Make straight the path

John the baptist cries out to us now in Advent, to " make straight the path" so that our Lord and King can reach us. The roads had to be straightened and the valleys filled in when the king was to make a trip to the people. The roads had to be repaired. God says he will do it, " I will cut a road through all my mountains" isaiah 49, but we must as always do our part. We must fervently will it and ask for it, then act in accordance with the request..

For us to allow our Lord to make His way to us, we straighten the path by staying on this ladder. By keeping our eyes on the goal, true north: God as king of our hearts. We constantly meditate on this realty and this allows us to let other choices be ignored. There are so many distractions from this life, led with our Lord, so we find it imperative to keep our eyes on the goal. Daily, during our holy hour, and many times during the day, and then we examine, with our examine prayer, how did we do? How many times did we not practice the three fold paradigm ( be aware , understand , take action,) and find ourselves looking off to the right or the left. Veering off, becoming concerned with things that won't further our spiritual life or that of others. What good has this been for you,how many opportunities to stay close to our Lord, to keep the path straight have we passed up?
Did we give into distractions, to anger to hurt to judgmental thoughts to anger to jealousy. Reject these temptations! See them for what they are. They are distractions, they are making a very crooked , and not - straight path to our Lord. This is the spiritual battle that we must fight against. Hold tight to the straight path.

Let us do this particular examine today. How did we not stay on the path, eyes forward? Did we allow distractions to take us off the straight path to our Lord? Resolve to reject those temptations tomorrow, and " make straight the path" once more.

As I mentioned in the blog below, on Oct 25th, rule 11 admonishes us to stay close to God. To not only minimize the side ways distractions but the highs and lows as we mature into a deeper more disciplined path towards God. A straighter path!