Caritas Christi Urget Nos

Tag: St. John the Baptist

  • The Nativity of Saint John the Baptist

    The Nativity of Saint John the Baptist

    Today’s readings

    Today we celebrate a feast that is a bit unusual for us.  When we celebrate a saint’s day, it is usually celebrated on the feast of their death, not their birth.  But today we do gather to celebrate the birth of a saint, Saint John the Baptist, and the fact that we’re celebrating his birth points to the fact that St. John the Baptist had a very special role to play in the life of Christ.  In fact, the only other saint for whom we celebrate a birthday is the Blessed Virgin Mary.

    Just as for Jesus, we don’t know the precise day John the Baptist was born. So the feasts of their Nativity – their births – were traditions developed by the early Church. The dates the Church selected are significant.  Jesus’ birthday was placed around the time of the winter solstice, mostly to counteract pagan festivals of the coming of winter. John the Baptist’s birthday was then placed around the time of the summer solstice for similar reasons.  But there’s more to it even than that.  Saint Augustine reminds us that in the Gospel of John, there is a passage where John the Baptist says of himself and Jesus, “I must decrease, he must increase.”  So John’s birthday is placed at the time when the days start to become shorter, and Jesus’ birthday is placed at the time when the days start to become longer.  John the Baptist must decrease, Jesus must increase.

    Today’s readings have a lot to do with who the prophet is. St. John the Baptist was the last prophet of the old order, and his mission was to herald the coming of Jesus Christ who is himself the new order.  Tradition holds that prophets were created for their mission, that their purpose was laid out while they were yet to be born.  Isaiah, one of the great prophets of the old order, tells us of his commissioning in our first reading today.  He says, “The LORD called me from birth, from my mother’s womb he gave me my name.”  The rest of the reading tells us of his mission, a mission of hardship, but one of being compelled to speak the word of god as a sharp-edged sword.  His calling began as a call to preach to his own people, but by the end of the reading, it is clear that that commission became a call to preach to every nation on earth.

    Isaiah says that he was given his name while in his mother’s womb. The same was true of Saint John the Baptist, whose name was given to Zechariah and Elizabeth by the Angel Gabriel.  Names have meaning.  Maybe you know what your name means.  But far more significant are the names of the prophets we encounter in today’s Liturgy of the Word.  Isaiah means “The LORD is salvation,” which pretty much encompassed the meaning of Isaiah’s mission, proclaiming salvation to the Israelites who were oppressed in exile.  The name given to the Baptist, John, means “God has shown favor.”  And that was in fact the message of his life.  He came to pave the way for Jesus Christ, who was the favor of God shown to the whole human race.

    Ultimately, the purpose for St. John the Baptist’s life was summed up in his statement: “I must decrease, He must increase.”  And so it must be for us.  Sometimes we want to turn the spotlight on ourselves, when that is exactly where it should not be.  For John the Baptist, the spotlight was always on Christ, the One for whom he was unfit to fasten his sandals.  Just as the birth of St. John the Baptist helped his father Zechariah to speak once again, so his life gives voice to our own purpose in the world.  Like St. John the Baptist, we are called to be a people who point to Christ, who herald the Good News, and who live our lives for God.  We are called to decrease, while Christ increases in all of us.  We are called to be that light to the nations of which Isaiah speaks today, so that God’s salvation may reach to the ends of the earth.

    St. John the Baptist, pray for us.

  • Monday of the First Week of Ordinary Time

    Monday of the First Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    It seems like just yesterday that John the Baptist was baptizing Jesus in the Jordan River.  Oh wait, it was just yesterday!  But today’s reading fast forwards a bit and takes us to a time after John has been arrested.  John isn’t dead yet, not yet out of the picture, but clearly he is decreasing, as he said in Saturday’s Gospel reading, so that Jesus can increase.

    And Jesus is certainly increasing.  His ministry is kicking into full swing, and he begins by preaching that the kingdom is at , and he begins to call his followers.  Simon and Andrew, James and John, two sets of brothers, two groups of fishermen, give up their nets and their boats and their fathers and turn instead to casting nets to catch men and women for God’s kingdom.

    You know, even though today is the first day of Ordinary Time, we continue some aspects of Christmas and the Epiphany right up until February second, the feast of the Presentation of the Lord.  So today’s Gospel fits right in with that.  Today’s Gospel gives us a little more light to see what Jesus is up to.  He calls us all to repentance and to accept the Gospel and the Kingdom of God.  He says to us just as he said to Simon, Andrew, James and John: “Come follow me.”  The year ahead can be an exciting spiritual journey for us.  Who knows what Jesus will do in us and through us and with us to further the kingdom of God?  We just have to answer that wonderful invitation – “Come follow me and I will make you fishers of men.”

  • Saturday after Epiphany

    Saturday after Epiphany

    Today’s readings

    “He must increase; I must decrease.”

    By these words, St. John the Baptist indicates that the Epiphany, the manifestation of our Lord in the flesh, is complete.  John’s disciples have got it wrong; they took offense at Jesus baptizing when he himself had been baptized by John.  They assumed that because John had baptized Jesus, that Jesus must in some way be inferior to John.  But John knows his mission as the Forerunner.  He knows that his ministry was one of paving the way for Jesus and the Gospel.  He knows that his own baptism was a mere precursor of the baptism that Jesus would bring, a baptism that imparts the fullness of the Holy Spirit to all believers.

    “He must increase; I must decrease.”

    St. John the Evangelist tells us in his letters that we are to be on guard against those who come in the name of Jesus but are not of him.  We must be wary of pretenders and totally turn away from false idols.  He has spent this past week in our first readings giving us the standards of discernment that help us to know the Truth.  Anyone of the Truth will testify to the Incarnation of Jesus in the flesh.  Anyone of the Truth will love deeply, and will love neighbors as well as God.  Anyone of the Truth, he tells us today, will cast out sin, from himself and from others.  Even though he may not be perfect, still he will battle sin and turn to Christ incarnate in the flesh for the indwelling of the Spirit, for the grace of his baptism.

    “He must increase; I must decrease.”

    Christ came in the flesh because, as the Psalmist tells us today, the Lord takes delight in his people.  As his people then, must also delight in him.  We must remember that we are all in the service of the one who came to set us free.  We must remember that our own thoughts, our own desires, all of these are not the be-all and end-all of existence, and quite often, we must die to them in order that God be manifested among us.  As we offer and prepare our gifts for the Eucharist today, may we also offer the decreasing of ourselves in order to pave the way for the increasing of Jesus Christ.

  • Solemnity of the Nativity of Saint John the Baptist

    Solemnity of the Nativity of Saint John the Baptist

    Today’s readings

    Today we celebrate a feast that is a bit unusual for us.  First of all, it’s a saint’s feast day, and saints’ days don’t usually take precedence over a Sunday celebration.  Secondly, whenever we do celebrate a saint’s day, it is usually celebrated on the feast of their death, not their birth.  But today we do gather to celebrate the birth of a saint, Saint John the Baptist, and the fact that we’re celebrating his birth and his day at all on this Sunday points to the fact that St. John the Baptist had a very special role to play in the life of Christ.  In fact, the only other saint for whom we celebrate a birthday is the Blessed Virgin Mary, so that tells us something about how important John the Baptist is.

    Just as for Jesus, we don’t know the precise day John the Baptist was born.  So the feast of their Nativities – their births – was a tradition developed by the early Church. The dates the Church selected are significant.  Jesus’ birthday was placed around the time of the winter solstice, mostly to counteract pagan festivals of the coming of winter.  John the Baptist’s birthday was then placed around the time of the summer solstice for similar reasons.  But there’s more to it even than that.  In the Gospel of John, there is a passage where John the Baptist says of himself and Jesus, “I must decrease, he must increase.”  So John’s birthday is placed at the time when the days start to become shorter, and Jesus’ birthday is placed at the time when the days start to become longer.  John the Baptist must decrease, Jesus must increase.

    Today’s readings have a lot to do with who the prophet is.  St. John the Baptist was the last prophet of the old order, and his mission was to herald the coming of Jesus Christ who is himself the new order.  Tradition holds that prophets were created for their mission, that their purpose was laid out while they were yet to be born.  Isaiah, one of the great prophets of the old order, tells us of his commissioning in our first reading today.  He says, “The LORD called me from birth, from my mother’s womb he gave me my name.”  The rest of the reading tells us of his mission, a mission of hardship, but one of being compelled to speak the word of god as a sharp-edged sword.  His calling began as a call to preach to his own people, but by the end of the reading, it is clear that that commission became a call to preach to every nation on earth.

    Isaiah says that he was given his name while in his mother’s womb.  The same was true of St. John the Baptist, whose name was given to Zechariah and Elizabeth by the Angel Gabriel.  There’s a dubious story in my own family’s history that my mother had my name picked out from the time she was twelve.  But it’s pretty hard for me to believe that a young Italian woman would have picked the name Patrick Michael for her son.  But that’s how the story goes.  Names have meaning.  Maybe you know what your name means.  I looked mine up this week and found that Patrick means “nobleman,” so if you feel like bowing when you see me, it seems like that would be appropriate!  But far more significant are the names of the prophets we encounter in today’s Liturgy of the Word.  Isaiah means “Yahweh is salvation,” which pretty much encompassed the meaning of Isaiah’s mission, proclaiming salvation to the Israelites who were oppressed in exile.  The name given to the Baptist, John, means “God has shown favor.”  And that was in fact the message of his life.  He came to pave the way for Jesus Christ, who was the favor of God shown to the whole human race.

    The point is, these men were created for their prophetic calling.  That’s true for us too.  All of us who have been baptized have a prophetic calling that came before we were ever born.  God created us for something special.  He created us to be with him, he created us to follow him, he created us to draw other people to him.  This means that, according to our abilities, our vocation and station in life, we were meant to serve God in some way that God might be glorified and that others may come to know him.

    During these couple of weeks, we have been asked to observe a fortnight of religious freedom.  As our nation’s bishops point out, religious freedom is one of our first and most cherished freedoms.  It was largely in pursuit of religious freedom that our nation’s forefathers came to this great land, and in defense of that freedom that they fought and died.  But now, many issues have put that freedom in danger.  The so-called HHS mandate is kind of the banner issue on the religious freedom front.  The HHS mandate requires all employers to pay for birth control regardless of whether it is against their moral teachings, as it is for us.

    But this is just the tip of the iceberg.  Another sad assault on religious freedom has been the requirement of any adoption placement agency to place children for adoption with people in same-sex unions.  Since our religion forbids this practice, we have been unable to comply, and so we have been pushed out of the adoption process, something that has been an extension of our acts of charity since this country began.

    The essence of the issue is that freedom of religion is now being defined in a very narrow way, which amounts to freedom of worship.  One is free to worship in any way one chooses, but must obey the law in all other things.  Let’s bracket for the moment the obvious objection that such a narrow definition was never intended by our founding fathers.  More important is that, for us, worship is not something we can separate from our daily living.  When we are sent out to “go in peace, glorifying the Lord by your life,” we are just beginning to worship.  What we do in our daily life is our real worship, not just the hour we’re here on Sunday.

    So our worship of God may indeed call us to speak against issues of the day, or to take in an adoptive or foster child to share God’s love, or any number of charitable acts, and our Church should have the freedom to pursue those according to our moral teachings.  That’s the essence of religious freedom, and that is what we are seeking to defend.  The prophetic call in all of us absolutely must speak up for what we believe as a Church and preach the Gospel by the way that we live our lives.

    We live in a society that is all about protecting and promoting ourselves.  Saint John the Baptist would have us promote Jesus instead.  That’s what he was about.  As it was for him, so it is for us: we must decrease, Jesus must increase.

  • Friday of the Second Week of Advent

    Friday of the Second Week of Advent

    Today’s readings

    We Americans tend to believe that we ourselves have all the answers; and I don’t necessarily mean that all of us together have the answers, but rather that we individually have the answers.  We hold relative truth, even if we wouldn’t say that we do.  It’s cold comfort to see, in our gospel reading this morning, that we aren’t alone.  Jesus’ generation was much the same.  John the Baptist came across too strict, and Jesus came across like a drunkard and a partier.  But they both proclaimed the truth; Jesus, obviously more so than John.  But the crowds dismissed them both, because both required them to change their lives and their ways of thinking.  If John and Jesus were right, then they weren’t, and that was unsettling.  It’s unsettling for us too, but we have the benefit of centuries of Church teaching to help us.  Maybe it’s time we abandoned our weak answers and points of view and put on the attitude of Christ.

  • The Nativity of Saint John the Baptist

    The Nativity of Saint John the Baptist

    Today’s readings

    Today we celebrate a feast that is a bit unusual for us. When we celebrate a saint’s day, it is usually celebrated on the feast of their death, not their birth. But today we do gather to celebrate the birth of a saint, Saint John the Baptist, and the fact that we’re celebrating his birth points to the fact that St. John the Baptist had a very special role to play in the life of Christ. In fact, the only other saint for whom we celebrate a birthday is the Blessed Virgin Mary, so that tells us something about how important John the Baptist is.

    Just as for Jesus, we don’t know the precise day John the Baptist was born. So the feast of their Nativity – their births – was a tradition developed by the early Church. The dates the Church selected are significant. Jesus’ birthday was placed around the time of the winter solstice, mostly to counteract pagan festivals of the coming of winter. John the Baptist’s birthday was then placed around the time of the summer solstice for similar reasons. But there’s more to it even than that. Saint Augustine reminds us that in the Gospel of John, there is a passage where John the Baptist says of himself and Jesus, “I must decrease, he must increase.” So John’s birthday is placed at the time when the days start to become shorter, and Jesus’ birthday is placed at the time when the days start to become longer. John the Baptist must decrease, Jesus must increase.

    Today’s readings have a lot to do with who the prophet is. St. John the Baptist was the last prophet of the old order, and his mission was to herald the coming of Jesus Christ who is himself the new order. Tradition holds that prophets were created for their mission, that their purpose was laid out while they were yet to be born. Isaiah, one of the great prophets of the old order, tells us of his commissioning in our first reading today. He says, “The LORD called me from birth, from my mother’s womb he gave me my name.” The rest of the reading tells us of his mission, a mission of hardship, but one of being compelled to speak the word of god as a sharp-edged sword. His calling began as a call to preach to his own people, but by the end of the reading, it is clear that that commission became a call to preach to every nation on earth.

    Isaiah says that he was given his name while in his mother’s womb. The same was true of Saint John the Baptist, whose name was given to Zechariah and Elizabeth by the Angel Gabriel. There’s a dubious story in my own family’s history that my mother had my name picked out from the time she was twelve. But it’s pretty hard for me to believe that a young Italian woman would have picked the name Patrick Michael for her son. But that’s how the story goes. Names have meaning. Maybe you know what your name means. But far more significant are the names of the prophets we encounter in today’s Liturgy of the Word. Isaiah means “The LORD is salvation,” which pretty much encompassed the meaning of Isaiah’s mission, proclaiming salvation to the Israelites who were oppressed in exile. The name given to the Baptist, John, means “God has shown favor.” And that was in fact the message of his life. He came to pave the way for Jesus Christ, who was the favor of God shown to the whole human race.

    Whatever our particular names may mean, we are also called Christian, and there is meaning behind that name. To be called Christian is to be called a follower of Christ, which means that like Jesus, we must lay down our lives for our friends, that we must preach the Good News of Salvation in our words and in our actions, and that we must always help people to come to know the love of God. And that, ultimately, is the purpose for which we have been created, the purpose God had for us from the time we were in our mother’s wombs. The way we do that might be different for each of us. Some will work out their purpose in the married life, raising children to love and honor God. Some will do that as religious sisters or brothers or as priests, bearing witness to all God’s people of the love God has for them. Some will do that in the single state, as models of chastity and courage in a world that can be dark and lonely.

    Ultimately, the purpose for St. John the Baptist’s life was summed up in his statement: “I must decrease, He must increase.” And so it must be for us. Sometimes we want to turn the spotlight on ourselves, when that is exactly where it should not be. For John the Baptist, the spotlight was always on Christ, the One for whom he was unfit to fasten his sandals. Just as the birth of St. John the Baptist helped his father Zechariah to speak once again, so his life gives voice to our own purpose in the world. Like St. John the Baptist, we are called to be a people who point to Christ, who herald the Good News, and who live our lives for God. We are called to decrease, while Christ increases in all of us. We are called to be that light to the nations of which Isaiah speaks today, so that God’s salvation may reach to the ends of the earth.

    St. John the Baptist, pray for us.

  • Second Sunday of Advent

    Second Sunday of Advent

    Today’s readings

    “Comfort, give comfort to my people, says your God.”

    So the prophet Isaiah begins our Liturgy of the Word today.  Those words made me think back to a time many years ago when I sang in a “Do It Yourself Messiah.”  Such “Do It Yourself Messiahs” are Christmas traditions in many places.  This particular program was being put on at my voice teacher’s church, and I had been practicing the first song of it, which is called “Comfort Ye My People,” for months.  I was to sing it as a solo.  Now understand, the prospect of a voice student singing in a church he’d never been to for people he’d never met, and being the fist voice they’d hear that afternoon – well that experience was just a little daunting.  I was feeling anything but comfort!

    But the text of that particular song is taken directly from the first three verses we get from Isaiah today.  This text is easily one of the most beautiful in all of Scripture, and I have to admit it’s always been one of my favorite parts of the Bible.  But as I reflected on it this week, the words almost seem to ring a bit hollow.  The headlines in the newspaper spoke of 533,000 jobs lost in just the month of November – the worst unemployment statistic in 34 years; a $14 billion bailout of General Motors, Ford and Chrysler; the deepening of foreclosures in the housing market, fueled this time by job losses – and we can’t forget the recent bombings in India, and the wars raging in Iraq and Afghanistan, to say nothing of unrest in other areas.

    And I know that as I say all that, there are some of you here who probably didn’t need to read it in a newspaper.  Either you have had to suffer from some of this, or someone you know did.  And so I can’t help but think that Isaiah’s promise of comfort seems to ring a bit hollow today.  So this comfort of which Isaiah speaks, when’s that going to start?

    Advent certainly has snuck up on us this year, I think.  We’re all in different places now than we were just a year ago.  Even if the recession and the danger in foreign lands hasn’t affected us, we might have experienced the loss of a loved one, a serious illness or injury of someone we know or even ourselves, maybe even a broken relationship.  Maybe these times find us needing the peace that Isaiah proclaims now more than ever.

    So I think the comfort that Advent finds us hoping for this year is not some kind of placid, easy comfort.  It’s not going to be found in hot chocolate or mashed potatoes, or even being wrapped in a warm blanket next to the fire.  It’s not the kind of comfort that prohibits us from trying something new, or taking a risk – God has no great love for that kind of comfort, to be quite honest.  And it’s not going to be the kind of comfort that waves a magic wand and makes all our troubles go away.

    I think the kind of comfort that Isaiah wants us to know about is the kind of comfort that comes from being in a hard place and having someone walk through it with you.  There is a real comfort that comes from that.  And that, I think, is the authentic kind of comfort that God brings us in our daily struggles.  We all know that our frustrations don’t disappear as quickly as we’d like them to.  We all know that we would certainly prefer not to have to walk through those low points at all.  But our faith teaches us that when we do walk through those valleys, we are never ever alone.  God is there, bringing us his comfort.

    And truly, this is the kind of comfort Isaiah is speaking about.  This reading is from the second part of the book of Isaiah.  In the first part, Isaiah was crying out to the people, warning them that God was not happy with the way they had turned away from him, that God was angry about the way they treated the poor and broke the commandments and didn’t trust in him.  But the second part – from which today’s first reading is taken – speaks to a people who were suffering the consequences of those sins.  They had been taken into exile; their homes and everything they knew were destroyed and now they lived as slaves, bitterly oppressed in a foreign land.  They too had no love for someone proclaiming a false comfort.  But Isaiah wasn’t proclaiming that kind of comfort or peace.  He was proclaiming a comfort and peace that could only come from God.

    And so it’s the great Saint John the Baptist who has the fulfillment of the promise in today’s Gospel reading.  These are the opening words of the Gospel of Mark, of which we will be reading a lot in this coming Liturgical year.  Mark has preliminaries: no genealogy like Matthew, no story about Elizabeth or the Annunciation like Luke.  He seems to rush breathlessly in and get right to the point, beginning with John’s Baptism.  He takes up the message of Isaiah: “Prepare the way of the Lord, make straight his paths.”  The old promises are being fulfilled and we are being offered a new way of life, one that finds us filling in the valleys and straightening out all those rough and winding roads.

    I find myself in these Advent days reflecting on some of my favorite Advent hymns.  The one that really expresses the Scriptures we have today is called “Comfort, Comfort Ye My People.”  It was written for the feast of the Birth of St. John the Baptist by German composer Johannes Olearius in 1671.  It was translated into English in the nineteenth century.

    Comfort, comfort ye My people,
    Speak ye peace, thus saith our God;
    Comfort those who sit in darkness,
    Mourning ’neath their sorrow’s load;
    Speak ye to Jerusalem
    Of the peace that waits for them;
    Tell her that her sins I cover,
    And her warfare now is over.

    For the herald’s voice is crying
    In the desert far and near,
    Bidding all men to repentance,
    Since the kingdom now is here.
    O that warning cry obey!
    Now prepare for God a way!
    Let the valleys rise to meet Him,
    And the hills bow down to greet Him.

    So Advent this year finds us waiting for two things.  First, we hear the call to repentance and await our own wholehearted return to God.  We are probably not going to get any part of the $700 billion government bailout.  We are going to have to depend instead on God in ways different and much deeper than we ever have before.  And that’s certainly not bad news, because nothing is more dependable than God.  Which brings us to the second thing for which we wait, and that is God’s comfort, a comfort that walks with us through good times and bad, a comfort that never lets us down, a comfort that makes us completely new.  We pray for that comfort along with our Psalmist today: “Lord, let us see your kindness and grant us your salvation.”

  • CREEDS Retreat Conference I: Advent and the Incarnation of Christ

    CREEDS Retreat Conference I: Advent and the Incarnation of Christ

    Readings:  Matthew 1:18-25; Matthew 3:1-7

    Godspell:  “Prepare Ye” and “Save the People”

    One of the single greatest mysteries of our faith is the Incarnation of Christ.  When you stop to think about it, who are we that the Author of all Life should take on our own corrupt and broken form and become one of us?  It has been called the “marvelous exchange:” God became human so that humans could become more like God.  When I was in seminary, it was explained to us by a simple, yet divinely complex rule: Whatever was not assumed was not redeemed.  So God assumed our human nature, taking on all of our frailty and weakness, all of our sorrows and frustrations, all of the things that make being human difficult at times.  As the fourth Eucharistic Prayer puts it, he became “one like us in all things but sin.”

    This belief in the doctrine of the Incarnation is essential for our Catholic faith, even our Christian religion.  One cannot not believe in the Incarnation and call oneself Christian.  It’s part of our Creed: “By the power of the Holy Spirit, he was born of the Virgin Mary and became man.”  This doctrine is so important, so holy to us, that at the mention of it in the creed, we are instructed to bow during those words, and on Christmas, we are called to genuflect at that time.  There is always a reason for any movement in the Liturgy, and the reason for our bowing or genuflecting is that the taking on of our flesh by our God is an occasion of extreme grace, unparalleled in any religion in the world.  If the Incarnation had not taken place, there never would have been a Cross and Resurrection.  First things are always first!

    And so it seems that it’s appropriate as we being our reflections on Matthew’s Gospel to begin with the Incarnation.  It’s even more appropriate that we do that during this season of Advent, whose very name means “coming.”  During Advent, we begin this wonderful period of waiting with the cry of St. John the Baptist,

    “A voice of one crying out in the desert,
    ‘Prepare the way of the Lord,
    make straight his paths.’”

    And the movie and play Godspell famously does this with the wonderful refrain “Prepare ye the way of the Lord…”  You notice in the movie that this song accompanied the liturgical action of the players being baptized by the Baptist.  Their dancing after pledging repentance of the sins of their past life signifies the joy that we all share being on the precipice of something new this Advent.  They received the forerunner of our sacramental Baptism by the one who was the forerunner of Christ.  This baptism was a baptism for the forgiveness of sins like ours, but unlike ours, did not convey the Holy Spirit.  That would come later, after the death and Resurrection of Christ.  He had to return to the Father in order to send the Holy Spirit.

    But, as the song suggests, that baptism was essential to prepare the way for Christ.  The Benedictus, the Gospel canticle from the Church’s Morning Prayer, which is based on a passage from the Gospel of Luke, speaks of that baptism and the significance of the Baptist’s ministry:  “You my child will be called the prophet of the Most High, for you will go before him to prepare his way.  To give his people knowledge of salvation by the forgiveness of their sins.”  Indeed, if our sins had never been forgiven, we would know nothing of salvation, indeed there really would be no salvation.  But that baptism of St. John literally prepared the way of the Lord by helping the people to know that God was doing something significant among them.  That was the reason for them dancing and splashing around in all that water: they too were on the precipice of something new, something incredibly, amazingly, wonderfully new.

    Now in Matthew’s Gospel, we have an infancy narrative – a story of the birth of Christ.  “Now this is how the birth of Jesus came about,” the Gospel begins.  Mary is found with child through the Holy Spirit, and Joseph doesn’t know what to believe.  But in Matthew, Joseph is the one who gets a visit from an angel, not Mary.  And he is the first one to hear a key phrase in Matthew’s Gospel: “do not be afraid” – “do not be afraid to take Mary your wife into your home.”  Fear, for Matthew, is the cardinal sin, because it is fear that keeps us from responding in love to the movement of the Holy Spirit.  Apparently Mary had no such fear, because the beginning of the Gospel “finds” her already with child through the Holy Spirit.  The child is born to the couple and at the instruction of the angel, he is named Jesus, he is Emmanuel, God-with-us.

    In the movie, there is no infancy.  Christ comes at the end of John’s baptism sequence, and instructs John to baptize him because, as Jesus tells him, “it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness.”  As he is baptized, Jesus sings, “God save the people,” a prayer that is of course already being accomplished as he speaks.  The play seems to be a bit more pessimistic than the actual Gospel, because Jesus practically pleads for God’s mercy on his people, implying a relationship that was not nearly as close as the Gospels proclaim and our faith believes.  This is one of the little grains of salt we need to take from the movie; in fact it does seem to be an expression of the author’s take on the Jesus event.  So I’d just say don’t take Godspell as Gospel, if you know what I mean!

    And so the advent and Incarnation narratives give us some pause in these Advent days.  We have the opportunity to think about our own birth, or rebirth, in faith.  We get to make the paths straight and the way smooth for the coming of our Lord yet again.  Maybe these days find us struggling to come to a new place in our faith, a higher stage, a bold move.  We might tremble a bit at where God seems to be leading us through our study of Scripture.  But Matthew begs us to hear those all-important words – “be not afraid” – be not afraid to go where God and Scripture lead you.  Be not afraid to take the next step.  Be not afraid to ascend to that higher place God longs for you to be in right now.

  • Martyrdom of St. John the Baptist

    Martyrdom of St. John the Baptist

    Today’s readings

    What we are celebrating in today’s feast is the fact that prison bars cannot silence truth. John the Baptist was not asked to renounce his faith; indeed Herod was probably very interested in John’s faith and may have even asked him about it on occasion. Not that he wanted to convert, mind you, but he just seemed to have a kind of morbid fascination with the man Jesus, and anyone who followed him. But the real reason that he kept John locked up was that Herodias didn’t like John, who had a following, publicly telling them what they should and should not do. Herod’s taking his brother’s wife was not permitted in Judaism, but it would all blow over if John would just stop talking about it.

    But that’s not how the truth works. And John’s one purpose in life was to testify to the Truth — Truth with a capital “T” — to point the way to Jesus. So he was not about to soft-pedal the wrong that Herod and Herodias were doing. And that was something Herodias just could not live with. As soon as the opportunity presented itself, she eagerly had John beheaded and rid herself of his prophecy. But that didn’t make her any less accountable to the truth.

    This could be a rather sad feast. The end of one who worked hard for the reign of God, and over something seemingly so silly. But, as St. Bede the Venerable says of him: “There is no doubt that blessed John suffered imprisonment and chains as a witness to our Redeemer, whose forerunner he was, and gave his life for him. His persecutor had demanded not that he should deny Christ, but only that he should keep silent about the truth. Nevertheless … does Christ not say: “I am the truth?” Therefore, because John shed his blood for the truth, he surely died for Christ.

    And so, for those of us who are heirs of the Truth, this is indeed a joyful feast. John the Baptist could not keep silent about the truth, whether it was truth with a capital or lower-case “T”. We must not keep silent about the truth either. We are called to offer our own lives as a testimony to the truth.

  • The Birth of St. John the Baptist

    The Birth of St. John the Baptist

    Today's readings

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    john“What, then. will this child be?”  That question from today’s Gospel is certainly key for the celebration of the birth of St. John the Baptist, but definitely also appropriate for all of us too.  At the birth of John the Baptist, the Incarnation was starting to get noticeable.  God’s plan had already been worked out with Mary and Joseph and Elizabeth and Zechariah.  But now their relatives and neighbors were starting to see things happen.  Unusual things.  Like the birth of a boy to a couple way too old to be starting a family.  Naming him something that no one in their families had been called.  It’s no wonder that people were starting to notice the mystery and asked “what, then, will this child be?”

    And that’s a question that’s important for all of us.  Every time a new child is born, we might wonder what their life and their world will be like.  This Sunday, I baptized seven children and I couldn’t help but wonder where life would take them.  What, then, will they be?  Because we all have a purpose.  Just as John the Baptist was called from his mother’s womb to be the forerunner of Christ, so we all have a call – very much from our mother’s womb – something God has always intended for us to do.  It is, of course, the great project of our lives to work that out.  And we must pray daily for the discernment necessary for us to know God’s will so that we would be what God intended.  That’s the only way we can be really happy, I’m convinced of it.

    We are all, as the Psalmist says, wonderfully made.  We are all called to live a prophetic life that gives witness to Jesus Christ, just as his cousin John the Baptist did in his life.  When we finally embrace God’s will for us, that’s the only time we can be truly free.  Just as finally accepting God’s plan and naming the child according to God’s plan freed Zechariah’s tongue.  God’s will in our lives is never constrictive: it is freeing, and when we freely choose to follow, we can never be anything but happy.

    This wonderful feast of John’s birth is really a tradition.  Just like we don’t know the exact day of Jesus’ birth, John’s is not known either.  There were no birth certificates back then!  St. Augustine was the one who taught that this should be the date of John’s birth – six months before Jesus was born.  And he was born near the summer solstice, at the point where days start getting shorter, while Jesus was born at the winter solstice, at the point where days start getting longer.  This mimics John the Baptist’s statement in John’s Gospel that “He (meaning Jesus) must increase, and I (meaning John the Baptist) must decrease.

    What, then, will we be?  Where will God’s will take us?  God knows.  So we just pray for the grace to receive it, so that we can be really, truly free.  Because when we decrease so that Jesus can increase, great things can and will happen.