Solemnity of the Nativity of St. John the Baptist (B – White)
ANTIPHON (John 1: 6-7; Luke 1: 17)
A man was sent from God, whose name was John. He can to testify to the light, to prepare a people fit for the Lord.
INTRODUCTION:
The Church celebrates the birthday of three biblical characters. Aside from Jesus and Mary, we calebrate the birthday of John the Baptist. Jesus’ birth is important because it heralds the fullness of God’s revelation to men and women. Mary’s birth is also significant because she gives birth to the Savior. The birth of John the Baptist is equally important because he paves the way for the coming of the Savior to the world. John’s call towards conversion is still relevant in our own time.
FIRST READING (Isaiah 49:1-6)
RATIONALE: Isaiah narrates how, from his mother’s womb, God has called him to be a prophet. He is being commissioned by God o be a light to the nations and not only for Israel.
HEAR me, O coastlands, listen, O distant peoples. The LORD called me from birth, from my mother’s womb he gave me my name. He made of me a sharp-edged sword and concealed me in the shadow of his arm. He made me a polished arrow, in his quiver he hid me. You are my servant, he said to me, Israel, through whom I show my glory.
Though I thought I had toiled in vain, and for nothing, uselessly, spent my strength, yet my reward is with the LORD, my recompense is with my God. For now the LORD has spoken who formed me as his servant from the womb, that Jacob may be brought back to him and Israel gathered to him; and I am made glorious in the sight of the LORD, and my God is now my strength! It is too little, he says, for you to be my servant, to raise up the tribes of Jacob, and restore the survivors of Israel; I will make you a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth.
RESPONSORIAL PSALM: (Psalm 139: 1-3, 13-14, 14-15; Response: 14a)
R – I praise you, for I am wonderfully made.
1. O LORD, you have probed me and you know me;
you know when I sit and when I stand;
you understand my thoughts from afar.
My journeys and my rest you scrutinize,
with all my ways you are familiar. (R)
2. Truly you have formed my inmost being;
you knit me in my mother’s womb.
I give thanks that I am fearfully, wonderfully made;
wonderful are your works. (R)
3. My soul also you knew full well;
nor was my frame unknown to you
when I was made in secret,
when I was fashioned in the depths of the earth. (R)
SECOND READING (Acts 13:22-26)
RATIONALE: St. Paul explains the role of John the Baptist as herald to the Savior. John the Baptist knew his place in the scheme of God’s plan and abided by it faithfully.
IN THOSE DAYS, Paul said: “God raised up David as their king; of him he testified, ‘I have found David, son of Jesse, a man after my own heart; he will carry out my every wish.’ From this man’s descendants God, according to his promise, has brought to Israel a savior, Jesus. John heralded his coming by proclaiming a baptism of repentance to all the people of Israel; and as John was completing his course, he would say, ‘What do you suppose that I am? I am not he. Behold, one is coming after me; I am not worthy to unfasten the sandals of his feet.’
“My brothers, children of the family of Abraham, and those others among you who are God-fearing, to us this word of salvation has been sent.”
ALLELUIA (cf. Luke 1:76)
R – Alleluia, alleluia.
You, child, will be called prophet of the Most High, for you will go before the Lord to prepare his way.
R – Alleluia, alleluia
GOSPEL (Luke 1:57-66, 80)
WHEN the time arrived for Elizabeth to have her child she gave birth to a son. Her neighbors and relatives heard that the Lord had shown his great mercy toward her, and they rejoiced with her. When they came on the eighth day to circumcise the child, they were going to call him Zechariah after his father, but his mother said in reply, “No. He will be called John.” But they answered her, “There is no one among your relatives who has this name.” So they made signs, asking his father what he wished him to be called. He asked for a tablet and wrote, “John is his name,” and all were amazed. Immediately his mouth was opened, his tongue freed, and he spoke blessing God. Then fear came upon all their neighbors, and all these matters were discussed throughout the hill country of Judea. All who heard these things took them to heart, saying, “What, then, will this child be?” For surely the hand of the Lord was with him.
The child grew and became strong in spirit, and he was in the desert until the day of his manifestation to Israel.
REFLECTIONS:
All four evangelists agree that Jesus’ manifestation to Israel was preceded by John the Baptist’s preaching and baptizing ministry. Jesus’ story began from the ‘baptism of John until the day on which he was taken from us’ (Acts 1:21). The infancy narratives and the Johannine Prologue simply serve as prelude to this story.
It is Luke who narrates to us the stories of John’s conception and birth. In a style called diptych or narratives in ‘two frames,” the stories about John are paralleled with those of Jesus to bring out the fact that Jesus is the greater one. Although wondrous signs accompany the conception and birth of John, he is not the Awaited One, the Messiah of God. Rather, he is a prophet who prepares the way of the Lord, as his father Zechariah prophesies (Lk 1:76). The name John or Yohanan means ”God favors’ and this is seen in the neighbors and relatives acknowledging the great mercy given to Elizabeth (and Zechariah), and they rejoice with her (Lk 1:14, 58).
As a son of a priest, John is supposed to be trained in the Temple services. Instead, he grows up in the desert, far from the luxury in which the Jerusalem priestly aristocracy lives. By his dress, diet, and preaching, John presents himself more like a prophet than a priest. John wears clothing made of camel’s hair and a leather belt around his waist. This garb makes him resemble the prophet Elijah the Tishbite who was described to King Ahaziah as ‘wearing a hairy garment with a leather girdle around his him” (2 Kgs 1:8). He is thus presented not as a prophet in general; he is the ‘new Elijah.’
John replies to the people who are filled with expectation about him that he is not the Messiah. He is ‘a voice of one crying out in the desert,’ as we read from the book of Isaiah (40:36). The original oracle was addressed to the Jewish exiles in Babylon, and speaks of the ‘second exodus,’ of the Lord saving his people, leading them out of a foreign land. The evangelist now speaks of salvation brought about by Jesus; John is the voice announcing Jesus’ coming.
The desert of Judea, the historical setting of John’s ministry, happily lends to the oracle that Luke sees as being fulfilled. ‘A voice in the desert’ is from Isaiah 40:3, part of the oracle of comfort beginning the so-called Second Isaiah, and referring to the return of the exiled community in Babylon around 538 BC. As the Lord led the enslaved Hebrews by way of the desert into the Promised Land in the Exodus story, now the Lord is leading his people out of the Babylonian exile back to Jerusalem where they can rebuild the Temple and their lives.
In the Lucan context, the ‘voice in the desert is John. The ‘Lord’ whose way should be prepared is no longer Yahweh—God but Jesus. Jesus is he who comes in the name of the Lord. And more: he is Kyrios—the Lord himself.
John is the new Elijah, come to call for repentance and reconciliation: “to turn the hearts of the fathers to their children, and the hearts of the children to their fathers” (Mal 3:24). This is in view of the ‘day of the Lord’—not the terrible day of Yahweh’s judgment, but the kairos, the day of salvation ushered by Jesus’ ministry among men and women.
COMMUNION ANTIPHON (cf. Luke 1:78)
Through the tender mercy of our God, the Dawn from on high we visit us.
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The Mass Readings are from iBreviary (www.ibreviary.com) and Reflections by Fr. Gil A. Alinsangan, SSP is taken from the 24th of June, 2018 edition of Sambuhay Missalette, printed in the Philippines by St. Paul’s Media Pastoral Ministry. The views and opinions in this post are those of the authors and does not necessarily reflect those of the blog site.
That in all things, God may be glorified!
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