The Responsorial Psalm provides the key to these two readings. Lord, I have come to do your will.
Right at the start of the Ordinary Time, we get a taste of the meaning baptism. It is true that the baptism is a sacrament of salvation. But sometimes we narrowly interpret it as the condition for salvation meaning that in order to be saved, one needs to be baptised. What today’s readings do is to expand our understanding of this sacrament.
We are baptised not merely for salvation. It is true that the Lord intends to save, but more than that, our baptism also initiates us into Christ’s mission to save. We are supposed to be the light of the nations. We are called not just to share His message but also to be His message to the world.
I was reflecting on this mission and one of the things which has made me think further is the listlessness of our modern lifestyle. How many of us while and waste our lives away? Another way of looking at it, we are mindlessly being entertained to death. Can you imagine how much time we have lost that we can never get back as we swing and sway from one “adrenaline high” to another.
The one truth about fulfilment or gratification is that it is temporary. What a high or a rush does for us is to grant us a temporary contentment because when the high dies down, we will be left hungering for more. The alternative to this endless oscillation is a sense of purpose.
During a Camino in 2018, I came across a tomb of a person who died along the Way and reading the tombstone I was struck by the reason for the tomb being located along the Camino. The person had spent his final years looking after the stretch of the Camino. Picture the deceased who had found a purpose and dedicated his life to the mundane and thankless task of making sure that people who walked the Camino can have a safe passage.
Likewise, John the Baptist came and he had only one purpose in his life which was to point out the Lamb of God. He did what he had to and that was it. His mission may have felt like it was meaningless but it was not in vain. The meaning of his existence was to be found in the fulfilment of his purpose and reason.
Perhaps the loss of purpose can help explain the lack of vocation in the Church. There is a need for more priest and religious but why has the vocation well run dry. It cannot be that the Church has no need of priests to provide the Sacraments. Our life of comfort coupled with the need for personal autonomy makes for a life in which rewards must be tangible in form. It is deeplymaterialistic. Whereas a life of service itself is a reward on its own. But that is hard to promote because we have been socialised into tangibility—or materialism. As someone said, “Cash is king”. Furthermore, everything we do needs to be highlighted, promoted and acknowledged. The incessant drive for social media presence basically hides a fear that if nobody knows us, then we are basically non-existent.
Thus, the humility of John the Baptist is instructive. His sense of identity was not tied to self-adulation but instead to making sure that Christ be known to all. That Christ is known and loved by all is our answer and our guarantee against our fear of being forgotten. It is not an assurance that we will never be lost but rather, it is an assurance that we will never be forgotten by God. Without the promise that we will be remembered by the Father, nothing of the sacrifices we make will mean anything.
The mission of Christ is not proselytisation per se. We are supposed to be agents of sanctification. It is a call to serve the Lord by making His presence felt in the world. Not by drawing attention to ourselves but by leading others to God. When Jesus asked Peter who he thought of Him, Peter answered “You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God”. The Pope, if there is one task associated with him, it is to assert unequivocally the very profession of Peter: You are the Christ. In a subsidiary manner, St Paul in the 2nd Reading reminded the Corinthians that they had been set apart to sanctify the world. We have a mission too, to be like both John the Baptist and St Peter, to point to those who seek, “There is the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world”.
In that way, we sanctify the world by our proclamation. But more than mere proclamation, we sanctify the world by our holy presence. Can you imagine how rich the world could be because of a genuine Christian presence. The contrary is also a possibility: imagine how impoverished the world is because of the Christian absence. In this country, we may be a minority but the impact we had on the education of the nation far exceeded our number. We are becoming even more of a minority with the loss of the schools and low birth rate. However, rather than curse the darkness perhaps we should light the candle of Christ’s presence. At present, we can criticise the government and thank God we still have the right to speak but maybe more than just migrating to escape the injustice of this country, perceived or otherwise, imagine what we can become if each Catholic were to engage more robustly in the political processes of the country. Some may express a modicum of disdain or cynicism toward this idea but really the best thing we can do is not what we can achieve. We can always start with praying. Right now the most effective way is to prepare for the upcoming election is to pray for the country. Surely that is possible. We bless the country and sanctify her by our prayers.
