I always find great hope in this first paragraph of the second reading from this past Sunday’s Office of Readings.  The reason I find it so hopeful is because in it Eusebius proclaims that the glory of the Lord will appear in the wilderness, not in Jerusalem.  Because most of my prayer these days consists in loving Christ in the darkness and the wilderness of my own life, it is a great consolation to know that that is exactly where Christ will manifest His glory.  Be heartened if you, too, experience a wilderness, a trackless waste, somewhere in your life.  “It is there that the glory of the Lord is to appear.”

The voice of one crying in the wilderness: Prepare the way of the Lord, make straight the paths of our God.  The prophecy makes clear that it is to be fulfilled, not in Jerusalem but in the wilderness: it is there that the glory of the Lord is to appear, and God’s salvation made known to all mankind.  (Eusebius of Caesarea)