3rd
SUNDAY OF ADVENT
Thessalonians
5:16-24
John 1: 6.8, 19-28
“I am the voice of one crying out in the desert
’Make straight the way of the Lord.’”
Last Sunday, we began meditating on the message of
John the Baptist he exhorts us to prepare for the big event of Advent. Today,
we are given an added opportunity to meditate much deeper on his person. Christ
himself would call John as the greatest man on earth ever born of a woman. No
doubt, the Lord has all the reasons to give
this enormous merit to the person of the Baptist.
Today’s gospel is taken from the version of John
the evangelist. And among others, our
Johanine gospel gives us three best qualities and virtues that describe the
person of John the Baptist: fidelity, honesty and humility.
1. “A man named John was sent by God. He came
to bear witness, to testify to the light, so that all might believe through
him.” The evangelist calls the Baptist a witness, one who comes to
testify. To be a witness or to give testimony to the truth can be of two ways
or levels. First, one can give witness or make testimonies through the use words,
as for instance, by recounting events, by narrating or relating facts, by
explaining things. Here, eloquence plays its role. Second, one can give witness
to a particular truth not so much by the word of mouth,
but by deeds, by acts, by way of life. Per experience, one becomes credible as
a witness when he puts into his life what he declares by his mouth. By becoming
a witness in word and example, one shows fidelity to the truth he professes.
And they who see him will surely believe in him. It is here that fidelity and
credibility meet, for after all, they are
just two words with one root: faith.
John the Baptist is undoubtedly a strong witness
to his own message because of his fidelity to it. Powerful in his exhortations
and uncompromising in his pronouncements, John is able to convince his hearers
because of the most exemplary life that he leads. While preaching the message
of repentance, he himself leads a most austere life in the desert, in the
wilderness, in solitude where his only protection from heat and cold is the
camel's hair, and his only solution to hunger and thirst are locusts and wild
honey. In short, the life of John bespeaks of that message, which he preaches.
Thus, martyrdom is that painful thing that John always expects to happen to
him. For after all, to be a martyr is the ultimate meaning of being a witness.
As the forerunner of Christ's gospel of
liberation, John the Baptist proves himself to be the "first recipient”
of Christ’s redemptive message. We can vividly see the effects of Christ's
liberation in him. John is a liberated person. He is selfless yet courageous.
He is detached yet determined. He is austere yet generous: All these and others
are a concrete proof that John in person is a living image of that kind of life
inspired by the spirit of the Beatitudes.
2. "John recognized
the truth and did not deny It.” Another exemplary quality or virtue John has is honesty. In
today's Johanine version of the gospel, we are told of the implicit anxiety of
the Jews know who John really is. So, not ordinary liaisons are sent but
priests and Levites just to ask John whether he is the Messiah, or Elijah, or
the Prophet These are critical questions which,
humanly speaking, would affect not only the career of John but of Jesus as
well.
We must remember that by the
time Christ came, John was already at the height of his popularity. Had he made
a mischievous curb and told the people that he was the messiah, the course of
events would have surely turned out differently. But as we hear in the gospel,
John's answer is clear and definite: "l am not the Messiah.”
We must also remember that the Jews were waiting,
longing and expecting for Elijah to come back.
The centuries-old expectation has in fact become a part of the Jewish religious
tradition that the Elijah who was snatched to heaven with his chariot would one
day come back to them. Thus, it is .no
wonder that the question was explicit: "Then who are you? Elijah?
Here we see that the time has become so ripe and the chance was right before
him had John maliciously thought of grabbing it. A simple "yes"
would suffice. After all, the Jews were perhaps already expecting an expecting
an affirmative answer. But John's honest answer was: "l am not.”
Or again, we must remember that John was accepted
as a prophet, for indeed he was. In fact, he was a great prophet and his
greatness consisted in being the bridge that united the two great
Testaments: Old and New. By his singular role in our salvation history,
we can safely propose that John was the last prophet of the Old Testament and
the first prophet of the New Testament. Thus, John could have played safe by
simply being ambiguous Anyway, he was indeed a prophet, and a great prophet at
that. But no. Although he knew he was a prophet, he was also aware that
he was not the prophet. So, John's honest answer was: “No.”
By John's honesty, we can see and say once more
how liberated he is. Indeed, the truth has
set him free!
3. The last but never the least quality of John is
his humility. John knew his own limits and never went beyond them: He was
always aware that he was only a voice and was not the "real
one." And John was not only honest and faithful; he was so humble. He
stuck to who he was and what his role would simply be: a voice tasked only to
prepare the way. It was humble enough to take a very tow profile even at his
immense and unstoppable popularity. He felt himself unworthy even to untie the
strap of the Messiah's sandals.
John’s humility is finally tested when at last the
great encounter happened. When Jesus came to John to be baptized, John felt
honestly uncomfortable. He even tried to stop the Lord with his humble protest:
“I need to be baptized by you, and yet you come to me!” (Mt 3:14) Yet,
when Jesus insisted to do justice to God's plan,
the same humility of John would move him to do the will of God unreservedly and
joyfully.
This is virtue that would characterize the person
of John. And he proved consistent until the end. Thus, when the hour finally
came for him to fade away, he would only say
with pride and joy: "He must increase while I must decrease" (Jn 3:30).