This is a most unusual celebration that we mark today. Only two births make the calendar of our Church’s major celebrations: the births of Jesus and John, son of Elizabeth and Zechariah.
In this reflection for the feast, I would like to address what I see as John’s life being truly significant for us during the times we often refer to as the Post-Vatican II days of the Church. I believe he can easily be looked upon as a model for us in the days since the Second Vatican Council ended, some forty years ago. Perhaps in these days of the new millennium John can be a guide, a model for the resolution of the new direction the Council Fathers, hopefully listening for the voice of the Holy Spirit in their prayers, put before us in what we so often call the documents of Vatican II.
There are three words that the Protestant theologian Walter Bruggemann uses to describe change that occurs in the faith experiences of all churches. Fr. Bob Rivers, Paulist priest who conducted the parish mission last year, cited Bruggemann’s words to describe the situation all of us have encountered in our Church since the end of Vatican II’s historic sessions in Rome in 1965. The three words are orientation, disorientation and reorientation. These words accurately describe the process that we, all of us, have been dragged through since the decade or two prior to the beginning of the Vatican II Council’s sessions in October 1962.
It is worthy of note that Vatican II is unique in that it was called not to bring about reform to combat a heresy that existed. Rather Pope John XXIII called for the Council to address pastoral issues. He and his advisers felts that the Church was in need of updating, for renewed vitality. Both John XXIII and his successor, Paul VI, both envisioned the Council as a time for the Church to look at the purpose and mission of the Church which each of these holy men saw a evangelization.
It is the life of John the Baptist, the man many considered a radical, that serves, at least for me, as something we might use as a true patron for the needs of the Church in our day and time. He is the patron of change. His entire mission in his life time was to bring the followers of Yahweh and Jesus Christ into a period of reorientation.
For as many as nine centuries before the birth of Christ, apostasy, immorality and idolatry were widespread in Israel. This might well be called the period of disorientation. Many of the Jewish people had wandered far from the one, true God. John came upon the scene preaching what so often is described as repentance. In fact, I believe, we might better understand John’s role as baptizer if we consider his preaching and teaching nothing but the voice calling the people to reorientation. Jesus told his disciples in Matthew’s gospel:
"From the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven has suffered violence, and the violent take it by force. For all the prophets and the law prophesied until John came; and if you are willing to accept it, he is Elijah who is to come. (Matt 11: 12-15)"
John knew the disoriented lives of many of the people. He also knew that he was gifted with the graces of bringing to a new way of life that would be explained by "one greater than me, whose sandal I am not worthy to unloose."
What John was in fact accomplishing is what the Church, especially since Vatican, is evangelization.
"From the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven has suffered violence, and the violent take it by force. For all the prophets and the law prophesied until John came; and if you are willing to accept it, he is Elijah who is to come. (Matt 11: 12-15)"
John knew the disoriented lives of many of the people. He also knew that he was gifted with the graces of bringing to a new way of life that would be explained by "one greater than me, whose sandal I am not worthy to unloose."
What John was in fact accomplishing is what the Church, especially since Vatican, is evangelization.
Today, most Catholics would claim that the Church is in a period of transition from its orientation prior to Vatican II. Pope John’s famous phrase about opening the windows in the Church for a little fresh air is often used by some who would see his perceived needs for the Church in the modern world were little more than explosives that jolted the Church and its people from their orientation that existed for centuries. The formalism, the authoritarianism that existed prior to 1965 was the only Church that Catholics knew.
Since the Council ended and produced documents that impacted most aspects of Catholic practice, there has been unrested ... disorientation. There was brought to the Church and believers a new paradigm of Catholic life. Even today the new paradigm is not easily accepted by many Catholics who long to return to the earlier orientation.
Today, I believe, were John the Baptist out on the hustings preaching, I believe he would be calling us to follow the lead of the Holy Spirit. He would be calling us to turn away from restorationism ... that returning to the way things were. What we came to experience in the documents of Vatican II is that the world outside the Catholic Church indeed has much to offer the Catholic Church. Vatican II brought the Church from its institutional status to being what Jesus truly wanted: the people of God, a phrase rarely used prior to Vatican II.
John would be teaching us that we are called to evangelize ... beginning in our own hearts. Indeed, evangelization must begin in our own parish families. Just as Isaiah wrote, we have a challenge in evangelization to make straight the way of the Lord. We must, as a community, make a pathway for the Lord to be known and loved be not just ourselves but by others.
John would be teaching us that we are called to evangelize ... beginning in our own hearts. Indeed, evangelization must begin in our own parish families. Just as Isaiah wrote, we have a challenge in evangelization to make straight the way of the Lord. We must, as a community, make a pathway for the Lord to be known and loved be not just ourselves but by others.
As Fr. Rivers mentions in his book, From Maintenance to Mission, true evangelization "has the power to bring new unity to the church in this period (post Vatican II) of upheaval. (Pg 18)" The radical ways of a John the Baptist preaching today in our pulpits and without our parish communities and committees would indicate that allowing evangelization to be the driving force that stimulates and guides our lives, our parish life, is the avenue to reorientation.
Pope Paul VI, in the encyclical Evangelii Nuntiandi, (On Evangelizing in the Modern World, no. 14), puts forward the position that the church exists in the world for one single purpose: to evangelize! Pope Paul tells us how we can evangelize.
"The Church evangelizes when she seeks to convert, solely through the divine power of the message she proclaims, both the personal and collective consciences of people, the activities in which they engage, and the lives and concrete milieu which are theirs."
In short, evangelization is spiritual renewal, missionary activity, and action for justice in the world. This is what John the Baptist taught in his days and what he would teach today ... because this is the mission that Jesus brought to the people of God.
Let us use this feast day recalling for us the birth of John to refocus our own spiritual purpose in life today. We are still in a period of disorientation following Vatican II with the various challenges that confront the church today. But there are among us those who are calling us to a reorientation through evangelization. This has to become the new orientation for the church and its future.
