Today's Gospel (Lk 3:1-6):  It was the fifteenth year of the rule of the Emperor Tiberius; Pontius Pilatus was governor of Judea; Herod ruled over Galilee, his brother Philip ruled over the country of Iturea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias over Abilene. Annas and Caiaphas were the High Priests at that time when the word of God came to John, the son of Zechariah in the desert. John proclaimed a baptism for repentant people to obtain forgiveness of sins and he went through the whole country bordering the Jordan River. It was just as is written in the book of the prophet Isaiah: listen to this voice crying out in the desert: «Prepare the way of the Lord, make his path straight. The valleys will be filled and the mountains and hills made low. Everything crooked will be made straight and the rough paths smooth; and every mortal will see the salvation of God».

Today, the Church proposes the contemplation of Isaiah's prophetic words about John the Baptist, the Precursor of our Lord, who made himself known, on the banks of the river Jordan, by announcing the salvation of God. He had the mission to prepare new ways for the Lord, to smooth the rough paths, to make the mountains low, to turn rugged earth into fertile valleys (cf. Lk 3:4-5). Now, we Christians are also requested —without any fear of the present world— to work apostolically so that every mortal will see the salvation of God (cf. Lk 3:6) that only comes from God through Jesus Christ.

We have many valleys to fill, many paths to smooth, many mountains to move. Maybe these are difficult times; but if we rely upon God's Grace, we will not be lacking the necessary means. We shall be precursors insofar as we live near our Lord and, then, those words from the Diognet-letter: «What the soul is to the body, so are Christians within our world» will be accomplished. Naturally, we have to love the world we live in with all our heart, as a personage from a novel by Dostoyevsky, used to say: «Love Creation in its entirety and its elements, each leaf, each beam of light, the animals, the plants. And, while loving them, you will be given to understand the divine mystery of things. And once this is understood we shall end up loving the whole world with a universal love».

Saint Justin said: «All nobly human things belong to us». And from the bowels of the Earth —amidst our job, our family, and our social environment— we shall be precursors in preparing the ways of salvation that comes from God. With our example and our words, as saint Josemaría Escrivá described the Apostolic work of us, Christians, in the middle of the world, «we shall shake the complacency of those around us, we shall open wide horizons for them to face their selfish and bourgeois existence; we shall complicate their life, by making them forget about themselves while bringing them peace and joy».