FIRST READING: Baruch 5: 1-9 – Take off the garment of your sorrow and affliction, 0 Jerusalem, and put on for ever the beauty of the glory from God. Put on the robe of the righteousness from God; put on your head the diadem of the glory of the Everlasting. For God will show your splendour everywhere under heaven. For your name will for ever be called by God, “Peace of righteousness and glory of godliness.” Arise, 0 Jerusalem, stand upon the height and look toward the east, and see your children gathered from west and east, at the word of the Holy One, rejoicing that God has remembered them. For they went forth from you on foot, led away by their enemies; but God will bring them back to you, carried in glory, as on a royal throne. For God has ordered that every high mountain and the everlasting hills be made low and the valleys filled up, to make level ground, so that Israel may walk safely in the glory of God. The woods and every fragrant tree have shaded Israel at God’s command. For God will lead Israel with joy, in the light of his glory, with the mercy and righteousness that come from him.
SECOND READING: Philippians 1: 4-6, 8-11 – In every prayer of mine, I am thankful for your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now. And I am sure that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ. For God is my witness, how I yearn for you all with the affection of Christ Jesus. And it is my prayer that your love may abound more and more, with knowledge and all discernment, so that you may approve what is excellent, and may be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruits of righteousness which come through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God.
GOSPEL: Luke 3:1-6 – In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, Pontius Pilate being governor of Judea, and Herod being tetrarch of Galilee, and his brother Philip tetrarch of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias tetrarch of Abilene, in the high-priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John the son of Zechariah in the wilderness; and he went into all the region about the Jordan, preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. As it is written in the book of the words of Isaiah the prophet. “The voice of one crying in the wilderness: Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight. Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be brought low, and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways shall be made smooth; and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.”
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Baruch was the prophet Jeremiah’s friend and secretary. It was he who wrote some of the prophecies of Jeremiah, and also provided biographical data about Jeremiah. What is called the Book of Baruch was most probably not written by Baruch. Nevertheless, it contains the teachings and sentiments of both Jeremiah and Baruch. Both of them lived through the beginning of the Babylonian captivity, which seemed to be a failure of God’s plan of salvation. The writer proclaims that this is not so. However, it is clear that he had in mind something much more than just the release of the Jews from Babylon: a return to the original communal plan which Moses designed for the people of Israel.
This plan became a reality through the Christian community. One such community, and a strong one at that, was at Philippi, a city in Macedon. Paul was a prisoner when he wrote to the Christian community there. It had been the first which Paul had set up in Europe, and, understandably, he had a soft spot for it. Paul rejoiced to see God’s plan being fulfilled. ‘His’ community was a sure sign that new times had begun.
These new times were heralded by John the Baptist. He was never a Christian, and neither was Jesus ever a disciple of the Baptist. Nonetheless, John was another sure sign (one which he could not have imagined in a thousand years) that the ‘age of the gentiles’ was over, and that the ‘salvation of God’ was at hand.
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