JtB

In Advent, we hear a lot from Isaiah and John the Baptist. Isaiah has big time prophecy about the coming of the messiah, and John is the prophet who directly precedes the messiah. So their testimony is pretty relevant.

Shocking as it may be, I'm not super learned on Old Testament matters, so I'm going New Testament on this one. Let's talk Jay Tee Bee.

John was not the Light, but He came to testify to the Light.

There we have it.

Well, let's backtrack.

Jesus Christ was and is God. The Son is a person of the Trinity. Jesus is God-become-man, the Word-made-flesh. Jesus' ministry and preaching is distinctive because it is literally the words and actions of God. He is unmediated, direct revelation. Jesus Christ was and is God.

John, on the other hand, was not and is not God; he is a prophet, a human preaching and acting humanly on his faith. His contemporary, Mary, is a beautiful model of human service to us as well (fun fact: did you know Mary is the only person assuredly present in all three eras [The Law and the Prophets, The Life, Ministry, Death, and Resurrection of Christ, and The Church] of salvation history?). She is an example in her contemplation, her motherhood, and her 'yes' to God's will, but her immaculate conception is an element of special grace that distinguishes her a bit. It doesn't make her less human; it shows us how someone can integrate one's own faith and heart with God's grace to realize the peace of freely aligning one's will with God. But John is yet another of the many amazing models we have in our tradition of faith.

A wise man once concluded, "On a basic level, John the Baptist was a faithful follower of Christ, ultimately martyred after being jailed. So, as someone who almost certainly died in faith in Christ, he is someone Christians should hold as a saint, 'part of the one holy catholic church comprised of Old Testament and New Testament believers alike.' John’s life and mission were righteous and fulfilled the prophecies of the messiah’s forerunner. John’s answering this call to prepare the way for Christ and faithfully serving God through his preaching and baptisms are evidence of John’s goodness and his obedience to God’s will. His service to God prompts Jesus to call him 'the greatest among men.'"

Hey, I had to quote my thesis.

The greater point with John is that he wasn't Christ, and he knew that. No matter what people wanted him to be, no matter how many people badgered him, he insisted he was just preparing a way for his Lord.

John had disciples following his lead. He had throngs of people coming to listen to his message. He had people piling in to receive baptism. However, he remained committed to the reality that what he was pointing toward was greater and bigger than him.

It's a beautiful reality that John baptized people into what would become our Church because baptism into Jesus' life, death, and resurrection is an initiation that commits a person and his/her life to the reality that they are part of someone and something bigger than themself. Just as John kept humble in anticipation of Jesus the Lord and Savior who was to bring salvation to humanity, we too must embrace the call to service and ministry in the name of He who gave us life.

Christ is God, so His example is perfect. Jesus' words and actions show us perfect mercy, compassion, and love. Idealism is helpful to us because the effort to try to be perfect calls us to constant self-reflection and improvement toward the perfect love of God. However, we ultimately cannot be Christ. We are not Gods but rather God's - mediators of the grace of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

In this reality, where we are conduits for the grace of Christ through our faith and our relationships, John gives us a model: John was not Christ but persistently pointed the way to Christ and cleared a way for Him in the world and in hearts.

We must strive to be like Christ. Though we are imperfect and cannot be Christ, we can be vigilant in prayer to grow into being fuller mediators of God's love and grace. Additionally, though, we can completely be John the Baptist's. This is not an idealistic pursuit that cannot be fully attained; it is a realistic and realizable goal for our journeys of faith. We can always be pointing to Christ in our words and actions, and we can make a way for Christ in the world.
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Added @ 5:10pm, a post-script - from the conclusions of my thesis' section on John:

"... [There is] great responsibility placed in the hands of everyone invited to Christ’s Kingdom: John’s imperfections amid his righteousness were excused in part due to ignorance; the citizens of Christ’s Kingdom have the fullness of God and His revelation in the prophecies of the Old Testament and their fulfillment in Christ and the New Testament, Christ’s Church, and its Tradition. In the Old Testament, earthly promises were the focus as the fullness of the Kingdom was yet to come. Now that Christ has come, “that man from the time of John the Baptist is assured of a speedy entrance into such an everlasting and blessed Kingdom, [and] it is no longer necessary for those promises of earthly well-being to be brought forward.' Given the fullness of God in the Incarnate Word that is Christ, Christians can access the fullness of God and taste the Kingdom through Christ. The unique actions of God with His Chosen People in the Old Testament are historically past—God’s love and care has been newly offered through humanity’s redeemer. It is up to the faith of God’s renewed people to embrace the fullness offered in Christ and grow to realize and experience His Kingdom."

Don't Knock It 'til You Try It

So here we are: Advent 2011. The dreaded new translation of the mass is upon us in full force, with all of its (con)substantial changes and roof homecomings.

We who have gone seeking have heard so much from many angles, decrying the archaicness of the text, the misguided efforts of the Church dedicating attention to something that isn't that important, and how we don't even know what these new words mean. There's plenty of truth to a lot of these opinions.

Some of the wordings aren't as smooth as we might like; restoring the balance of Latin and Hebrew poetic structure and faithfully translating a no-longer-spoken-conversationally language is not going to sound conversational. The Church does have bigger problems, from the lingering shadows of the abuse scandals to the tensions between clerical and lay ministry/leadership. Some of these wordings are confusing- consubstantial? God of Hosts? under my roof?

My question is, "so what?" At the end of the day, it's all part of an effort to be more faithful to the liturgical tradition of our Church, which stands on the two legs of Scripture and Tradition. It's a way for English speakers to say words that more closely follow the Latin that is the basis for every language's translation of the mass, so that from east to west - er, I mean, from the setting of the sun to its rising - we all have as similar a mass as our universal church can have across borders and language barriers. One of my favorite practical effects of our transition: smaller language groups that lack the resources in terms of Latin scholars and studies translate their mass from English to their own language rather than directly from Latin. So by giving them a more faithful English translation as a starting point, we are coming closer to their celebrations of the mass as well.

Something to not lose in all this: the priests, part of the hierarchy so often criticized and derided, the hierarchy that approved this change, have even more than us to learn and review. Their parts have changed more than ours, and new things have been added to the giant Roman Missal that guides them through their celebrations of our masses. Don't overlook the beauty of some of their new words.

My two favorites:

1. As the priest lays his hands over the gifts to call the Spirit over them, he prays, "Make holy, therefore, these gifts, we pray, by sending down your Spirit upon them like the dewfall." What a beautiful image to use! It is a mystery of our faith that Jesus becomes present in the bread and wine as His Body and Blood through the Eucharist, and part of the prayers that effect this is this calling of the Spirit. How can we explain this loving action of our God? What if we just invoke the image of dew in the morning? When we awake, the grass and lawns of our neighborhoods are damp with the gentle, benign moisture of the morning, water that hasn't come from rain or storms that we can see and hear or from hoses or watering cans when we tend to our lawns; it is water that appears through a fairly easily explained process but nonetheless invokes some childlike awe and wonder for the simple splendor of it. So give this new imagery a shot - the Holy Spirit coming over the gifts to prepare them for Christ like the morning dewfall!?

2. After the gifts have been presented and the altar has been prepared, the priest invites us to begin the prayers over the Eucharist with him. This change to the invitation is so subtle that you might miss it, but when you catch, it will change your 'tude. "Pray, brothers and sisters, that my sacrifice and yours may be acceptable..." That's right. No longer is our participation in the sacrifice of the Eucharist only implied or understood; it is explicitly invoked in prayer. Our sacrifice - our self-offering of our sins, our penitence, our prayers, our gratitude - is invited specifically to the altar. The reality that we are united in our baptism in Christ as we gather as His Body to celebrate the Eucharist invites us to share all of those things of our self with each other in the Eucharist. Then, we, like the bread that is His Body, Jesus and His people, are broken, shared, and sent forth. It begins with this invitation from the priest. So listen and let your heart be drawn in anew as you're specifically invited to the reality of the Eucharist that has been there all along but not spoken so specifically to us until now.

I could go on and on about pros and cons of the new words. The major point is that no one should really be too opinionated either way. People should talk with one another to share their feelings in community, but the point is for us to continue to deepen our spiritual commitments and live our faith. The mass - the Word and the Eucharist - is the basis and rhythm for doing this. So let's engage it prayerfully, but remember the end we all are working toward is relationship with ourselves, with others, and with God. And hey - give it a shot and spend a few Sundays and daily masses with it before you get to fired up either way. Don't knock it 'til you try it.