Father Christopher Zugger

There are two particular Old Testament passages that reflect the ministry of Saint John the Baptist. One is from Malachi 3: 1

Behold, I send My messenger, And he will prepare the way before Me.

The second is from Isaiah 40:

 The voice of one crying in the wilderness:

“Prepare the way of the Lord; Make straight in the desert A highway for our God.

Every valley shall be exalted And every mountain and hill brought low;

The crooked places shall be made straight And the rough places smooth;

The glory of the Lord shall be revealed, And all flesh shall see it together;

For the mouth of the Lord has spoken.”

Both Scriptures make reference to the fact that before the coming of the Christ, God will send a messenger to prepare the way. John is the messenger. But he is more than that –  We see it laid out for us in what Zechariah has to say, who goes from being struck mute and apparently also deaf, to proclaiming the glory of God in his new baby son in the famous Benedictus that we still say daily in the divine office. Only after he acknowledges that the baby will indeed be called John, which means Graced by God, only then can he fulfill his role of being a prophet and foretell the future ministry of John.

John did not set up a new sect within Judaism, but rather, after he grew up, he left the hill country of Judea, the territory of the most devout Jews, the land of Jerusalem itself, and he went out into the desert. Jesus will do the same thing, and then Jesus would emerge from the desert to settle in Capernaum, the territory of Galilee. John’s time in the desert though, is different. He emerges from the wilderness, the land of wild animals but also the land where prophets would go to encounter God, and he would come into Israel 500 years after the last of those prophets and set the countryside on fire with his preaching. As the prophet of God, the last of the prophets, he truly came to pave the way for the Messiah. The desert then was home to the Essene Jews, who founded isolated monastic communities; it was home to Zealot rebels, who would follow different false Messiahs and launch violent rebellions. John doesn’t do either of these – he will call the people to radical conversion, and administer a ritual baptism of repentance and sorrow for one’s sins. This conversion is a conversion to prepare the people for the Lord, not just a ritual. John won’t get caught up in multiple ceremonies like the Essenes did, he won’t be emphasizing animal sacrifices like the priests, or fulfilling the 631 commandments of the law like the Pharisees.

John’s call is to prepare hearts, to make people listen to the essence of the Law – God is alive, God has not forgotten the Jews, God is sending fire upon the earth through His Holy Spirit, and that fire will be given by Christ.

This feast falls at mid-summer, just when the days begin to shorten. There are two reasons for this: firstly and mostly directly, it is clear from the Gospels that St John was born six months before the Savior (Luke 1:26), and so his Nativity falls six months before that of the Savior; secondly, the Nativity of the Savior was appointed at a time when the days begin to lengthen as a sign that He is the Light of the world, the Baptist’s Nativity is kept as the days shorten as a reminder of his own words: “He must increase, but I must decrease.” He comes to do God’s will, to move hearts, to make people think.

The same is true for any Catholic Christian today. We are entrusted with the gospel message of Jesus, with the fullness of revelation given to His Church. The great saints did not achieve holiness by accumulating power or fame – they did their job, they grew in the power of the Holy Spirit through conversion, and they stepped aside to let God work in their own hearts and the hearts of people around them.

When Saint Therese of Lisieux died, some of the nuns in her monastery said, What will we write about her? She died so young and never did anything. Then they read her magnificent journal, what we call The Story of A Soul, and their hearts were set on fire. Saint Anthony of Padua worked in the kitchen, happily scrubbing the pots, until he was asked to give a sermon on a feast day with no time to prepare, and everyone in the church was transformed by the power of his words. Saint Basil the Great was so close to God that Saint Ephrem said he saw the Holy Spirit speaking in his ear while he preached.

All of the saints and blesseds did what God asked of them, wrote what they were inspired to write, and stepped aside to let the Spirit go to work. The same is true for us – while we work at living out our salvation in fear and trembling as Saint Paul says, we have to do what we are each called to do in our particular state of life, and do it well, for the glory of God, and do it so that others will feel God’s love. We study well, we play the sport well, we love our spouse and our children and our parents, we do our work as a civilian or a soldier or a priest or nun and do it well, for the glory of God and out of love for God.

John comes into the world and in the very womb of his mother worshipped Jesus at the moment of the Visitation, when Mary met Saint Elizabeth, and spent his entire life worshipping and serving God. We can do the same, out of true love of God, if we listen to the Spirit and respond to the Spirit. Let us ask him for this grace, the grace to listen to the Lord and to be converted by that Holy Spirit, to go forward in love and mercy and in God’s power, not my power.