Tag Archives: John the Baptist

2nd Sunday of Advent: The Merciful Way of the Lord

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To listen to today’s homily, please select the audio file below:

Last year, CNN ran a series on television called Finding Jesus: Faith, Fact, Forgery. One of the segments was about John the Baptist. I’m afraid I didn’t like John as he was portrayed. He shouted a lot about the coming judgment. There was something scary and unstable about him and I thought to myself: “I don’t know if I would follow this man.”

In the CNN presentation scholars periodically commented on John and his relationship with Jesus. They seemed to say that Jesus was a copy of John, that he got everything from John; he learned everything from John. That made me wonder if I would follow Jesus, if that was the way he was.

I find the scriptures offer a more reliable picture of John and Jesus. Luke’s gospel sets the stage for John’s appearance. “In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar,
when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea,
and Herod was tetrarch of Galilee,
and his brother Philip tetrarch of the region
of Ituraea and Trachonitis,
and Lysanias was tetrarch of Abilene,
during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas,
the word of God came to John the son of Zechariah in the desert.”

“In the desert.” John preached “in the desert,” in the Jordan valley where pilgrims from northern Israel traveled on their way up to Jerusalem. They’ve taken the time off to go up to the temple and then go back home to their work and life as before. They’ve been walking on rough roads in hot days. They’re stopping to get some water before walking the last 15 miles up to the holy city.

John approaches them. “Something is happening, something big is going on. Something that the prophets have promised. We have to get ready for it. God is ready to do something. Someone is coming. ‘Prepare the way of the Lord.’ God is coming to judge us.”

Yes, there’s an urgency about John, but he’s not insane. He sees there’s something great ready to happen. God, the judge of all is coming. Someone is coming to bring God’s judgment.

When Jesus comes, John is certainly not his teacher. He recognizes Jesus and baptizes him in the Jordan. But Jesus is not a copy of John. Later, from he’s in prison, John sends disciples to Jesus who ask “Are you he who is to come, or shall we look for another.” Jesus said to them in reply, “Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind regain their sight, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have the good news proclaimed to them. And blessed is the one who takes no offense at me.” (Matthew 11, 5-6)

Jesus calls himself the face of God’s mercy, the hand of God’s mercy, the gift of God’s mercy. John was waiting for God who is judge, but Jesus reveals God who is kind and merciful.

On March 13, 2015, Pope Francis called for a Holy Year of Mercy, a year to live “in the light of the Lord’s words: ‘Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.’ (Luke 6, 36) The year begins this week, December 8th, the Feast of the Immaculate Conception and ends on November 20, 2016, “the Sunday dedicated to Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe–and the living face of the Father’s mercy.”

CNN and John the Baptist

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CNN
Last night I watched the second of the CNN series entitled Finding Jesus: Faith. Fact. Forgery, on Sunday evenings during lent. This segment concentrated on John the Baptist. It was partially a dramatization of John’s life, his baptism of Jesus and his own death at the hands of Herod, Salome and her daughter. Periodically scriptural scholars were introduced to comment on John and Jesus. Also interspersed through the segment were reports on the search for the relics of John.

I’m afraid I didn’t like John too much as he was portrayed, fiercely striding through the desert shouting out warnings of a coming judgment. A scary, unstable figure, he seemed to me. Why would anyone want to follow him and let him dunk you in water? The scholarly experts on the program in their comments seemed to be talking about someone else, not the figure portrayed in the series. Were they ever introduced to the dramatic side of the production they were part of, I wonder?

John was the mentor of Jesus according to the dramatization, which makes me wonder how Jesus will be portrayed in the series’ later segments. Will Jesus be another John? I hope not.

John taught Jesus the Lord’s Prayer, the series’ narrator claimed, and Jesus taught it to his disciples in turn. One of the scholarly experts, a young woman who teaches at Notre Dame University, when asked later on her Facebook page what she thought about that, said she didn’t agree with the interpretation. Too bad she didn’t say that on the program itself. What are scholars for if not to keep things in perspective?

Speaking of scholarly perspective, here’s a quote about John the Baptist from Rudolf Schnackenberg, a good New Testament scholar. Obviously he doesn’t see John as the mentor of Jesus.

“When John speaks of the One who is to come, he is thinking of an executor of divine judgment, not so much of him through whom God’s mercy and love are made visible. He expects the kingdom of God to arrive in a storm of violence, in the immediate future, with the Messiah’s first appearance. This vision gives to his summons to conversion its urgent, compelling tone, increased further by the appearance of renunciation and flight from the world which he presents in his own person. From what we know of his preaching, he seems transfixed by the vision of the judgment and finds nothing to say about the salvation the Messiah will bring.” ( Rudolf Schnackenberg Christian Existence in the New Testament, Volume 1, University of Notre Dame 1968, p 39)

3rd Sunday of Advent: Who are You?

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To listen to the audio of today’s homily, please select play on the audio bar below:

According to today’s gospel, Jewish officials and Pharisees from Jerusalem sent representatives to John the Baptist as he was baptizing in the Jordan River near Jericho asking “Who are you?” “Are you the Messiah, Elijah, the Prophet?” “Why are you baptizing?”

John the Baptist is an interesting figure in the gospels. He’s a strong figure who knew who he was and who he was not and wasn’t afraid to be the person God wanted him to be. “I’m not the Messiah, or Elijah, or the Prophet,” John answers. “I am the voice crying out in the desert, ‘Prepare the way of the Lord. ’”

John knew who he was. He could have said he was the son of Zechariah and Elizabeth, the cousin of Mary, the mother of Jesus. Zechariah, John’s father, was a priest in the temple of Jerusalem who surely expected his son to follow him as a priest. That was an important religious role in Judaism which was handed down from father to son.

But John chose a different course. God led him another way. He didn’t follow his father into the temple as a priest. We don’t know when, but John went down to the Jordan Valley where the road ascended to Jerusalem, and preached and baptized the crowds going up to Jerusalem to the temple of the Lord. The clothes he wore, his style of life set him apart from everyone else.

John doesn’t seem to care how he looked or what people thought of him. He certainly didn’t choose an easy place to be, a desert place. There’s a strength and determination in John that later Jesus himself praised.

John was what God called him to be, and he wasn’t afraid to speak the truth. He had a voice for God, even if he sounds at times like a drill sergeant getting people ready for the battle of the last days. He said unpopular things to powerful people and faced the consequences. Herod Antipas, who ruled Galilee and Perea, arrested him and put him to death.

Jesus admired John the Baptist for being who he was.

It’s so important to be who we are and who God calls us to be, isn’t it? I suppose that’s one of the graces of our Advent season. It reminds us that Jesus Christ came into this world for a reason, but we are reminded too that we came into this world for a reason. We have our unique gifts and should recognize them. We have been given a voice to speak as God would have us speak, and we should use it.

Who are you? Why are you doing the things you’re doing? Those are wonderful questions. “Who am I? And what am I doing with my life?”

Advent: The Season of Joy

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NbMImf0zo7s&feature=em-upload_owner%5B/embed%5D

Thursday, 4th Week of Lent

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Lent 1
READINGS
Different witnesses take the stand in John’s gospel today (John 5,31-47) and we listen to them testify for Jesus. They counter the false witnesses brought forth when Jesus stands before Caiphas, the high priest.

John the Baptist, “a burning and shining lamp,” speaks for him. The miracles and works of healing Jesus performed speak for him. His heavenly Father, who draws to his Son those unhindered by pride, speaks for him. Then, the scriptures, long searched by the Jews for the way to eternal life, “testify on my behalf.”

These are the ways faith in Jesus comes to us even now. How faithfully do we accept them? The church, like John the Baptist, points Jesus Christ out to us; are we guided by its light? His works and words and miracles are proclaimed in the scriptures; do we search into them? Our heavenly Father draws us to his Son; do we pray for faith and humility to accept his grace?

We’re reminded by scholars that “the Jews” spoken of in these passages of John’s gospel are not the whole Jewish nation but those who opposed Jesus because pride and position turned them against him. Ever since, people still oppose him. In Lent, the voice of the Father says once more: “Listen to him.”

Mystics like Paul of the Cross knew that faith is a gift of God; we don’t get it by reason alone. He recommended prayer, steady prayer, as a means to nourish and strengthen faith. “Every time your soul recollects itself in God, in the inner temple of your soul, it is born anew to a new life of love in the Divine Word Jesus Christ. I pray the Lord to help you understand and practice what I am teaching. In this recollection in the flame of holy love all the remains of sin are destroyed and the soul is renewed in God.”(2041)

O God,
Giver of all gifts,
Strengthen my faith.

Evil Doesn’t Have Its Way

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Beheading JohnToday we read a long narrative from Mark’s Gospel (Chapter 6) describing the death of John the Baptist at the hands of Herod Antipas. It’s been called a “Passion Account before the Passion of Jesus.”

Herod Antipas, ruler of Galilee, had his capitol in Tiberias a short distance from Capernaum where much of Jesus’ ministry took place. He certainly knew what Jesus was doing and what people were saying about him. Some said he was Elijah, or a prophet. But what caught Herod’s attention especially was talk that Jesus was John the Baptist raised from the dead.

Herod had arrested John and imprisoned him, probably in his fortress at Macherius near the Dead Sea. Then, influenced by his wife Herodias, who resented John’s criticism of their marriage– which violated Jewish law– Herod had John put to death.

The story told in great detail in Mark’s Gospel is an example of evil, oppressive power at its worst. Herodias’ daughter Salome dances at one of Herod’s bloated banquets and elicits his promise to do anything she asks for. “What shall I ask?” Salome asks her mother. “The head of John the Baptist,” is her answer.

Later in Mark’s gospel, Jesus identifies John the Baptist with Elijah. “I tell you that Elijah has come and they did to him whatever they pleased, as it is written of him.” (Mark 9, 13) Like Jesus, John suffers and is treated with contempt.

The story of John’s beheading by Herod prepares Mark’s readers for the story of the Passion of Jesus. Both stories were meant to help Mark’s first audience, Roman Christians, face the sudden, absurd persecution inflicted on them by the Emperor Nero in the mid 60s. Like Herod, Nero seemed supremely powerful. They could not see it yet, but evil would not have its way. The Son of Man would rise from the dead and be glorified. So would they.

That’s the lesson we should take from this story too. Evil doesn’t have its way.

To Believe Is To Live

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According to Luke’s gospel, you live when you believe and faith always sends you on a mission.

After the angel announces the coming of Jesus in Nazareth and then leaves her, Mary’s not alone. The Spirit remains with her, and the Word of God dwells in her womb. Unlike Zechariah struck dumb, Mary’s faith grows stronger. She does not lapse into silent darkness but seeks light.

She sets out “in haste” for the hill country of Judea to visit Elizabeth, the wife of Zechariah, who also was with child. It’s not an ordinary visit. She hurries on because she’s filled with a sense of her mission. She hurries to Judea, where her relatives serve in the temple of God.One woman will speak to another.Visitation

“Blessed are you who believed,” Elizabeth says to Mary.

“You too, my people, are blessed,” comments St. Ambrose, “ you who have heard and who believe. Every soul that believes — that soul both conceives and gives birth to the Word of God and recognizes his works.

“Let the soul of Mary be in each one of you, to proclaim the greatness of the Lord. Let the spirit of Mary be in each one of you, to rejoice in God. According to the flesh only one woman can be the mother of Christ but in the world of faith Christ is the fruit of all of us.”

Approaching Christmas we ask that our souls be like the soul of Mary.”Lord,grant that enlightened by the Holy Spirit and encouraged by the example of the Blessed Virgin Mary, our hearts may always seek out and treasure the things that are yours.”

Readings here.  Homily here.

The Road Through the Wilderness

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Sometimes the best view you get of the world is from above. Here’s a picture taken from a plane in the 1930s or so of the road up to Jerusalem from Jericho and the Jordan Valley. I add another from the ground of the road outside Jericho from more recent times.


 Jericho Rd 3

Jericho road modern

 

Both pictures tell us the road to Jerusalem is a climbing, winding road. It wasn’t easy to take when prophets like Isaiah and John the Baptist knew it. Of course today it’s easily managed by car or bus. But in those days, walking or on a donkey, you didn’t always know what to expect when you went through deserts and mountains and some fertile areas where crops were grown.

Isaiah and John the Baptist knew this road very well and they used it to explain our way to God. First, it’s an image that says life will never be easy.  On that road you’re going to get hungry, tired, even wonder whether you will make it or not. Unexpected things can happen: you may get robbed like the man did in the parable of the Good Samaritan. That happened on the road up from Jericho to Jerusalem, remember. You might be blind, like the two blind men from Jericho who couldn’t find their way.

But if you want to get to Jerusalem and enter the house of God, you have to take that road. Jesus took it when he went up to the Holy City. He began in the wilderness.

The message of Isaiah and John the Baptist, so beautifully expressed in our first reading for today (Isaiah 35,1-10), is that God will bring us there.

3rd Sunday of Advent

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Readings are here.

Knowing who you are is one of the most important tasks we have in this life.

Here’s a homily on John the Baptist  by St. Augustine. He had to distinguish himself from Jesus, the Messiah.

John is the voice, but the Lord is the Word who was in the beginning. John is the voice that lasts for a time; from the beginning Christ is the Word who lives for ever…

Because it is hard to distinguish word from voice, even John himself was thought to be the Christ. The voice was thought to be the word. But the voice acknowledged what it was, anxious not to give offence to the word.

I am not the Christ, he said, nor Elijah, nor the prophet. And the question came: Who are you, then? He replied: I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness: Prepare the way for the Lord.

The voice of one crying in the wilderness is the voice of one breaking the silence. Prepare the way for the Lord, he says, as though he were saying: “I speak out in order to lead him into your hearts, but he does not choose to come where I lead him unless you prepare the way for him.”

What does prepare the way mean, if not “pray well”? What does prepare the way mean, if not “be humble in your thoughts”? We should take our lesson from John the Baptist. He is thought to be the Christ; he declares he is not what they think. He does not take advantage of their mistake to further his own glory.

If he had said, “I am the Christ,” you can imagine how readily he would have been believed, since they believed he was the Christ even before he spoke. But he did not say it; he acknowledged what he was. He pointed out clearly who he was; he humbled himself.

He saw where his salvation lay. He understood that he was a lamp, and his fear was that it might be blown out by the wind of pride.

2nd Sunday of Advent

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We’re reading from the Gospel of Luke today. He plays a major role in the season of Advent. All this year, in fact, we’ll be reading from Luke’s Gospel on Sundays.

When you read Luke, notice especially his thrust towards the world beyond Judaism. Though he repeats most of the stories about Jesus found in the gospels of Mark and Matthew, Luke emphasizes the universal message of Jesus. His gospel is meant for everybody.

In Luke’s gospel, for example, old Simeon in the temple predicts the Child will be a “light of revelation to the gentiles.” ( Luke 2, 32) “All flesh shall see the salvation of our God,” John the Baptist says to today’s gospel. (Luke 3,6) Outsiders like Namaan the Syrian and the widow of Zareptha will accept his gospel rather than his neighbors, Jesus says in the synagogue at Nazareth. (Luke 4,17 ff) After his resurrection Jesus tells his disciples “A message of repentance and forgiveness would be preached to all nations.” (Luke 24,47)

Luke further emphasizes that the Christian message is good for this world. It brings life. The Acts of the Apostles, Luke’s sequel to his gospel, tells of the beneficial spread of the gospel from Jerusalem to Rome, “the ends of the earth.”

In today’s gospel for the 2nd Sunday of Advent you can see the evangelist’s universal thrust. He introduces John the Baptist by a list of impressive world leaders:  Tiberius Caesar, Pontius Pilate, Herod Antipas and Philip, the sons of Herod the Great, and the Jewish priests Anna and Caiaphas– all significant figures, and most strong opponents of Jesus.

They represent the power structure of the day, but Luke is not interested in their stories. He would have us recognize the real power in this world: Jesus and John.

How insignificant John the Baptist seems compared to an emperor and Roman governor, other powerful rulers and priests. Unkempt in appearance and in ragged clothes, John looks like a nobody as he preaches to travelers near the Jordan River, on the road to Jerusalem. What power does he have? Luke answers simply, “The word of God came to John the son of Zechariah in the desert.” The word of God empowered him.

The gospels invite us to see ourselves and our world in the stories they tell. What can we see in this gospel?

Does Luke remind us that Jesus is more important than anyone else in this world, even ourselves? Keep before your eyes the One who is far more important, far more wise, far better than any celebrity or anyone famous. Look for the One who in the manger and on a cross. God is present and powerful there.

We are meant to bring our gifts to this world. Our time and place wait for the goodness of the gospel, and who will bring it but us?  I mentioned earlier that Luke’s gospel says Jesus’ message is meant for everybody. Do we really believe that, or are we losing our belief that Jesus Christ belongs in everyone’s life?

John the Baptist in the desert seems to have nothing. But he has the word of God, a word he preached and lived.  Isn’t that enough?