This Sunday is the only time that we hear from the prophet Baruch in the three-year cycle of Sunday readings.  Baruch was thought to have been the scribe of the prophet Jeremiah, and his writing is a reflection on the history of the people of Israel and the experience of the Babylonian exile.  For Baruch history and the hopes and belief of Israel are intertwined.  The same is true for us Christians.

We have the hope of salvation and the hope of the fullness of the Kingdom of God.  In Advent we await the coming of the one whose life, death and resurrection opens the way for us to return home to the Father.  This is the hope that has been planted within our hearts but this hope grows within our daily context and within in our daily journey of faith and not despite it.  Luke is quite specific in his gospel (Lk. 3:1-6). In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea and Herod was tetrach of Galilee, Philip tetrarch of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanius was tetrarch of Abilene, during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas…”  This was a hard time for Israel – the country was brutally occupied.  Caesar was a foreign emperor; Pilate was his governor.  The tetrarchs were seen as collaborators.  And precisely into this the word of God came to John the son of Zechariah. 

We look at our world today – the war in Ukraine and the Holy Land, the polarization in our own country, the social confusions, the natural disasters and it is precisely into this that the word of God comes to us and it is in this reality and not despite it that hope is born and strengthened by this hope we move forward.  Hope is born in the reality of our world and it is also born in the reality of our lives.  

Baruch gives a powerful image of God commanding that the mountains be made low and the age-old depths and gorges be made into level ground so that his people can joyfully return to Jerusalem.  The mountains and the gorges are the obstacles preventing the people from returning.  What are the mountains, the age-old depths, the obstacles in our lives that stand in the way of our returning to the Father?  The addictions we have cultivated, the pride we nurse, the sin we allow, the resentments we hold on to, the prejudice we turn a blind eye to, the list can go on.  These are the mountains and the gorges we have thrown up between us and God.  And into this the word of God comes undeterred.

How is God laying low the mountains and filling in the gorges of our lives?  By Jesus who is the way and by the outpouring of his grace and the salvation he won for us.  How do we prepare the way of the Lord these days of Advent, how do we find hope?  We receive the sacraments, we confess our faults, we live Christian charity, we pray and work for peace, we forgive and we ask for forgiveness not despite the reality of our life right now but within it. 

And in this, hope is born.  Paul witnesses to this truth in his letter to the Philippians, I am confident of this, that the one who began a good work in you will continue to complete it until the day of Christ Jesus.