We are intimately
known by God,
that we might be witnesses to God’s love!
John the Baptist’s
story is extraordinary. Luke’s Gospel
recounts John’s miraculous conception, which occurs only after an angel of the Lord appears to John’s
father Zechariah, reassuring him that his wife
Elizabeth will bear him a son, a
child who will be filled with the Holy Spirit even from his mother’s womb. Everything, down to John’s very name, has
been foretold by the angel; indeed, Zechariah will have to insist that John is his name. And, as of every human creature, God’s
knowledge of John the Baptist is intimate and maternal: Before
I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born, I dedicated you,
the prophet Jeremiah tells us. Isaiah will echo this intimation of intimacy,
noting that the prophet is identified by God even before he is born: The Lord called me from birth, from my
mother’s womb he gave me my name.
Such womb
knowledge is, as Psalm 71 suggests, essential to those whom God calls: On you
I depend from birth; from my mother’s womb you are my strength. John’s
future ministry as prophet would depend on that strength, for he would proclaim
a baptism of repentance, as Acts
reminds us, his baptism of water foreshadowing Jesus’ baptism with the Holy
Spirit. John’s is the baptism we
maintain for those entering the Church, a baptism by which we, like John, are
sacramentally called to be priest, prophet, and king. Yes, priest, prophet, and king: like John the Baptist, we are known by God
from the womb, known by God that we might know God in turn, know his Son and
his Spirit. And yet that knowledge of
God requires self-effacement; John knew that he was not worthy to unfasten Jesus’ sandals,
that his mission was to give witness, to prepare the way for the coming of
Christ, for the grace to come. All that
John the Baptist did pointed to something beyond himself; John emptied himself,
that he might allow the Holy Spirit, present to him in the womb, to work through him.
God created us
that God might know us and be known by us.
We are loved, and chosen, called, to be witnesses to that love. God knows us intimately; Psalm 139 reminds us
that God has probed us, knows us, knows
when we sit and when we stand.
It is our trust in God’s intimate knowledge of our very being, that
allows us to love him, to love Jesus,
as the First Letter of Peter states, and also to love the Father and the Spirit. Prophets like John the Baptist prophesy about the grace that is to be ours, that we might, in turn,
reveal that grace – God’s love – to the world, giving witness, as John did, to
the intimate relationship God desires with each of us from our mother’s womb. Might
we be ever aware of that intimacy, that we might, like John, testify to the light, and share with all
the power of God’s love in our lives.
Image source: www.wordle.net
