Overview:

Tuesday of the Fourth Week of Advent

A Reflection for Tuesday of the Fourth Week of Advent

“Thus says the Lord GOD:
Lo, I am sending my messenger
to prepare the way before me;
And suddenly there will come to the temple
the LORD whom you seek,
And the messenger of the covenant whom you desire.
Yes, he is coming, says the LORD of hosts.
But who will endure the day of his coming?
And who can stand when he appears?
For he is like the refiner’s fire,
or like the fuller’s lye.
He will sit refining and purifying silver,
and he will purify the sons of Levi,
Refining them like gold or like silver
that they may offer due sacrifice to the LORD.
Then the sacrifice of Judah and Jerusalem
will please the LORD,
as in the days of old, as in years gone by.
Lo, I will send you
Elijah, the prophet,
Before the day of the LORD comes,
the great and terrible day,
To turn the hearts of the fathers to their children,
and the hearts of the children to their fathers,
Lest I come and strike
the land with doom.” (Malachi. 3; 1-4, 23-24)

Find today’s readings here.

If Christ is a kind of living heaven, then John the Baptist is like a walking purgatory. The prophesied “Elijah” from today’s first reading, John is like a “refiner’s fire” or a “fuller’s lye” purifying us so that we may be made worthy to stand in the midst of the Lord. John’s words will shake us so much (“you brood of vipers, who warned you to flee from the wrath to come!”) that the scales of sin will fall from our eyes. The scales will fall and our eyes will be uncovered so that we can see and recognize Jesus when he comes. So we can enter into the living heaven of him. 

And John’s baptism is so thorough it does the same work—washes off our sins, unwraps our moral crimes, rids ourselves from anything that stands in the way of us and Christ. 

It occurs to me there are also different kinds of John the Baptists, different ways of making us clean and free. John does it with fire and ice and threats of doom. And Lord knows sometimes we need that. You are walking toward a cliff my friend, STOP! 

And then there are those who purify us in a different key. I am thinking of a theater teacher I have studied with. Her joy, her sparkle, her positivity, her encouragement, her smile—they create the very conditions for the responses she gets. People are more joyful, vibrant and loving around her. I have seen it in her students over and over again for years. She beams with kindness, and that kindness helps to release us, even if only for a few moments, from the shadowed or cynical ways we can walk in the world. 

In a more joyful way, she is doing the same purifying that John is doing. My teacher does not call her students a brood of vipers. She calls them by their names. She tells them they are doing a good job, and even more goodness flows from them.

Each in their own ways, John the Baptist with jarring prophecy and this master teacher with encouraging kindness, are preparing us to meet Christ in the ten thousand ways he enters our world; the ten thousand different mangers he appears in, birthing in us generosity, kindness, joy.

Joe Hoover, S.J., is America’s poetry editor and producer of a new film, “The Allegory.”