“Yes, Lord, you may build the house.” The great King David had a great idea; “Let’s build a house for God, made of the best cedar wood. We’ll build it in the best location. On a mountain if need be. Inside, we’ll build the best furniture made by the best craftsmen, like a St. Joseph. We’ll call in the construction workers to build an inground pool in the backyard in case God wants to take a swim. Nothing but the best for God. We’ll move him out of that old, ugly, smelly, dirty tent he’s been residing in forever, and move him into a new address with all the worldly trappings.” King David’s great idea. So God said to King David through the Prophet Nathan , “Tell King David to go take a hike. He won’t be building me any houses. Bad idea.” So much for David’s generosity that God flung back in his face. “Yes, Lord, you may build the house.” What a difference between David, the greatest King in all of Israel by far, and this lowly servant woman from Nazareth. David wants to build a house for God, and gets turned aside. Mary gives God permission to build a house in her tabernacle. David wanted permission from God, somewhat. God wanted permission from Mary, for certain. “May it be done to me according to your word. Yes, Lord, you may build the house.” Anyway, the Temple got built, not by David as we know, but by his son Solomon. David was wandering in the netherworld after death by the time the first construction workers showed up. Despite that, David’s house idea was a good one, even though God left him out of the project. David was on to something. Like when we’re on to something good, and know it’s what God really wants. St. Francis of Assisi had a David inclination. God said, “Yes, Francis, build that house of poverty and simplicity.” God would borrow David’s idea, and use it for the world’s salvation. God would dwell in the Temple in Jerusalem, close to his people. They could come and visit him, spend time with him, and pray to him. That’s the same search for closeness we seek in the presence of the Eucharist. But the Temple of bricks and mortar in and of itself cannot save a single sinner anymore than the Green Monster can. Beautiful visuals they are; immense, superb craftsmanship, but no life or breath in them. In our weakness and sin, we needed a Temple – a sinless one – living and breathing, matching our makeup. And God left it up to Mary of Nazareth to decide if that was happening through her human perfection. ‘Yes, Lord, you may build the house.” Our God loves us so much that He didn’t like the idea of some earthly King building him a house, telling him “You have to move from that tent to the Temple, and don’t forget to take the fish tank.” A fair question; “Who is God in this case?” Sounds like it would be the human King. Instead, in preparation for the perfect humility and obedience of Jesus, God humbled himself before the Virgin, not through a Prophet, but through the angel Gabriel who stands before God, asking her, “Will you be the Mother of my Son?” As the entire court of heaven and all its inhabitants held their breath for the answer, waiting those few critical seconds that seemed like an eternity to see if the ball was going to be caught for an out, or fly over the Green Monster for a home run, Mary pondered a split second and said, “May it be done to be according to your word. Yes, Lord, you may build the house.” The house that our merciful God wanted was built. David had the idea. God borrowed it. Mary carried it in her and brought him to birth. We await the birth of that house in a few days, in a stable. The house of salvation, for us. the house of mercy, for us. The house of knowledge of the ways of God, for us. The house where God becomes up close & personal, for us. Eventually, a house with a Cross in it; and a house with an empty tomb. “Yes, Lord, you may build that house in me; you may build that house in

Imagine if you went out into a desert at night, no lights, no cameras, no action. Just dead silence, with a wolf’s howl or a snake’s hiss occasionally. So you go out to the dead silence in the pitch darkness, and you bring along with you a bullhorn. Press the “on” button, place the horn to your mouth – in the dead silence and the pitch black – and as loud as you can through the bullhorn you begin to recite the Our Father. How far will your voice carry over the extended plain, over flat land and sand? Will your voice be heard for miles? Would you get the attention of a walking creature, like a fox, the name Jesus called King Herod? Most likely your voice crying out in the desert, especially with a working bullhorn, would be heard through echoes for a handful of miles. That is one big-mouth! I know a few who need no bullhorn. John the Baptist had lots of practice at being a voice crying out in the desert. Living out there for years, having no one to talk to most of the time. Maybe he was present with some others once in a while. Some tourists on a bus may stop by here and there saying, “Who’s that weird-looking guy? Is he eating a grasshopper? Get your cameras out!” We know how tourists are. And from John’s angle; “Here comes another bus of nosy people again!” But most of his adulthood John was likely a hermit. A hermit with a big mouth, an oxymoron if there ever was one. The desert is the most perfect location on earth to have your voice travel for miles. The echoes continue on and on and on, until it fades into the darkness. The Baptist’s is the biggest voice, the biggest mouth that ever entered and left a desert, culminating at a River. From no water to holy water. He owned a crying voice that could be heard for miles in every direction. But John didn’t cry out just anything. It’s not like John told bad jokes through his bullhorn, wait for the silence of his bad joke to stop, then hear if a laughing hyena’s call would return his way. There were no bad jokes in the voice of John the Baptist. Rather, his voice was one of reason, of concern, a voice of holiness and conviction; a voice of truth and light; a voice that, yes, prepared the way of the Lord. John’s was the most excellent voice for conversion through the repentance of sins that carried throughout the desert of our world. His voice is still heard today for those who wish to pay attention. His was a good, godly voice crying out in the desert, all the way to the River. He carried his bullhorn with him. Tourists thought is was a jar of honey. It was his big mouth. We’re created not only for listening. Two ears; one mouth. Not just two ears, being a virtue to attentively hear the other, especially the cry of the poor. But also a big mouth. Now, when a person is a labeled a big mouth, it’s almost always an insult, is it not? When’s the last time “Hey, big mouth!” sounded like a compliment? But there’s at least one situation, one central part of our lives where a bullhorn is a very good tool for us saying to the world as Church, “Make straight the way of the Lord.” Those are words meant not only to be heard in the silence of our listening; they are meant to be spoken through a bullhorn to a word in dreadful need of hearing them. “Make straight the way of the Lord.” This straightness begins with each of us personally. We’re responsible for our straightness. We don’t blame any of our crookedness on others, like adults in a certain walk of life so easily and immaturely do (if you know who I mean). We cannot cry out in the desert, “Make straight the way of the Lord,” if our straightness is rather crooked. That would be a bad joke, where a sneering laugh echoes back our way from the pit below. It’s the holiness and faithfulness of John the Baptist that allowed his voice to penetrate the hearts and minds of the crowds awaiting a Messiah. “Who are you?” they ask. Are you Elijah or Moses, or Mary or Veronica? “No,” he answers. Honesty is a great virtue. Especially when confessing our sins. Then “What are you?” they ask him. What sort of creature are you John? What sort of creatures are we? As we close in on our Lord’s birth, may we draw closer to the sort of creatures who do not shy away from symbolically standing in the middle of the desert, with a bullhorn, with the “on” button lit up, a voice crying out, “Make straight the way of the Lord.” May these words never be a bad joke for us or others, but words that testify in our lives to the light of Christ.

As we journey through life, there are some parts of the journey where we might not want to know absolutely everything about a given situation. For example, when someone becomes ill, they may not wish to know a diagnosis. Some of us would say the more we know the better chance of recovery. Unless there is no cure. But some of us don’t want to know any potential bad news connected to our health. Which is why many guys – and a few ladies too – will not visit a doctor for years. This knowing or not knowing something important about ourselves leads to a curious question about the Immaculate Conception; “How well did Mary know that she was conceived a sinless creature in her mother’s womb, St. Anne? That God’s favor, grace, and power had filled her? Did Mary come to know in her adult years that she was conceived without original sin for the singular purpose of carrying the Divine child in her tabernacle?” Makes for a healthy, very spiritual meditation to ponder Mary’s self-knowledge. Would she want to know that God protected her from the ravages of evil, and the Evil One, and that He created in her being – body, soul, and spirit – the most perfect creature of all time? We know in Our Lady’s visits to St. Bernadette in Lourdes, France in the 1850’s Mary identifies herself to Bernadette as the Immaculate Conception. Did she know this on earth, or, did she learn this about herself after she was assumed into heaven? Whereas Tom Brady is the greatest quarterback of all time, poor Tom cannot hold a candle – or a football – to the greatness of Blessed Mary. Yet, as the Magnificat tells us in the first chapter of Luke’s Gospel, Mary calls herself a lowly servant. The best kind. The Gospel today is the story, not of the Immaculate Conception, but of the Annunciation, the conception of Jesus in Mary. We have in Scripture no explicit story of Mary’s conception in her mother’s womb. I suspect the very first reason for the lack of Mary’s conception story in the Bible is because her entire life is centered in the conception and birth of Jesus. If we could have asked her during her lifetime, “Mary, do you fully understand who you are and how God has favored you so?” She would likely answer, “Who I am is far less important than you worshipping the fullness of my Son. I want you to know and love him as I know and love him. With all your being. If you do this, who I am will be understood with joy.” And that’s the key understanding of this most beautiful Marian celebration. A celebration that we as Church, as proud Catholics, we embrace the infinite goodness of this Most Holy Woman and Mother. We unite our souls with her sinless creation and sinless life. Unlike Eve, who faltered in the Garden, dragging Adam into the pit, this Lady from Nazareth faltered not! Whether aware of this good news or not, she lived every day in the perfection of her virtues. And her greatest perfection and virtue were the words, “This is my Son and Lord. I invite you to walk in his path as I do.” May the Immaculate Conception pray for us. Amen.

Two Masses will be held in celebration of the Immaculate Conception of Mary, a holy day: Monday. December 7 at 4:00 p.m. & Tuesday, December 8 at 9:00 a.m.

There’s a priest I know who has the habit of one-upping everyone in conversations. If I say, “You know, I try my best to pray a Rosary each day,” he’ll say, “Oh, I pray two Rosaries every day.” Good for you! If you told him you were at the Red Sox game in October, 2013 when they won the World Series at home for the first time in 95 years, and that you had good seats in the grandstands, he’d say, “Yea, I was in the dugout for that game.” Everything a one-upper says has to be taken with a grain of salt. Or an entire barrel of it. It’s hard to figure out what’s true and what isn’t, understanding that more is not true than is. There are many, many parts of the life of John the Baptist to admire and imitate besides eating grasshoppers. From the start, in the holy womb of his mother St. Elizabeth, to violent finish with his head on a platter, John was faithful to his vocation and mission throughout. As Catholics, we are called, even commanded, by the Lord to do the same with the whole of our faith. John the Baptist, outside of Jesus and his holy Mother Mary, was a prophet infused with the virtues of humility and obedience. Not even the Apostles, I believe, lived these virtues to the perfection that John did. He had full understanding of what God sought from him from beginning to end, and had no worldly holes in him looking like a piece of Swiss cheese. John prepared to perfection the way of God’s Son into the start of his public ministry. The Lord welcomes the same from us. That we allow the holiness and beauty of Jesus’ ministry to walk before us in every phase of our lives. But my number one favorite personal characteristic of John is actually a failure on his part. He failed miserably at being a one-upper. John’s baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins was a spiritual reality that the Israelites of old could have used to save themselves from a ton of justified anger coming down from Mt. Sinai and elsewhere. At their building of a golden calf, bowing down and worshipping before it. Or being sent into the slavery of Babylon for 70 years, asking themselves, ‘God, where are you when we need you?” Repentance on the part of the Israelites for the forgiveness of their grave sins would have avoided untold amounts of misery and heartache they forced themselves into. Our repentance will avoid all those internal struggles we have. John’s message of repentance for the forgiveness of sins would have prevented all that horror for the Desert People of 40 Years. It was the loudest message to come down the pike that begins in heaven. Repent in preparation for God’s arrival. Repentance for the forgiveness of sins is the number one preventative medicine that cures the misery of spiritual illness. John’s message was – and is – the most effective way to be in, and remain in, right relationship with God and each other. The importance of John’s message cannot be overstated for us today. John was in a position better than anyone who made it to adulthood to one-up Jesus. His message of repentance proclaimed even before Jesus appeared at the River was so effective that according to a story in the Acts of the Apostles (Chapter 19), John disciples, many years after the Lord’s resurrection, when encountering St. Paul on one of his missionary journeys, the conversation between them turned to baptism. John’s disciples, years after Jesus ascended, never heard of being baptized in the Holy Spirit, the baptism of Christ that we have all received. They knew only of John’s baptism of repentance. It’s a fascinating story that reveals the lasting effect of John’s preaching. When you leave here today, you’re going to forget what I said. Years later, they remembered his message that carried well into early Christian communities. Despite this, John remained true to his calling and mission. And that’s the message for the 2nd Sunday of Advent in preparation for our Lord’s birth. A central part of our preparation is a self-understanding; that Jesus Christ is the leader, and we follow. Another verse from Acts, chapter 5; “We must obey God and not men.” This verse points to what will bring us to heaven, or what will send us to hell. In today’s world that some call post-Christian, it takes much humility to remain faithful and true to our following, even following the Savior of the world. We look to John the Baptist for the perfect Christian gift we can offer to our Lord; never attempt to one-up God by taking him over. By replacing him with worldly living. Yes, we are his hands, feet, and voices. But always in the context of being servant-followers to Him and each other.