In his meditation on the Gospel for the Third Sunday of Advent – which talks about the interaction of St. John the Baptist with those who ask him who he is and what on earth he is doing with all of his preaching and baptizing – St. John Baptist de La Salle takes up the ways that God works through others to bring us God’s light, God’s salvific presence, and God’s remarkable invitation for reconciliation and unity.
In this Gospel, the priests and temple officials ask questions that people today may ask of us as Christians or as Catholics. “Who are you? What do you have to say for yourself?” The implied question is, “Why should we pay attention to anything that you say? What gives you a corner on the truth?” And it’s a legitimate question. But like most important questions, although it’s an easy question to ask, the answer has to be a bit more complicated. It is more complicated because it involves a mystery, something that lies essentially much deeper than what is accessible through simple explanation. Herbert McCabe points to a similar phenomenon in reference to appreciating one of Shakespeare's plays. In a passage of his worth quoting at length, he writes that depths of meaning are not found "...in a play when you watched it for the first time; you have to learn to understand it, and you cannot take short cuts to the depth. ... [A]s we enter into a mystery it enlarges our capacity for understanding. ... [W]hen it comes to reaching down to the deeper meanings, there is no substitute for watching or taking part in the play itself. The mystery reveals itself in the actual enactment of the play. It is very hard to put the meaning of Macbeth into any other words, and that is why literary critics are always harder to read than plays; it all seems so much more complicated. This is not because critics are trying to make things difficult, nor is it that the deep meaning is itself something complicated. It is something simple; the difficulty lies in bringing it up from its depth. When you try to bring deep simplicities to the surface you have to be complicated about them. If you are not, then you will simply have substituted slogans ... for the truth."
This is also the case with St. John the Baptist’s message, and is indeed the case with all of Scripture. De La Salle writes that scripture “is like a lamp shining in a dark place until the day dawns and the morning star rises in our hearts.” (Med 3.2) A lamp reveals the things that were previously in the dark. But the light doesn’t tell you what to do with all of those things. That’s up to you. If may happen, however, that by encountering what lies revealed by the lamp – in other words, what we come to know – something new and precious may rise up in our hearts. And this is also true with the things of faith. De La Salle writes that “… knowledge is not enough; it is necessary for God himself, through Jesus Christ Our Lord, to show us the path we must follow, and to inspire us to walk in the footsteps of his Son.” (Med 3.3)
The mystery of faith is only genuinely known by being encountered, by being engaged, by being put to the test of actual life and practice. As teachers, we, like St. John the Baptist, “… are only the voice of the One who really disposes hearts to accept Jesus Christ… Do not be content, therefore, to read and to learn from others what you must teach your pupils. Pray God to impress all these truths so firmly on yourselves that you will not have any occasion to be, or to consider yourselves to be, anything but the ministers of God and the dispensers of his mysteries.” (Med 3.1-2) And it is the mystery of the Incarnation that awaits our celebration and deeper engagement when Christmas finally arrives.
(Video Version HERE)
