jesus says to us, through the prophet Isaiah: "Here comes with power the Lord God, who rules by his strong arm; here is his reward with him, his recompense before him"
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