By Deacon Derick Cranston
The Catholic Messenger
In 1956, President Eisenhower signed the National Interstate Highways and Defense Act. It took 64 years to build 42,500 miles of highway with 92,200,000 tons of asphalt and cement. A stipulation in the contract required that one in every five miles of the Interstate be built in a straight line so that planes could land in an emergency.
In Scripture, we hear John the Baptist proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins and crying out, “Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight …” John’s call to straighten the paths and repent of our sins resonates until us through the centuries.
Life is not a perfect journey, and many times the road is twisted due to the many distractions that prevent us from making God the center of our life. We will always experience bumps in the road and unexpected curves that scare us.
We can even lose our way and get lost. When we allow ourselves to be distracted from God’s path, personal demons begin to surface. We all have them and we must all be on guard against them. This year has definitely taken us all down a difficult and dangerous road.
A virus that infects millions, racial tension and political dissent has probably brought out the worst in us. We disagree and then we disagree a little more. Our personal demons see an opening and want to lead us down the wrong path.
Yet just as Eisenhower had the foresight to require that one in every five miles of the Interstate be straight, the fathers of our Church had the foresight to make Advent a time to straighten our lives. Advent is a time to connect, refill our spiritual tank, and fix what needs to be fixed.
It will not always be easy; we do not guarantee lifetime fixes. We are all a work in progress and, like the Interstate, the infrastructure of our life will always need improvement and repair.
Soon we will celebrate the birth of a child named Emmanuel, which means: “God is with us.” These difficult times will pass, we anticipate a vaccine and hope is on the horizon. We always have hope when God is with us.
(Deacon Cranston is a pastoral associate at St. Mary’s Parish in Riverside, Holy Trinity Parish in Richmond, and St. Joseph’s Parish in Wellman. He can be reached at [email protected]).
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