Children can say the oddest things at times, can’t they? As a four-year-old boy was helping his father one morning put the decorations on their Christmas tree, he asked him many questions. “Daddy, why are there so many lights? What do all the colors mean? Did you help your daddy when you were big like me?”
As he as sorting out the ornaments, he then asked his father, “Daddy, what does ignore mean?” His father explained, “Ignore means not to pay attention to people when they call you.” Immediately, the little boy said, “I don’t think we should ignore Jesus.”
Puzzled, his father knelt closer to his animated son and replied, “I don’t think we should ignore Jesus either, son. I think we should give Jesus our full attention. Why do you say that we ignore him?” The boy responded, “But Daddy, that’s what the Christmas carol says, ‘O come let us ignore him.’”
As the young father said, ignore means not paying attention to someone, and yet as we look at the world around us, how readily have we ignored what Jesus said so long ago?
In the opening story of his gospel, Mark quotes the prophet, Isaiah, “I send my messenger ahead of you to prepare your way: a herald’s voice in the desert, crying, ‘Make ready the way of the Lord, clear him a straight path.’” Mark uses John the Baptist to introduce the star of his gospel, Jesus Christ.
We encounter John as a voice crying out in the desert, calling his listeners to prepare the way of the Lord through repentance. He did this in a manner that caught everyone’s attention. Then and now, one could easily go along with the crowds, believing that socially acceptable behaviors are also morally right. John felt otherwise, so he confronted the people of his times, urging them to take a second look at themselves. They responded by acknowledging their sins and coming forth to be baptized.
We are urged to do the same by going to confession. Doing so will provide the comfort, forgiveness and pardon that we crave whenever we have offended God and others. When we refuse to honestly deal with our sins, we continue to be mastered by sin. In the disguise of many addictions, sin can remain the center of our lives, rather than God.
As followers of Jesus Christ, we should strive to be holy yet why do we feel that becoming holy is a nearly impossible mission in this lifetime? Well, to become holy, we must first admit that we do ignore Jesus at times and sin. So long as we make excuses for our sins, we can’t be holy, any more than hot water can remain hot if we keep adding ice to it.
We can find the path to holiness when we make the time and effort to listen to Jesus. If you have a bible, read it. Use the Word Among Us as a tool to help you develop the practice of reflecting on God’s wisdom. That in turn motivates us to engage in concrete acts of love and mercy. Becoming holy can be challenging especially if our efforts in the past at deepening our relationship with God has been lukewarm. Keep in mind that it is easier to act your way into a new way of thinking than to think your way into a new way of acting.
Instead of ignoring Jesus, we must, like Jerusalem’s inhabitants in the gospel, seek to be reconciled with God, repenting our sins, all the laziness and self-indulgences that make our lives a spiritual wasteland. We have to straighten out our lives, so that everything we do will lead us back to him. On Monday, four priests will be on hand to hear confessions, a big step forward in our quest for holiness.