“I will make you a light to the nations”
Saturday, June 24, 2023: NATIVITY OF JOHN THE BAPTIST (Solemnity)
by Fr. David M. Knight
View readings for today: https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/
LECTIONARY 587 (Is 49: 1-6; Ps 139: 1-3, 13-14, 14-15; Acts 13: 22-26; Lk 1: 57-66, 80) Inventory: How do you think God feels about you? Does he admire you? Have plans to use you for his work? Would it be prideful to think he intends to do great things through you? Or is that just a silly thought? Input: The readings talk about three people God obviously admired: Isaiah, David and John the Baptizer. Sure, what God admired in them was his own work, but he praises the end products. And the end products were what they were — just as we are what we are, although it is all God’s gift. God calls Isaiah a “sharp-edged sword,” a “polished arrow, “my servant, through whom I show my glory.” The Responsorial, Psalm 139, if not written by David, was written “of David” as reflecting his thought: “O LORD, you have probed me and you know me. You know when I sit and when I stand; you understand my thoughts from afar.... Truly you have formed my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I give you thanks that I am fearfully, wonderfully made....” And according to Paul, God called David “a man after my own heart who will fulfill my every wish.” 1 Jesus’ expressed his admiration for John in glowing praise: “What did you go out into the wilderness to look at? A reed shaken by the wind? ...Someone dressed in soft robes? ...A prophet? Yes, I tell you, and more than a prophet.... Truly I tell you, among those born of women no one has arisen greater than John the Baptizer.” Then he adds the puzzling words: “Yet the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.” This means anyone who has received “the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ.” So, what does all this tell us of ourselves? Does God admire us? Have plans to use us for his work? To do great things? Is it pride, or just stupidity, to think he does? “I am made glorious” In Isaiah 49:1-6, Isaiah has his doubts, He says, “I thought I had toiled in vain... uselessly spent my strength.” but God says, “I will make you a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth.” Isaiah had to believe: “My God is now my strength! I am made glorious in the sight of the Lord.” Jesus says of us, his disciples, all who are enlightened by his words: “You are the light of the world.... Let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.” Does that make us like Isaiah or not? Do we just need to have faith and believe it? Is that crazy, or is it just the “Gospel,” the “Good News” that we may have never really taken seriously? Acts 13:22-26: We may be using as our excuse for not proclaiming the Good News as enthusiastically as John the Baptizer that we are not that holy. We are not saints. We are pretty mediocre Christians. We sin a lot. No one we live and work with would take us seriously if we said anything about Jesus. Who are we to talk? Do you know what David was really like? Do you know whom God called “a man after my own heart who will fulfill my every wish”? Besides being first a bandit guerilla raider and then a ruthless king who slaughtered his enemies, David was a rapist and a murderer. He raped the wife of a faithful officer, then had the officer killed in a cover-up. Have you ever done anything as low, as evil, as contemptible as that? Read about it in 2 Samuel, chapter eleven. Then ask how God could call David “a man after my own heart who will fulfill my every wish.” How do you think Bathsheba, the woman he raped, and whose husband he murdered, would have felt, hearing God say that? Let’s admit it: we have no idea at all of God’s love, and of how forgiving he is. Psalm 103 says, “For as the heavens are high above the earth, so great is his steadfast love toward those who fear him.” And God himself told us in Isaiah 55:8-9: “My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways.... For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.” But it takes something like God’s dealings with David to bring it home to us. Do you know the answer to all this? Paul gives it in the reading from Acts. He said of David: “God brought forth from this man’s descendants Jesus, a Savior for Israel.” Jesus is the Savior, and only Jesus. Jesus is the Light of the world, and only Jesus. It is only in and through Jesus Christ that God’s salvation “reaches to the ends of the earth.” But by Baptism we have “become Christ.” Jesus enlightens and saves the world in and through us who are his body on earth. Jesus is the “man after God’s own heart who will fulfill his every wish.” But he does it with us and in us and through us. That is the mystery of Christianity. In a nutshell, what Paul said he preached was “The riches of the glory of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory” (Colossians 1:27). Think about that. Then go back and read the Inventory questions again. Initiative: Accept the truth: God has called and sent you. Get going. 1 Paul’s source about David was 1 Samuel 13:14; Psalm 89:20; Isaiah 44:28.
Reflections brought to you by the Immersed in Christ Ministry
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