Watching any of the twenty-four hour news programs, reading the paper or listening to the radio can be an unsettling experience. Recently, I heard of a priest in Chile who was stabbed while distributing Holy Communion during Mass. He is hospitalized and recovering. Also this past April in Chile, a bomb was set off at the front door of a local convent. Stay out of Chile! The war in Iraq or Afghanistan and the state of the world’s economy can lead any of us to despair. We long for a voice of reason, a word of encouragement, and a message of hope.
Those who lived in the time of Jesus were beset by every reason to despair for their country was not their own. Palestine was the far eastern Mediterranean outpost of the Roman Empire. The government burdened the people with heavy taxes and governed by force and fear. Disease and poverty were not the exception to the rule; they were often the norm of life. The general population was illiterate and struggled for every day existence, yet these oppressed people were the chosen of God. Their faith and the Temple of Jerusalem was the focal point of worship and a sign of unity for the nation’s population. They longed for a Savior; a Messiah who would unite the nation and overthrow the oppressive government, returning the land as their own. In the midst of what was truly a struggle for identity and existence the voice of one strange yet charismatic preacher was heard near a river in ancient Israel called the Jordan. “Is this Elijah returned?” they wondered? “Is this the long awaited Savior of the nation?”
His name was John and he was conducting a ritual of cleansing, repentance for sin; baptizing people in the river Jordan and shouting out – “Prepare the way” and “One mightier than I is coming!” Today, the Church marks the Solemnity of the Nativity of St. John the Baptist. The literal translation of his title: “John the dipper.”
The readings chosen to mark the birth of this last and greatest prophet of the Old Testament, whose life is the hinge on the door which turns to the New and points to the person of Jesus the Christ – the savior longed for but unexpected – is today implied in Isaiah 49: 1-6 as one who shouts: “Hear me, O coastlands, listen, O distant peoples”
. . . I will make you a light to the nations that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth.” Was Isaiah speaking directly of John the Baptist? Perhaps not but nonetheless, it seems such a “wake up and take notice” call refers to someone of great note and certainly seems fulfilled in the person of John.
The Acts of the Apostles, our second reading, Acts 13: 22 -26, defines the purpose for which John came on the scene: “John heralded his (Jesus) coming by proclaiming a baptism of repentance to all the people of Israel . . . Behold one is coming after me . . .”
So, John would peak the curiosity of many during his time. Around his birth, mysterious events took place. His father, Zechariah, had been struck mute, unable to speak, when as priest in the Temple, he entered the holy of holies and encountered an angel who announced that his elderly wife, without child, would now conceive a son, who should be given the name John. Such astonishing news was questioned by Zechariah who was struck mute because of that doubt.
The Gospel of Luke 1: 57-66,80, reminds us that at the circumcision of John, eight days after his birth as was the custom to name the child, the silent Zechariah, against precedence but in obedience to God’s will, wrote on a tablet, “John is his name.” And he was silent no longer. “What then, will this child be?” asked those present. Mystery surrounds the initial beginning of this child’s life who grew to be the mighty Baptist in the desert – the great precursor of Jesus the Christ.
Now, as nature cooperates for us from this time when the maximum light of the sun north of the equator has flooded the earth but now begins to slowly decrease, we look forward to the birth of the true Savior marked on December 25th, after which the light will slowly increase as a sign of Jesus’ presence. The liturgical calendar reflects these two great events which changed the course of history but even more, the meaning and purpose of our lives. As John said, like the light of the sun, “I must decrease and he must increase.”
Our meaning and purpose, though in these early summer days of vacation and outdoor activity, should never be put on the back burner for a later time. We are consecrated in our baptism and anointed with sacred chrism to be “priest, prophet, and king” as the baptism rite reminds us, after the example of Christ himself. Wherever and whenever we travel, that consecration goes eternally with us.
Like John, we too have a direction to go – to point the way to Christ; maybe not by a river out in the wilderness but by the integrity of our lives. Which way am I going? In what direction do others see me leading them? Does my life silently and with inspiration for others, convict me of the truth that I am what I claim to be? Am I living out the purpose for which I was created? Have I embraced the fullness of my Catholic Christian faith?
The great theologian St. Augustine, wrote to the newly baptized Christians of his time and reminded them of John's significance:
"For when John was preaching the Lord's coming he was asked: Who are you? And he replied: I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness. The voice is John, but the Lord in the beginning was the Word. John was a voice that lasted only for a time; Christ, the Word in the beginning, is eternal."
John the Baptist is a sign for us. Christ is our hope and a light for the nations. Is he a light for you? Where do you shine that light for others?
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