Breath of the Spirit Reflection: Vocal Training
St. Francis of Assisi famously exhorted his community to “preach constantly and, when necessary, use words.” Today’s reflection offers us a similar challenge: to both speak words of Love’s presence and to become that loving presence; to speak of justice and to act justly. As such, Advent invites us to a greater integrity: when our words reflect not only what we believe but who we are.
December 10, 2023: Second Sunday in Advent, Year B
Isaiah 40:1-5, 9-11
Psalm 85:9-14
2 Peter 3:8-14
Mark 1:1-8
Vocal Training
A reflection by Richard Young
What is the difference between “I have a voice” and “I AM the voice?” Our gospel for today is synced with the beautiful poetry from the fortieth chapter of Isaiah. Mark implies that the baptizer fulfills Isaiah’s prophecy, that he, John, IS the voice sent to prepare the way for the coming of the Just One. In the Gospel of John, it’s not just an implication, because there the baptizer clearly says, “I AM, as Isaiah prophesied, THE VOICE of someone crying out in the wilderness, THE VOICE that says, ‘make straight our God’s road.’”
Do you have a voice? Or are you the voice? Over the years DignityUSA has been partially defined as “THE voice of LGBTQIA+ Catholics.” Dignity has had to be a voice in the media, being the go-to group that news outlets frequently count on for comment when there are events that impact our community. Fundraising appeals have asked members and friends to “support the voice of DignityUSA,” so that we don’t just HAVE a voice; we ARE a voice. Having a voice doesn’t necessarily mean you are using it. Having a voice is passive. BEING a voice is active. It’s about putting yourself out there and embodying your convictions—embodying, putting flesh on your sense of justice. BEING the voice builds the roads, fills in valleys, and levels mountains. It makes the rough ways smooth, so that the glory and radiance of the Divine can be seen. Like John, we must BE the voice.
Several years ago, I attended a rally at which I heard some wonderful activists speak, including Vermont’s Senator Bernie Sanders. We were angry, because just the night before (early that morning, in fact) the US Senate passed a so-called tax reform bill that numerous independent, non-partisan groups severely criticized. The Congressional Budget Office reported that this bill would add $1.7 Trillion to the national debt. Provisions in the bill would result in thirteen million people losing their health insurance. Leading economists called this bill a huge disaster for the nation, actually raising taxes for the great majority of us. The list of problems with the proposal was extensive, and there was nearly universal agreement among the bill’s critics that it simply robbed from the poor and middle class to enrich the upper one percent, who clearly didn’t need it. How, many of us wondered, could anyone with a conscience support this? We had plenty to be angry about.
One of the speakers at the rally was from a rural county, a proud, tough, plain-spoken Appalachian mother, grandmother, and great grandmother, who, like the baptizer, did not hesitate to quote Isaiah, as she lambasted the politicians responsible for this scam. “Woe to you who make unjust laws, to those who issue oppressive decrees, to deprive the poor of their rights and withhold justice from the oppressed of my people, making widows their prey and robbing the fatherless. What will you do on the day of reckoning, when disaster comes from afar? To whom will you run for help? Where will you leave your riches?” That’s Isaiah 10: 1-3. This lady shouted this message, spewing forth her righteous anger. She named a couple of politicians who were certainly largely to blame, and she said they were coming after her people, so she was coming after them. Greed is a sin. That was her message, and she was a modern-day John the Baptizer, calling the powerful to repentance. That’s not just having a voice; that’s BEING the voice.
I think of a scene from some Hollywood Bible epic, depicting John the Baptizer getting arrested. He stands in the Jordan River, and a bunch of Roman soldiers approach him. One says, “We have orders to bring you to Herod.” John, who is not intimidated by anybody, says, “And I have orders to bring you to God.” They go into the river after him, and as they reach him, he grabs their heads, plunges them into the water, and he shouts, “Repent! Repent!” Now, that’s BEING the voice.
“Prepare the way of our God.” That’s what the voice says, the voice which Isaiah described and which is embodied by God’s people when we live our prophetic calling. I prepare the way when I AM the voice, when I speak up, when I refuse to be silent in the face of injustice. I prepare the way for the coming of God when I attack and expose the corporate sins that harm God’s people. AND I prepare the way when I acknowledge the personal unloving attitudes that are in my own heart. I have to BE the voice of justice for myself as well. I have to smooth out the rough road within me. I have to look at that which makes the road rough: greed, jealousy, bitterness, a judgmental attitude, despair, lack of forgiveness. I have to BE the voice that demands that my soul clear a path through my own wilderness. I have to let go of all that blocks my vision of God’s glory.
John the Baptizer, as Mark’s gospel tells us today, was a total oddball. He lived on the fringes of society, maintaining a weird diet and a bizarre sense of fashion. He is truly the voice in the wilderness, the place for outcasts, where such strange behavior happens. The wilderness is the marginal world, where God’s most zealous ones are disciplined; that is, made into disciples. Today’s story suggests that this is the place where one’s voice can be fine-tuned. It is the place where we take voice lessons, if you will, to move beyond just having a voice to BEING the voice. It is the place where Jesus himself went for forty days and forty nights to do battle with the devil, so the story says. It is there that he found his voice, his sense of mission. And after returning from there, he stayed on the margins. He entered another wilderness, getting his voice trained even further among the poor, the sick, the tax collectors, the prostitutes, the ones not welcome in the Temple. He gets to know their wilderness and stays there. If he was to BE the voice that announces that the Reign of God is here, he needed wilderness training.
We are blessed to be where we are: on the fringes, meeting in out-of-the-way places without any official approval from church authorities, labeled heretics by some, gathering where sexual and gender minorities and women and the un-ordained lead liturgies that many call illicit, where some of us take positions on social issues that would be condemned by “good” Christians and profess a faith that is way too progressive for some. We might as well be wearing camel hair and eating grasshoppers and wild honey. This is OUR wilderness. We are right where the crazy baptizer would be. We are SO blessed to be where we are, because where else could we get such amazing voice lessons? Where else can we learn so well the skill of BEING the voice? The rural lady I mentioned earlier lived among some of her state’s poorest people. That was her wilderness. That’s where she got her voice training. I think of former Secretary of State (and the first woman to have that job), Madeline Albright. She began her life in the wilderness of Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia, from which her family escaped. She once observed, “My driving force is that I want to make a difference. It took me quite a long time to develop a voice, and now that I have it, I am not going to be silent.”
Making a difference: perhaps it is our Advent task for today to work on developing our own voice, to BECOME the voice with which we can make a difference. Perhaps our Advent task is to embrace our exile in the wilderness, to learn from our fellow outcasts how to “make ready the way of Our God,” how to “clear God a straight path.” Then, as Isaiah, said, “the glory of God shall be revealed, and all shall see it together.”
Rev. Richard P. Young is a retired Catholic priest and mental health counselor. He chairs the Liturgy Committee of Dignity/Dayton’s Living Beatitudes Community and has worked with several Dignity Chapters since the late 70s. He once served for a term on the national board of DignityUSA and has attended all the national conventions/conferences since 1981.
He is married to former DignityUSA national secretary, Bob Butts. Richard was honored with a President’s Award at the 2022 Dignity National Conference in San Diego.
