{"id":340344,"date":"2011-11-30T23:00:58","date_gmt":"2011-11-30T22:00:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/december-2011\/"},"modified":"2024-06-06T12:04:17","modified_gmt":"2024-06-06T10:04:17","slug":"december-2011","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/december-2011\/","title":{"rendered":"December 2011"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"color: #008080\"><strong>\u201cPrepare the way of the Lord, make straight his paths\u201d<\/strong><\/span>  While this Word of Life is an expression of joy, it is also an  invitation to a complete and radical change of direction in our life.  John the Baptist invites us to prepare the way of the Lord \u2014 but what  can be the way?  Jesus\u2019 coming was proclaimed by John the Baptist, but before entering  public life to begin his ministry Jesus spent some time in the desert.  That was his way. In the desert he found profound union with God, but he  also encountered temptation, and by experiencing that he made himself  one with all of us. He came out victorious.  We see Jesus follow this way again in his death and resurrection.  Since Jesus followed his way to the end, he himself has become \u201cthe way\u201d  for us who are still on the road.  He is the way we must follow in order to fulfill our calling as human beings to enter into full communion with God.  Each of us is called to prepare the way of the Lord who wants to  enter into our life; and we must make the paths of our life straight so  that he can come in. We have to prepare the way for him, removing every  obstacle one by one, such as those arising from our limited way of  seeing things, from our weak will.  We need courage to choose between our way and his way for us, between  our will and his will, between a program we have thought of (which may  or may not turn out) and the one created by his all-powerful love. Once  we have made the decision, we have to work at conforming our own  stubborn will to his.  How? Those who have become fulfilled Christians, the saints, teach us  a good, practical, intelligent method: do it right now. Moment by  moment, let us try to remove the obstacles that keep us from doing his  will so that it will be no longer our will living in us, but his.  In  this way we will have lived the Word of Life:  <span style=\"color: #006633\"><strong><span style=\"color: #008080\">\u201cPrepare the way of the Lord, make straight his paths\u201d<\/span><\/strong><\/span> <\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: right\"><em>Chiara Lubich<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cPrepare the way of the Lord, make straight his paths\u201d (Lk 3:4).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":34,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"give_campaign_id":0,"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1,92],"tags":[2820],"class_list":["post-340344","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-non-categorizzato","category-word-of","tag-lc-3-4-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/340344","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/34"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=340344"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/340344\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=340344"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=340344"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=340344"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}