24th JUNE. WEDNESDAY. NATIVITY OF SAINT JOHN THE BAPTIST

1.Isaiah 49:1-6

2.Acts 13:22-26

3.Luke 1:57-66,80

REFLECTIONS AND MEDITATIONS

Today in a very special way our mother church is inviting us to celebrate together the solemnity of Saint John the Baptist. The meaning of his name, in Hebrew “Yeho-hanan,” means the Lord is gracious.” As St. Luke the evangelists underline in the infancy narratives, the birth of John the Baptist did not only bring forth God’s great favour to the childless couple, Zachariah and Elizabeth, but to the whole of humanity. Before John’s the Baptist birth around 400 years the prophetic voice in Israel has been mute. The advent of John the Baptist into the desert near river Jordan he preached repentance and renewal. Undoubtedly all four gospels concur that it was he who prepared the way for Jesus Christ, the anointed one of God.

John the Baptist through theological analysis seems as the one who is a boundary between the two testaments that is the Old and the New Testament. He represents the Old because the law and prophets existed until John the Baptist, thus he represents the Old and heralds the New. Because he represents the Old he is born of elderly couple; because he represents the New he is revealed as the prophet in his mother’s womb, already he had been marked out there, thus it was already shown whose forerunner  he would be, even before he saw him. With human understanding these are incomprehensible but with God, they are comprehensible. Finally he is born, he receives a name, and his father’s tongue is loosed.

Zachary is struck dumb and loses his voice, until John, the Lord’s forerunner is born and releases his voice for him. John’s voice is closed and released and opened up by John’s arrival, it becomes clear when the one being prophesied is about to come. The releasing of John’s the Baptist voice has got theological significance that it can be compared to the tearing of the veil of the temple at the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. If John were meant to proclaim himself he would not be opening Zachary’s mouth. The tongue is released simply because the voice is being born. For when he was already heralding the Lord when he was asked he replied “ I am the voice of one crying in the desert.”(  Isaiah 40:3; Mark 1:3;  John 1:23). The Lord from the beginning was the Word, John is the voice for  a time, but Christ is the eternal word from the beginning.

As John the Baptist prepared people of his time to receive the Lord, thus each one of us is invited to prepare the people of his/her time to receive the graciousness and favour of God. By virtue of our baptism we are all invited to have a share in the ministry of the Church to bring people of our time, people who seem to be lost to Jesus. There are many voices yearning, looking for Jesus, within our different capacities we are invited to bring these people of our time swallowed by materialism, ideological beliefs, secularism, modernism to come and meat Jesus they have not yet experienced in their lives.

The solemnity of John’s the Baptist has got something practical in our lives, that we are called to renew our faith, hope and love. It is a call to each one of us to renew our lives by offering it to God daily as John’s the Baptist did.