12.12.2020 Homily

This short gospel passage comes from the first chapter of St. John's gospel beginning with verse 18. And what John does, is he describes four successive days in the life of John the Baptist, and describes four events that occur in that same four days. So today is the first day as he's describing it. And John the Baptist is affirming who he is--that he's not the Messiah, that he's not the prophet, that he is a voice, a voice crying out. What he's saying to them is he's not the destination. He's the pass-through. He's not to be the end, he's to point to the completion, to the fulfillment. Then the second day is when he sees Jesus and he announces who He is to his disciples. He says, "Behold, the Lamb of God, this is the Son of God. This is the one who comes to take away the sins of the world."

And then the third day, he once again points out Jesus and two of his disciples, Andrew being one, and another disciple. They leave John and they go and they join Jesus. And on the fourth day, John recedes into the background. And it's a story of Nathaniel and Philip coming to join Jesus. All of that though flows from John's identity. He comes to bear witness, witness to the light. He is not the light. He comes to bear witness to the light. Jesus is the light. Jesus is coming to banish darkness. Jesus is coming to free us from all that is evil and destructive. He's to point the way for that.

 

Well, in just a few moments, Eli is going to be baptized here at the font. And after the water is poured on his forehead, and after he's anointed with the sacred oil, he's going to receive a candle lit from the Christ candle, the Easter candle. And he's told that he is a child of the light. He is another John the Baptist. He's come to bear witness to the light, and that his whole Christian life and yours and mine is really the flowing out of that. That by what we do and what we say and who we are, we are to be proclaimers of the mercy of God, present in Jesus Christ.

That's what it means to be a Christian.

And that all begins in the moment that you and I were washed in the waters of baptism. So as Eli is being baptized, it would be well if all of us would just in our own minds, in our own memory, call to mind the truth about ourselves. That whether it was a short time ago or a very long time ago that we were baptized, we were given that light and we were called like John the Baptist to be witnesses, witnesses to the light. “I am not the light, but I come to bear witness to the light.”