Words of Welcome

  John the Baptist, Rosary Basilica, Lourdes Isaiah 40:1-11 Imagine this scene: You’re standing in the heavenly courts when God gets up to speak. God tells the heavenly council: “Comfort, O comfort my people.” Yes, “speak tenderly to Jerusalem” because the city has paid the penalty. Therefore, the time for healing has begun.      Then a voice from the council responds: “In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God” so that “the glory of the Lord shall be revealed.” That’s good news for exiles living in Babylon because that means it’s time for God to lead them home on a brand-new freeway!   Then a third voice offers a word of caution. While God is faithful, people are a lot like grass that withers when “the breath of the Lord blows upon it.” Nevertheless, despite our tendency to fall short of God’s expectations, God’s word stands forever. In this, there is hope.  So, let us go to the mountain a...

Isaiah 55:10-13 You know the theme song from the Sound of Music:         The hills are alive with the sound of music; With songs they have sung for a thousand years. The hills fill my heart with the sound of music.          My heart wants to sing ev'ry song it hears. These words may create a certain picture in our minds of Julie Andrews running across a mountain meadow in the Austrian Alps, singing to her heart’s content. But she has nothing on the prophet we know as Second Isaiah.  Isaiah joyfully declares to a group of exiles:    “For you shall go out in joy and be led back in peace; the mountains and the hills before you shall burst into song, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands” (Is. 55: 12).  When you hear these words from the prophet do you catch a vision of joy and peace? Do you hear a song of joy and peace spreading across the mountains and through the trees? ...

Isaiah 49:1-7 When Elwood Blues picked up his brother Jake at the Joliet Prison, they set out on a “Mission from God.” They felt called to raise money to prevent the foreclosure of the Catholic orphanage in which they grew up. It’s a movie filled with music and car crashes, but the main point is this “mission from God.” Nothing was going to stop them from raising the money to pay off the creditor before it was too late. It was a race against time, but nothing would stop them from saving their home.  In our reading last Sunday from Isaiah 42 we heard God speak to a group of exiles, reminding them that they were God’s covenant people. God said to them:  “Here is my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my soul delights; I have put my spirit upon him; he will bring forth justice to the nations.” ( Is 42:1 ). This morning we’ve heard a second Servant Song as found in Isaiah 49. In today’s reading, we hear that God called the Servant to be a light to the...