Homily for Vigil of Birth of St. John the Baptist

Homily for the Vigil of
the Birth of St. John the Baptist

June 23, 2018

Jer 1: 4-10
Luke 1: 5-17
Nativity, Washington, D.C.                           

“He will turn many of the children of Israel to the Lord their God” (Luke 1: 16).

We’ve interrupted our regularly scheduled programming—the Sundays of Ordinary Time—to bring you a special broadcast, the solemnity of the Birth of St. John the Baptist.  In some places, like the province of Quebec and Don Bosco’s city of Turin, it’s a major civic holiday, as well.  In many traditionally Catholic places, they may no longer actually be religious—Quebec, e.g.—but they still celebrate their patron saints.  Perhaps John the Baptist needs to work a little harder now “to turn the hearts [of] the disobedient to the understanding of the righteous, to prepare a people fit for the Lord” (Luke 1:17).

Naming John the Baptist (Fra Angelico)

John was not a Baptist, nor is he the patron saint of the Baptists.  He’s called the last of the prophets of the O.T., and he could also be called the first prophet of the N.T., a Christian prophet.  Certainly he was a prophet, “and more than a prophet,” according to Jesus himself (Matt 11:9); and, also according to Jesus, a very great man:  “among those born of women there has been none greater than John the Baptist” (Matt 11:11).

That helps us understand why John is one of only two saints whose earthly births we celebrate in the church calendar; the other is the Virgin Mary, whose birthday we recognize on Sept. 8, nine months after her immaculate conception.  For all other saints, the rule is to celebrate the day of their heavenly birth, the day they passed from this life into eternal life.  We have celebrations of those days, also, for John and our Blessed Mother.  John’s entrance into the earthly history of salvation, like Mary’s, tho in quite different manner, marks the transition from O.T. to New.

So important is John the Baptist that the feast of his birth is ranked a solemnity, like the feasts of St. Joseph and Sts. Peter and Paul, and the major feasts of our Lady. Like some of those feasts, it supplants the regular Sunday celebration.  Like Christmas and Pentecost, it even has separate Mass texts and readings for the vigil Mass.

Our readings for this feast emphasize the prophetic role of John the Baptist.  Jeremiah recalls his prophetic role and how God called him to this task from the womb.  The Church has applied this Scripture to the prophetic calling of John the Baptist, as we heard in our gospel reading.  For it was the mission of John the Baptist to prepare Israel for the approach of her Savior.  The preaching of the apostles in the 1st years after the Lord’s ascension highlighted John’s mission:  “John heralded [Jesus’] coming by proclaiming a baptism of repentance to all the people of Israel…,” St. Paul said.  John “would say, ‘One is coming after me….’”

John’s role was to raise the people’s awareness of their sins, of their need for a renewed relationship with God, and to get them ready for the one who would establish that new relationship with God.  By all accounts John preached fire and brimstone—see Matthew 3 or Luke 3—but not without hope; for his symbolic baptism, while not washing away sins like Christian Baptism, represented that new relationship with God to which repentant sinners were committing themselves.  People came to John by the hundreds, maybe the thousands; unfortunately, there were no ushers there with their clickers making a parish sacramental report.  But people came from all over because John helped them see the truth about themselves and also because he helped them find God.  John did what all good preachers have done thru the ages:  Anthony of Padua, Jonathan Edwards, Billy Graham, John Paul II.

We, too, want to find God.  We, too, want to be right with God:  to have our hearts turned from disobedience to the understanding of the righteous, to be made people fit for the Lord.  A right relationship with God has to begin in the same way that John the Baptist preached:  with the admission in our own hearts that we’ve sinned, that our relationships with God and with God’s children are in disrepair.  It’s like a 12-step program:  you start with your admission of disorder in your life and your need for help in re-ordering your life and your relationships.

One of the major reasons for the disorder and chaos in Western societies today, like the U.S., is that we don’t want to admit that some attitudes and actions are wrong, are disordered in terms of natural law, are sinful.  In too many cases, in fact, we celebrate evil and call it good.  Killing the innocent, e.g., thru abortion, euthanasia, or assisted suicide, can never be right or virtuous.  Same-sex relationships can never be right or virtuous.  Conceiving children like they’re manufactured products (IVF or, now, 3-parent babies) can never be right or virtuous.  Rejecting people from a different continent or of a different religion, or because they’re handicapped or not the same color or speak a different language is always an offense against the God who created those people in his image.

John the Baptist’s program, his call to repent and turn to the Lord, isn’t a program only for hardened sinners or people who’ve rather neglected God for years while enjoying the party scene, relentlessly pursuing business success, or messing up their family lives.  We all have to refocus our lives regularly—check our GPS and see whether we’re still on course toward the Lord our God.  Have we made lying, cheating our employer, pornography, tearing down someone’s reputation a regular part of our lives?  Are we responsible stewards of God’s created world?  Do we vote and take part in the life of our community?  We Catholics have the wonderful sacrament of Reconciliation to help us straighten out and get back on track; and, besides, to be freshly outfitted with the gear we need—God’s grace—to move on with our journey.

The Preaching of John the Baptist (Pieter Bruegel the Elder)

That call to repentance is one message for today from John the Baptist.  The other message we might take from the feast is John’s role:  constantly pointing to “one coming after me,” one greater than himself, viz., Jesus.  He “heralded Jesus’ coming” (Acts 13: 24).  John’s life and especially his preaching pointed to Jesus, the one who would baptize people with fire and the Holy Spirit.  His death pointed to the truth of God’s law, to the holiness of marriage and family.  So must we be heralds whose words and deeds point to Christ and announce his presence to the world.  We are the images of Christ that people see, the heralds they hear, day in and day out.  They won’t meet Jesus in person till they get to the pearly gates.  Till then, they have just us.  So, may we always let our words, and above all our actions, point others toward truth, goodness, holiness, toward our Lord Jesus, who lives and reigns forever and ever.