Please read the passage before the homily.
Nothing that God does, nothing that happen, happens in a vacuum or without a context. What happened in the fifteenth year of Tiberius Caesar under Pontius Pilate happened in a context, in a particular place.
On a particular day and a particular time of day, the word of God came to John the Baptist. John then went out into the desert, as many others had done before him. Did he associate with the Essenes, the people of the Dead Sea Scrolls? Perhaps yes, perhaps no, but they were part of the culture of the time, part of the particularity of John’s call.
Your call may include a desert experience. Many Hispanic people had had experiences of the desert. The local weather, the local political situation, the economics of your time, and many other things make up the circumstances of your call.
I was born in the age of the airplane; you were born in the age of jet planes and rocket ships. I was born when we were coming out of a depression; perhaps you came of age in a time of recession. I was born when sexuality was binary; perhaps you have experienced sexuality as fluid. These are the particularities of individual calls. Our calls do not happen in isolation from reality.
However, wherever and whyever did God call us, God did call us. The word of God came in the desert over John and John experienced it in the desert. Our desert perhaps is in the city, on a farm, or in an apartment house.
The voice of God can come to any desert of ours. Scripture says that in wherever your desert is, “Prepare the way of the Lord and make his way straight because everyone will see the salvation from God.
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