This Sunday could very well be called ‘Vocation Sunday’. Both the first reading and the Gospel are stories of call and response.

The joyful first reading from the prophet Isaiah proclaims that God is on his way to save his people. This coming brings healing and rejoicing and an end to sorrow and lament.

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The Gospel opens with the people, the tax collectors and some soldiers, having heard the call to change their lives, all asking John, ‘What must we do?” These three groups would normally be very suspicious of each other. The Roman soldiers occupying the country, the locals who collected tax on behalf of the Romans, and the crowd, often the victim of both. Yet somehow John’s preaching has brought them all together in a community of sorts. Read more

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The sense of preparing is very strong in our readings this weekend as we focus on the ministry of John the Baptist. The loving action of God gently fills in the valleys and lowers the mountains and straightens and smooths the roads so that we can be fully open to the living and transforming presence of Jesus so that ‘all mankind shall see the salvation of God’ in and through us. Read more

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John the Baptist sits at the centre of this week’s Gospel and next week’s. He is the ‘one who cries in the wilderness: Prepare a way for the Lord; make his paths straight’.

John was preparing the people for the coming of Jesus. Moved by his preaching many sought baptism in the river Jordan. This ancient water-rite symbolised dying to the old way of life and rising to a new way of life. That’s what repentance is about: turning away from sin and turning towards God. It is about true conversion of heart. It’s about making straight the pathways of our hearts. The fruit of our repentance and true conversion shows itself in good works.