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In the gospel that we just heard, we hear words that are so familiar to us, the theme of Advent - "Prepare the way of the Lord, make straight his path."

These are beautiful, poetic words. In the musical "Godspell," they made a great song! But what do they mean to us today? Prepare the way of the Lord. What does that mean to us?

I'd like to apply it today to just one area, and that is how do we as parents, guardians, teachers, catechists, coaches, anybody involved in youth ministry, how do we prepare the way of the Lord in the lives of children and teenagers? As people of faith, one of the things that we want most in life is to share that faith with our children. We want them to believe what we believe. We want them to value what we value. We want them to hold sacred the very things that we hold sacred in this world. I know in my own family of my two daughters, there were many times that I wish that they would have a zipper on the top of their heads, and that all I would have to do is just pump in there everything that I believe and value and cherish and then zip it back up again - and then that would be it! They would get it, for the rest of their lives! But it doesn't work that way, does it?

The truth is that we cannot force our children to believe anything. We can't force them to value what we value. We can't make them consider as sacred the things that are sacred to us, anymore than our parents could force those things on us. At some point in our lives, we had to decide what we believed, what we valued, and what we held sacred.

John the Baptist, powerful preacher that he was, could not force the people who listened to him to believe what he was saying. In fact, Jesus could not force people to believe. If He did, He would have violated everything that is human - that God created into human beings. Free will, the right to choose. So not even Jesus could make anyone believe in the Gospel that He preached. That's the bad news - that we can't force these values and faith onto our children and teenagers.

But there's good news, too. The good side is that there's one thing that we can do, just one. I've thought about this over the years of my parenting (I've given it so much thought and like many of you, I'm sure - I've lost sleep over this question). "What can I do to get my kids to believe what I believe, to value what I value, to consider sacred the same things in this universe that God gave us that I think are sacred," and I've come down to just one thing. I'd like to share it with you, and I'm sure this is no great revelation to you. The one thing that we as parents, teachers, catechists, coaches, youth ministers, anybody who has anything to do with influencing the lives of young people, the one thing that we can do is model for them the things that we believe.

We can model for them a life of faith. We can model for them a person, a grown-up, who values important things in life. We can be models of the things that we hold sacred and let them see what it is that we believe in. That's all we can do. That's all that John the Baptist could do, that's all that Jesus could do. John modeled by his life what he preached. Jesus modeled by His life what He preached.

So as a parent, I want my kids to grow up to believe in God, and Christ, and Church, and to hold dear the things that I hold dear, all I can do is model that for them. So then we have to look at ourselves and say, "What is the quality of our modeling right now?" What are we modeling for our kids? Because every minute of every day, every day of every week, every week of the year, we are modeling something to them. Advent is a good time to think about this, because we have that theme - "Prepare the way of the Lord, make straight his path" - and today we are thinking, prepare the way of the Lord in the lives of our children and teenagers. How do we do that?

So we need to examine our consciences on the quality of our modeling. Let's just throw out a few things. What are we modeling? Are we modeling alcohol abuse? Are we saying to our kids, "This is how you grow up to be a real grown-up. And I hope that when you grow up you'll be like me." Are we modeling anger, rage, inability to control a person's temper? Is that what our kids see? And are we saying to them, "Now this the way to grow up and be an adult. Road rage." Any kind of rage! Inability to just control what we're feeling and our responses to what we're feeling - just flying off the handle. Is that the modeling we're giving?

Do our teachers, parents, coaches, all of you who are involved in youth works in some way, I would ask you to take a look at the quality of the language that you use in front of your kids. And I'm not just talking about four-letter words, I'm talking about the ability that adults have to destroy the spirit of the child by beating the kid down and down and down into the floor. Are we saying to them, "This is the way to grow up in this world. That when you grow up and you have kids, you beat them down the way I beat you down." So we just need to look at ourselves today and say, "what is the quality of my modeling, what is it that I am saying to those in my charge?"

Now, I don't want you to get the idea that I am standing before you as a perfect model - I wish! I wish! But at the end of the day, if we can say, "I did my best to model the real faith and values, the truth that I hold sacred," then that's all we can do. So the next day we get up again, and we have that same goal before us, and we might fail again. But we get up the next day, and we keep doing it. That's all that God or anybody else can ask of us.

I'd like to close with a quotation from the great Oscar Romero, the martyred archbishop of San Salvador in El Salvador who said some things that I think we can apply to our own parenting, our teaching, our coaching, or whatever. And he said:

And as the old saying goes, at some point, after we've modeled for eighteen, twenty years or even longer for our kids, we have to "let go, and let God," and just turn it over to Him.

At this Mass, we have a group from our RCIA program who are candidates to become Catholics at Easter, and they are going to be going through their Rite of Acceptance in a few minutes, but I'd like to apply this question of modeling to them. These are people who want to be Catholics - what kind of a feel do they get when they come into this Church on Sunday? What kind of treatment do they get, even though you might not know them, when they're outside in the front of the Church. Are we modeling the Catholic Christian life for them? Are we able to show them by the people that we are, that yes, they have found a home, that they are in the right place, and that we welcome them?