Today we celebrate a Solemnity, the birth of St. John the Baptist. St. John the Baptist is the last of the great prophets of the Old Testament and the first of the New Testament. Ands so, His birth marks the end of the Old and the beginning of the New. John the Baptist is the first one to preach to the world in order to evangelize the world to Christ; he is the first to point to Jesus as the promised Messiah.
In the midst of this “Fortnight of Freedom,” we can turn to St. John the Baptist to help us in our current struggle for our Religious Freedom. St. John reminds us that in our struggles on this earth we must always turn to what is essential. St. John teaches us the essentials. He begins with the core of the Revelation of Jesus; and this begins the first of three ways St. John can help us all to save our freedoms, save our nation, and even more importantly to save souls, our own and others.
The message of John’s preaching is really quite simple as it begins with the essential message of the Gospel, “repent for the kingdom of God is at hand.” Even though simple, it had great effect. As a result, many came to him to receive his baptism by an act of repentance; that is, by changing their life from bad to good, from good to better, and from better to best.
Our Lord, when he begins His (public) apostolic ministry, begins by preaching just as John the Baptist did (saying): “repent for the Kingdom of God is at hand.” This shows how Jesus not only respected John, but that this message of the need of repentance and conversion is one willed by God; it is the same message at all the valid Marian Apparition sites from LaSalette Lourdes; from Fatima to Akita and summed up in the Divine Mercy Revelations to St. Faustina. It is in fact, the very essence of the Gospel—Repent and believe; believe what? Believe the truth…What is the truth? Jesus is the truth and His teachings, which come to us through the teachings of the Catholic Church; this is the truth that alone can save us.
Repentance begins with us, the faithful, not with those out there, not with those who are attack our freedoms and our Holy Mother Church. To become one with Christ, we, WE, you and I, have a great need to repent more fully. Repentance means to conform our lives more fully to Christ, to give our lives more completely to Christ to become one with Him by living His Will which is the will of His Heavenly Father.
This begins with learning our faith more deeply so we can live it more authentically, more fully. None of us can say we know and understand our faith well enough; and none of us for sure can say we live it well enough. We also have to be prepared to give an account of our faith in Christ and in His Holy Catholic Church to those who would challenge us. This necessarily requires us to know and deeply understand, not just memorize the Scriptures and our Catechism. Perhaps we need to read, study, and meditate more frequently on the Scriptures and attend the many Bible studies and educational opportunities here in our parish; they are many. Educated Catholics are evangelical Catholics.
And this brings us to the second way St. John can help us in our day. We are called to repent and believe in the Gospel not only for ourselves but for others. As John is the one who “prepares the way of the Lord,” we are to do the same. In other words we are called to be evangelizers to the entire world...
Today, in light of our current threats, we especially see the need for what is a “new” evangelization. Pope Paul VI wrote an Apostolic Exhortation on this in 1975 and said the Church exists to evangelize. Pope Paul wrote, “ ...the Gospel message is not an optional contribution of the Church. It is the duty incumbent on her by the command of the Lord Jesus, so that people can believe and be saved. This message is indeed necessary. It is unique. It cannot be replaced. It does not permit either indifference, syncretism or accommodation. It is a question of people’s salvation.”
Pope John Paul II as well, called the entire Church to this “new” evangelization—He called not only the priests and religious, but also each and every one of the faithful to be evangelical. Often this can rub some Catholics a little wrong, as they do not think we are called to this; after all were Catholic, not Evangelical.
Pope Paul VI wrote, “The Church is an evangelizer, but she begins by being evangelized herself.” We first are evangelical by our own inner conversions, our own believing in the Good News of Jesus- He comes to forgive us our sins and bring us a new, personal and intimate relationship with Jesus Christ. Each one of us is then sent to preach the Gospel. However, as Pope Paul wrote, the Evangelizers are sent “To preach not their own selves or their personal ideas” but the Gospel received from the Church. Not personal opinions, for we must decrease and He must increase, but the truths of the Gospel found in its fullness in the teachings of the Catholic Church founded directly by Christ Himself on the Rock of Peter. And we must preach this truth in two ways; by what we say, but most importantly again by the way we act, for St. John prepared the way for the Lord by his life more than by his words.
And finally the third way the Baptist can help us; if we are to repent and believe in the Gospel so that we can prepare the way for the Lord and so bring about the new evangelization, St. John again shows us the way by pointing out to us, THE WAY And THE Truth, by pointing out to us the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world… John reminds us that Jesus, the true Lamb is not an ideal for us to strive to attain, He is a person, a Divine Person who is in our midst on earth in His human body still; He is a Person for us to obtain and be obtained by.
And so, St. John says to us today, “Behold the Lamb of God truly present in the Holy Eucharist!” Behold means to first believe, then adore so that we can hope and love the Godhead truly present there. This is why we held forty hours devotion this fortnight of freedom.” There is nothing more powerful than for true believers to come in faith on their knees before the Holy Eucharist. How proud I am of this parish family for filling up the hours and making our forty-hour devotion of the Holy Eucharist a great success.
If our own personal conversion to the Gospel can only come through adoration of the Holy Eucharist, so too then the Conversion of America can only come through our adoration of the living God truly present there. All the grace we need for our conversion, our families conversion and the conversion of our beloved country has its source in the Holy Eucharist. We need to be Apostles of the Holy Eucharist!!!
The message of John the Baptist and Jesus, the message of the Gospel continues, and in every age of the Church men and women have continued to proclaim this message and apply it in their lives; their lives have become living Gospels for the world to see. And so St. John the Baptist’s message is directed today especially for those within the Church, not only for the luke-warm but even for us who take our faith seriously, we are called to become even better so that we can be used as was John; we are called to be evangelizers to the world...How much, not only our world, but our Church needs new “John the Baptists,” needs us to be new “St. John the Baptists.” How modern day threats to religious freedom shouldn’t bring us down, but instead inspire us to do more to bring the light, life and so the living giving truth of Christ and His Church to others around us.
In our Mass today, may we all accept more deeply the commission of our Lord to be evangelists, like John the Baptist. We are all call to point to Jesus, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. Pope Benedict said that Evangelization is the best service that Christians can offer to heal the wounds of society. To establish a fully reconciled society it is necessary to begin with Christ, the only one able to definitively offer this grace to human beings." And our Lord’s grace is with us through the Sacraments because it is His desire that no soul be lost.
The enemies of our faith, the enemies of Christ want to relegate our faith in Christ to the private sphere. They will allow, for now, for us to worship in private, but they are becoming ever more insistence that we can not proclaim Christ to the world. But this is an impossibility for the true believers whom with the Spirit that animated St. John the Baptist, must cry out to all peoples and all nations, “Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world; Repent for the Kingdom of God is at Hand!!!”
May we be strengthened and nourished in the Holy Eucharist we receive in faith, because the Holy Eucharist is Jesus the True and Living God. Let us today through the intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of the Adorers of the Eucharist, pray for an increase of living faith to see more clearly the Lamb of God in the Holy Eucharist and give our lives and our complete selves totally to Him in an act of adoration and of love. Amen.
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