3rd Sunday of Advent
Year C

What should we do???

Last Sunday John the Baptist said that we must submit to a Baptism of repentance, better translated as “metanoia” to transcend our ego centered approach to God.  Baptism means gradually drowning or suffocating the identity we trust in more than our true identity as God’s beloved ones.

This is the primary action is largely interior.  Now all kinds of people ask John what next.  Now that we are committed to suffocating to death this mental fiction that we are not God’s beloved what should we do exteriorly in our lives.

John’s advice for people who are sobering up in a world that is still impaired by fear, shame and wrath is to begin to act with integrity within the corrupt system.  Gradually, a new culture of justice that comes up from the bottom can eventually change the power at the top.

Within ourselves we keep winnowing our hearts, minds and instincts with merciful awareness and practicing surrender to love in order to be more truly alive.  The more we keep working what the first harvest has brought in the more our yield improves.

This winnowing is the process of moving from sorrow to joy.

Joy is what makes all this interior work possible.  Joy is what makes the exterior work worthwhile.

The basis of vocational maturity is living out of the truth that we are the beloved and then letting the growing weight of that identity leverage new acts of justice and peace at our job in our corrupt world.

By Mark Blom, OMI – Vocation Director  OMI Lacombe Canada