Homily for the Birth of St. John the Baptist, 2007
We are blessed here at Saint John's
with some powerful religious symbols.
This church is surely one of them,
with its powerful focus on the altar,
the table for sharing holy gifts.
Another is the Mabon Madonna,
the beautiful statue of Mary with the child Jesus.
Another is Christ in glory in the Great Hall.
Finally, we have the artistic presentation of John the Baptist.
If you look at this sculpture,
he is pretty tall and thin.
Many women and men in this country wish they could be so.
Of course, this is where a faithful diet
of locusts and wild honey takes you -- protein and carbohydrates.
No fats and no pasta --
I can't help but wonder what John the Baptist's metabolism
would do with a Big Mac and a large order of French fries.
For the prophet John this commitment to simplicity
is part of being ready
to hear the word of God and proclaim it.
It is not an idiosyncratic gesture,
a manifestation of his large ego.
It is the kind of discipline
that we know it takes to be a good athlete,
or a dancer, or any other work that requires exquisite focus.
John's asceticism has everything to do
with hearing and seeing God clearly in any situation.
This can only occur
because he is not invested in his own comfort,
or in the way things are.
I don't want to romanticize John the Baptist.
We know that he was martyred by King Herod
because he refused to be silent,
refused to get on board with the king.
In our day we need men and women who live by strong principles,
who are willing to risk for the sake of Christ,
and for the sake of the poor and disenfranchised.
John reminds us that it takes personal and communal discipline
to live for Christ and for the Gospel.
For the sake of concreteness, let me name some of them:
personal prayer, fasting, silence,
reflective reading of scripture,
reading good theology and serious literature.
John the Baptist is a prophet,
recognized as such even by people who didn't like him.
But being prophetic is tricky.
Prophecy is like humility
in that the minute you become conscious of it in yourself,
you lose the capacity for it.
C.S. Lewis, in his book Screwtape Letters,
has a senior mentor urge a junior tempter
to work on a guy in a subtle way
so that he becomes proud of being humble.
By analogy,
to be prophetic is to lose self-consciousness,
and not embrace it.
It is to recognize and refuse trends,
no matter how noble the intentions behind them.
Here I am speaking of trends such as the death penalty or euthanasia.
Some states are pushing these two measures.
Even if they become trends we would resist them
because they are so opposed to the Gospel.
Within this Benedictine environment,
our task is not to produce prophetic individuals,
but to be a prophetic community.
And that, of course, is easier said than done.
Humility always helps
because humility forces us to acknowledge
that we ourselves can never know when we are being prophetic.
A self-proclaimed prophet is no prophet.
A self-proclaimed prophetic community is not prophetic.
It is just self-absorption.
Humility forces us to stop looking in the mirror and asking,
"how are we doing now? how am I doing now?"
Only future generations will be to decide
whether what we are doing now is prophetic.
Our task is to be as fiercely focused on Christ
as John the Baptist is,
to point to Christ day in and day out,
season in and season out.
Our task is to take Matthew 25:31-46
and to lives our lives in such a way
that we recognize Christ in the poor, the hungry, the homeless,
the prisoner, the sick, stranger,
the unpopular boy or girl in your class, in each other,
in the person who is sitting next to you.
Our task is to let the Gospel message
and the proclamation of the Reign of God so permeate our being
that it is part of our cells.
At the end of the day, we want to say with John the Baptist,
"he must increase and I must decrease. He must increase and we must decrease."
Of course, there is a wondrous, joyful outcome to
being like John the Baptist. We see, firsthand, Christ
at work in our world. This is a source of joy and hope.
Abbot John Klassen, OSB
June 24, 2007
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