“He said, “I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way of the Lord,” Jn 1:23
The voice in the wilderness did not come in anticipation to the nativity, but after the birth of Christ. It wasn’t until about 30 years after, that the call to repentance came, a call that indeed shook religious and state institutions, but more importantly, shook the hearts and minds of those that heard it. This was the call preparing the way to Jesus.
At His mother’s request, Jesus began His mission at a wedding feast in Cana. Just as Eve was created from the side of Adam, so too would His Bride the Church, come to flow out of Christ’s side on the Cross. Like the spear that brought water and blood out of Christ. John baptized with water and spilled blood as a martyr. He was the first spear to be thrust to the side of the people.
The call was to remind everyone that “every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.” Lk 3:9 What would the call be like today for a people waiting for Christ’s Second Coming? In his letter to the Philippians, St Paul tells us the answer: “work out your own salvation with fear and trembling” Phil 2:12. The second call sounded a lot like the first; so did the attempt to shut it down.
Today, another voice in the wilderness calls ever so faintly for repentance and good works for salvation. Make straight, not left nor right, the path to the Lord. G.K. Chesterton once wrote that “Evil is always a place where extremes meet…Thus while we are seeing around us a degree of license that can rightly be called pagan, we are also seeing a destruction of liberty that is rightly called Puritan.” He wrote this observation in 1922, but he may as well be writing it today.
As we approach Christmas, the attempt to abort the arrival of Christ continues. The massacre of the Holy Innocents is as real today as it was nearly 2000 years ago. A plan MAID in hell to stop men from coming to the well, a well where the water, as it was given to the woman, is new and life-giving. Our Lord is not only the Truth and the Way, but also the Life, thus to pursue a culture of life, is to pursue a culture of Christ. The source of this life-giving water, is unsurprisingly, the same source that also gave us the Bread of Life. The journey is always full of peril. It may indeed require an arduous walk to Egypt before we walk triumphantly under the shade of palms. It is at that point though, that we can expect the institutions to once again and again, brings us back to the Cross. It’s always at the Cross.
It’s at this point, that like the Cyrene and Isaac long before him, we pick up our wood and carry it to the top of the mountain, the place where we go tell everyone that Christ has died… and has also Risen! A place where all the faithful come, as on that silent night, to loudly proclaim the coming of our Saviour.
Caravaggio painted St John the Baptist more than 13 times, making him the second figure he most often portrayed. Perhaps he was trying to extend the saint’s call for repentance and conversion to a people grown deaf but not yet fully blind. Beauty in its many senses, can be a vehicle to goodness and eventually to truth.
We’ll end with a final remark on what Christ’s Mass is about from another voice crying out in the wilderness, the voice of G.K. Chesterton: ” I may remark in passing that Christmas means Christmas. It means what is says; and it consists of the two most provocative and controversial words in the world; one provoking crucifixion (Christ) and the other persecution (Mass).”
Let us then prepare ourselves for Christ’s Second Coming, as the shepherds and three kings before us did for the first: attentive to the signs, outsmarting the Herods of our times, and more importantly, by visiting the house with life-giving wells and a manger* where Christ dwells.
St Joseph, pray for us.
St John the Baptist, pray for us.
Roberto Freire
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