Enlightened self-interest should prompt every young man to keep a sharp lookout for all that is injurious to him. He may have the best religious training, together with the virtuous surroundings of a good home, but these will not be sufficient without his own personal activity. If he selects by preference heretics and freethinkers as the companions of his leisure hours; if he is so puffed up with the idea of his own ability that he can find no Catholic associates worthy of his notice; if he is so confident of his own strength that he habitually neglects to receive Holy Communion, he has become a traitor to the King of Heaven. Our Lord wants his followers to attain the highest standard of human excellence. To those who love him and fearlessly keep his commandments he gives the courage which belongs to true manliness; and their piety has power to surmount every obstacle on the way to heaven.
Sermon VIII.
The Voice In The Wilderness.
Make straight the way of the Lord.
—John i. 23.
This expression, dear brethren, is no new one in Holy Scripture, and it fell on no unaccustomed ears. More than seven hundred years before Jesus Christ the great prophet Isaias spoke about "the voice of one crying in the desert: Make straight in the wilderness the paths of our God." Again, three hundred years later, another prophet, Malachias, wrote: "Behold, I send my angel, and he shall prepare the way before my face." Again, about six months before Jesus Christ was born, an aged priest, Zacharias, took his own little child, who was only eight days old, in his arms, and in the beautiful hymn of the Benedictus says of him: "Thou, child, shalt be called the prophet of the Most High; for thou shalt go before the face of the Lord to prepare his way."
You know, dear brethren, who this little child was, who was the burden of all this prophetic song. You know it was St. John the Baptist. And you know, too, the mighty work he had to do.
And now, in this morning's Gospel, it is St. John the Baptist himself speaking: "I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness. Make straight the way of the Lord."
Now, how is this "way of the Lord" to be "made straight" in the spiritual desert of our hearts? Well, the prophet Isaias tells us that there are five things which we have to do in this matter: The first, "every valley shall be exalted"; the second, "every mountain and hill made low"; the third, "the crooked become straight"; the fourth, "the rough ways plain"; and the fifth, "the glory of the Lord revealed."
He begins, you see, by telling us that the valleys must be exalted. And don't you think that these "valleys" are a very good likeness of all the things which we have left undone in our lives? All these abysses of idleness, of neglect, of carelessness, of indifference, which lie in the wilderness of our sinful past, these have to be filled up. Christ our Lord cannot come to us so long as there are such great holes in the road. We must set to work and "exalt" them by throwing into our religious life all the pains and care and diligence and faithfulness we can.