Eather David McGough

The Word
this week
Th%Birthday of John the Baptist Isaiah 49: 1-6; Acts 13: 22-26; Luke 1: 57-66 & 80
TELL YOU solemnly, of all the children
▪ born of women, a • greater than John the
Baptist has never been seen, yet the least in the kingdom Of heaven is greater than he." Mt. 11: 11)
, Today we celebrate the birth {if
john the Baptist, described .r•J'esus as the greatest of all Ihe children born to woman. In fae next ptuuse Jesus described John as the beginning of something even greater. John prefigured a world filled with the
presence of God. Those who embraced and lived in such a world would know a dignity even greater than that of John the Baptist. The least in such a kingdom would be greater than John.
The remembrance of such a saint confronts our lives. We can choose to live in the presence of Christ. We are the heirs to all that John proclaimed. By his death and resurrection, Christ has begun in us that kingdom in which even the least is greater than John the Baptist. The reality of what we have become in Christ challenges the witness of our lives. Do we truly live as those whose lives have been enriched with a dignity greater than that of John the Baptist'?
The figure of John the Baptist both challenges and enables our lives. If we are to claim our place in the kingdom of God, we will do so by our faithful acceptance of Christ. John claimed nothing for himself. The greatness he proclaimed lay not within himself, but within the one he welcomed with such humble faith. "I am not the one you imagine me to be; that one is coming after me and I am unfit to undo his sandal."
John lived out the repentance that he proclaimed. He claimed nothing for himself. He trusted totally in all that Christ would enable at his coming. We are truly repentant when we acknowledge that we are not the persons we thought ourselves to be. If our life is to have any lasting dignity, it will be the work of Christ coming into our lives.
THE DIGNITY in which we are called with John the Baptist is described in the words of the prophet Isaiah. Here the humble servant acknowledges the guiding hand of God. "The Lord called me before I was born, from my mother's womb he pronounced my name."
Despite our failings. Christ has claimed each one of us in baptism. With John the Baptist, we can claim a dignity which rests in the grace of God's calling rather than the achievement of our lives. As the words of the prophet continue, we see the strength that lies in humility. "He made my mouth a sharp sword, and hid me in the shadow of his hand. He made me into a sharpened arrow, and concealed me in his quiver."
Only the truly humble can conceive their lives as hidden in the hand of God, concealed in his quiver. The humility which allows itself to be penetrated and directed by the presence God becomes the sharp sword which opens the world to the love of God. John the Baptist lived such a life from the first moment of his birth.
The life of John the Baptist, measured by the values of the world, was a failure. He died alone in a prison cell long before Christ was fully acknowledged. The servant described by Isaiah knew a similar kind of loneliness. "I have toiled in vain, I have exhausted myself from nothing."
This was to be the ultimate poverty of spirit offered by John the Baptist. Christ dies in the same poverty on the cross. Let us pray that we might offer our poverty to God in the spirit of the saint we celebrate.