Praise the Lord! Determination, resolve, fortitude, relentlessness, perseverance, drive, hope, persistance, courage—characteristics we all strive to achieve in our lives and characteristics of St. John the Baptist. We all love that character, the protagonist who fought hard, endured great obstacles and challenges and triumphed in the face of adversity. They have been beaten down, struck down and abandoned yet are that much more determined to continue to carry the banner, the task that they have been ordained to accomplish. Now if you were to find this in a movie, you may go watch I am Legend where Will Smith takes on crazy mutated rabie-infested vampire zombies. Lord knows that even that movie event would be a good alternative to the Golden Compasses' subverted atheistic plot. Or perhaps we could just crack open that time tested non-cinematic classic thing called the Bible and look to St. John the Baptist! After 5000 years of Judeo-Christian history, these stories continue to capture our souls....I hope.
Yes, John the Baptist. Picture him in prison, shackled up, beaten down, bloodied, mocked and scourged. He's caught at the hands of Herod for being a rabble rouser, a crazy prophet whose austere life of locust, honey and nomadic tendencies threatened the ruler's pagan life of comfort and opulence. As Jesus asks us today, “What did you go out into the desert to see? ...someone wearing fine clothing, living in a royal palace?” No! Someone with these characteristics are seldom found in affluent circles, but found in, “the least of the kingdom of heaven.” It reminds me of where I used to look for these attributes...at fancy conferences all over the country with affluent donors and the potential to get lots of money and accolades. Praised be Jesus Christ that I left that life and have found that kingdom by sitting down with a nineteen year old at Father Carr's Place 2B on Thanksgiving Day and praying a blessing with him for the family that he no longer has. That's where God calls us to be...to be with the Baptist, not with the sloppy self-indulgent bureaucrats like the Herod's of the world.
Yes, John the Baptist. Picture him in prison, shackled up, beaten down, bloodied, mocked and scourged. He's caught at the hands of Herod for being a rabble rouser, a crazy prophet whose austere life of locust, honey and nomadic tendencies threatened the ruler's pagan life of comfort and opulence. As Jesus asks us today, “What did you go out into the desert to see? ...someone wearing fine clothing, living in a royal palace?” No! Someone with these characteristics are seldom found in affluent circles, but found in, “the least of the kingdom of heaven.” It reminds me of where I used to look for these attributes...at fancy conferences all over the country with affluent donors and the potential to get lots of money and accolades. Praised be Jesus Christ that I left that life and have found that kingdom by sitting down with a nineteen year old at Father Carr's Place 2B on Thanksgiving Day and praying a blessing with him for the family that he no longer has. That's where God calls us to be...to be with the Baptist, not with the sloppy self-indulgent bureaucrats like the Herod's of the world.
St. John the Baptist is our protagonist this Advent. He is the one who we want to be with. He is the prophet who heralds the coming of the Christ. I have a lot of trouble with a particular line from today's Gospel. From prison, St. John the Baptist commands his disciples to go find Jesus and ask Him the question, “Are you the one who is to come, or should we look for another?” Why in the world would St. John ask this question? Just last week he was saying, “Prepare the way of the Lord! Repent and believe! I am not worthy to carry his sandals!” I mean he baptized Jesus, saw the Holy Spirit come down on Jesus, heard God talk to Jesus...heck he knew Jesus since childhood! They were cousins after all! So why would he ask this question, “Are you the one who is to come?”
Maybe the Baptist is more like us than what we would like to think! We see him in this state of desolation and maybe he is just like us in so far as he's wondering if all this suffering and sacrifice has been in vain. He's at the end of his strength and just needs to know if his life has been in worth it...that his cousin, Jesus, really is what he has preached him to be all these agonizing years. Perhaps John the Baptist is looking for a little assurance that his life has not been futile, that he can have joy in knowing he did the right thing in proclaiming the saving power of Christ. Is faith and belief enough to live by or could I have a little empirical evidence of Jesus' mission?
And aren't we all a little like this? We ask the same question in our own lives, “Jesus, are you the one who is to come? Because I'm not really sure. I've been beaten up, pushed around, and am just really exhausted from the heartache that this life has handed to me. I'm imprisoned by the Herod's of the world and I just don't know if I can endure much longer...are you coming this Christmas or is the only thing coming a huge credit card bill? Are you coming this Christmas or is the only thing coming the depression and loneliness of yet another holiday of broken relationships and hauntings of the death of a loved one? Will we allow Jesus to move into these voids of our hearts and the hurts of our soul? Or will we simply give up and sink back into disbelief and despair and allow yet another Christmas to pass without conversion, without going to confession and believing in the true presence of Christ in the Eucharist. Will we be the “Christers” of modern fast-paced life only attending Church on Christmas and Easter? Or will we go deeper with our Catholic faith and experience true authentic conversion allowing the Spirit to finally move into our lives. To be changed and to be blessed for not taking offense at the name of Jesus Christ?
Furthermore, we can share the characteristics of St. John the Baptist by living our lives in faith. John didn't have real evidence of Jesus' saving power while in prison, yet he believed. He was patient and like the farmer of our second reading waited, “for the precious fruit of the earth.” His heart was beaten, but his heart was held firm, “because the coming of the Lord [was] at hand.” He did not complain and [stood] before the gate of redemption. St. John is an example of hardship and patience. He just needed a little assurance today, a little joy on this Gaudate Sunday. Just like all of us.
The second part of the question resonates with us as well, “Should we look for another?” After we've been beaten down, we ask the same question don't we? Maybe I should just look for something else right now. Like the Green Bay City Council approving a Wiccan symbol on their city hall lawn! We have the nativity here and all, but secular culture is telling us to look for another religion so we'll allow a pagan new-age cult that denies Christ to be displayed on public property. We look for another savior when in our midst we deny the Savior that comes to us in the only real Truth that exists—Jesus Christ in the Eucharist! BODY, BLOOD, SOUL and DIVINITY! We look for another by patronizing Phillip Pullman's stealth campaign to subvert Christianity in The Golden Compass. We look for another by leaving the Catholic faith for the entertaining frenzy of non-denominational ecclesial communities who purposely attract lapse Catholics into their own flock, degrade our sacraments and teach that the belief of Jesus' true presense in the Eucharist is unbiblical. “Should we look for another?” No! We need not look to another answer! The answer is before us if we chose to believe!
There is no other! There is only Christ Jesus! He is the one who relays back to St. John and to us today, “the blind have regained their sight
the lame have walked
the lepers are cleansed
the deaf can hear
the dead have been raised
the poor have had the good news proclaimed to them!”
But we don't believe, we are still blind, we are still lame, we still carry the leprosy of our own sin, we are deaf to the teachings of the Catholic faith, we are dead and have not been raised. We don't proclaim the good news to the poor because we don't sincerely invest in their lives and all we do is put a couple bucks in the second collection for social concerns. Yes, we look for another because we haven't allowed the the one who is to come to enter into our hearts. We haven't headed the call of the Baptist!
Even if John the Baptist hadn't heard what Jesus was doing, his question implies that he would continue the heralding of Christ to the world...from prison and to the point of being beheaded. But he did get word that Jesus was indeed doing what He claimed he'd be doing! Have we heard the Word! Have we gotten an answer? Have we heard and experienced the saving power of Jesus Christ in our lives! Because if we haven't we may as well be dead. Life is meant to be lived, not to be something we just stumble and struggle through. If that's life, I don't want to live! Christ is coming to give us life! Jesus is the one who is to come! Jesus is the one who we should we look for and no other!
As Isaiah says, Jesus strengthens our hands when they are feeble. Jesus makes firm the knees that are weak. Jesus is the one who says to us whose hearts are frightened, “Be strong, fear not!” St. John the Baptist shouts to us in the confidence of faith and we with him in the belief that “Here is our God, He comes with vindication; with divine recompense...He comes to save us! Then and only then will our blind eyes be opened, our deaf ears be cleared, our lame legs will leap like a stag and our mute tongues will finally sing...even at Sunday Mass if I may add! These thing will come to pass in our life, if of course, we want to share those characteristics of St. John the Baptist. The choice is ours.
