PRAISED BE Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!
When the angel spoke to Zechariah
about his son John, he said “You will have joy and gladness and many will
rejoice at his birth.” And so, in today’s gospel, those words were fulfilled.
At the birth of John, many neighbors and relatives heard that the Lord had
shown great mercy towards Elizabeth, and they rejoiced with her. In spite of
her old age, Elizabeth gave birth to him. And so, the newborn child was indeed
a sign of mercy…that kind of sign that gives joy. When the mouth of Zechariah
was opened and his tongue was freed, all the more did the people wonder about
this child: “What will this child be, for surely the hand of the Lord was with
him?”
What will this child be? The
prophet Malachi responds: “Thus says the Lord, ‘Lo, I am sending my messenger
to prepare the way before me…” When John the Baptist was confronted by the
priests who asked him “who are you?”, John replied by quoting the prophet
Isaiah: “I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness, ‘make straight the
way of the Lord.’” Pope Francis said that John is the voice, but "it is a
voice without the Word, because the Word is not him, it is an Other." Here
then is the mystery of John: "He never takes over the Word," John
"is the one who indicates, who marks". The "meaning of John's
life - he added - is to indicate another." And John really "was the
man of light, he brought light, but it was not his own light, it was a
reflected light." John is "like a moon" and when Jesus began to
preach, the light of John "began to decline, to set". "Voice not
Word - the Pope said - light, but not his own" "John seems to be
nothing. That is John’s vocation: he negates himself. And when we contemplate
the life of this man, so great, so powerful - all believed that he was the
Messiah - when we contemplate this life, how it is nullified to the point of
the darkness of a prison, we behold a great mystery. We do not know what John’s
last days were like. We do not know. We only know that he was killed, his head
was put on a platter, as a great gift from a dancer to an adulteress. I don’t
think you can lower yourself much more than this, negate yourself much more.
That was the end that John met".
And here we see the greatness of
this child. He will be great because he negates himself; he keeps pointing to
the one who comes after him as someone so great that he himself is not worthy
to untie his sandal straps. It is this kind of greatness that the Church must
aspire for. The Church is a Church of the poor, a Church that always
diminishes. Francis continues: "The Church must hear the Word of Jesus and
raise her voice, proclaim it boldly. 'That' - he said - 'is the Church without
ideologies, without a life of its own: the Church which is the mysterium lunae which has light from her
Bridegroom and diminish herself so that He may grow.'
"This is the model that John offers us today, for us and for the
Church.” Imitating John, we must be “a Church that is always at the service of
the Word, a Church that never takes anything for herself. Today in prayer we
asked for the grace of joy, we asked the Lord to cheer this Church in her
service to the Word, to be the voice of this Word, preach this Word. We ask for
the grace, the dignity of John, with no ideas of our own, without a Gospel
taken as property, only one Church that indicates the Word, and this even to
martyrdom.“
Jesus, I trust in you! O Mary
conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee!
