TURN TO GOD! ^_[1]

STARTLING CLARITY

1. John the Baptizer challenges human beings to change. He does not summon the social collectivity as if it were a living, sentient organism. Rather, he addresses persons, demanding them to change their disposition to life. From his abode in the desert, the prophet is able to see with startling clarity the ills and troubles of his people. He opposes his people's spiritual complacence and passivity. He puts no stock in claims of entitlement. Rather, he rouses them to work for their salvation.

2. Reform your intentions and repent of your sins, he declares. Recognizing the universality of the Word of God and human nature, let us employ our knowledge of faith to draw a divine lesson from the life of the baptizer. The social forces and human behaviors of 1^st century Palestine may indeed be applied to the circumstances of our own nation and its people. Historically, the Jewish people tended to view salvation as an external matter, as for example, deliverance from their enemies and the inheritance and preservation of land and goods.

MOTIFS OF EXTERIORITY

3. Eternal life, if such a thing could be imagined, was achieved by the perpetuity of one's family bloodline. Good fortune in life was seen as a manifestation of God's favor and a proof of spiritual piety. This view applied to families and the nation itself. Salvation was a material and corporate project. The work of salvation was considered the religious obligation of political and religious leaders chosen for a two-fold purpose: to preserve the people's culture and emancipate them from their enemies. Understandably, the Jewish people believed that they were entitled to God's favor and divine intervention even if their leaders failed.

4. The Jewish people knew God as the superior force of the cosmos. By means of divine power God would vindicate Jewish culture. God would intervene and do away with religious and political oppression. God would accomplish what human leaders could not. The people of Jesus' day, however, were ensnared by two erroneous assumptions, both predicated on motifs of exteriority. On the one hand, they believed that their corporate relationship with God guaranteed their nation's right to political autonomy and ultimate military supremacy. On the other hand, the corporate model imposed little or no direct responsibility on individuals for the development of that relationship and the greater good of Israel.

IGNORING THE VITAL EXERCISE

5. Ironically, the reverse of these assumptions is now prevalent in present-day Western cultures which declare God contingent and his Kingdom irrelevant to human society. Whereas Israel presumed its political structures to be equivalent to God's Kingdom, even synonymous with God's realm, contemporary secularism declares that the affairs of state and culture have nothing to do with God. Jewish religion de-emphasized the importance of individual spirituality; secular cultures in the West now enshrine the cult of individualism as a form of divinity and label it "post-Christian".

6. Hence, many persons claiming to be Christian succumb to the grave error that a right relationship with God means a relationship between equals. Except that human beings, deserving rights without responsibility, are more equal. Therefore the Creator is obliged to be submissive to human needs and wants. God must acknowledge the supreme autarchy of the human person. If God does not cooperate, human beings will co-opt God by denying his existence or simply ignoring him.

7. Having enshrined the twin pillars of national sovereignty and individual passivity, the Jewish people could not adapt intellectually or spiritually to the exigencies of their day. Of history's many lessons, one plays itself out repeatedly. People place unrealistic expectations upon their institutions, while at the same time, despising them. This is precisely what happened to ancient Israel which, as a nation, ignored the vital exercise of critical self-judgment.

CATASTROPHIC CONSEQUENCES

8. Over time, numerous factions arose in Palestine under the aegis of global forces: Pharisees, Sadducees, the priestly aristocracy, middle-class priests, Herodians, Jewish royalists, zealots, Essenes, Sicarii,^[2] nationalists, Roman sympathizers, Jewish collaborators, predatory tax collectors, a ravenous merchant class, and a fractured, alienated general population. Leaders of these factions typically asserted that they were heirs of the nation's rightful destiny.

9. With some variations, each of these groups enshrined within their activities an attitude of contempt and intransigence while accusing the others of feebleness and selling out. All manner of dissension and civil unrest boiled under the noon-day sun in Israel. [cf. Eccl. 1:9] Plunging into internecine strife and open rebellion against the powers of Rome, the Jewish nation collapsed with catastrophic consequences. The Romans crushed the nation's religious identity by destroying the Jerusalem temple in 70 AD. Fifty years later, Rome drove out Jerusalem's Jewish inhabitants, obliterated the Jewish character of the city and transformed it into a Roman colony.

FROM THE SAME FOUNTAIN

10. Injustice, oppression and tyranny arise when human institutions or governments are assumed to be living organisms unto themselves and superior to the human persons they were intended to serve. When this happens, people no longer perceive social institutions as servant but as master and ultimately as enemy. Alienation encourages the rise of militant individualism. Persons express their hostility by aggressive actions towards neighbor and orderly government. At the end of the day, little remains to distinguish the elements peculiar to truculent despots or radical egalitarians.

11. "From the same mouth come blessing and cursing. My brethren, this ought not to be so. Does a spring pour forth from the same opening fresh water and brackish?" [Jas 3:10-11] In either case, both despot and egalitarian survive by propagating varieties of a self-serving lie--rights and freedoms originate in man and may be manipulated at will for the sake of his social institutions. Predation becomes the ultimate expression of impotence and savagery. Tyrant and anarchist drink from the same poisonous cup of self-exaltation; lawlessness spreads under the canopy of harsh governmental rule.

CONVINCED OF THEIR IRRELEVANCE

12. The cult of individual autonomy can overwhelm the corporate life of a nation; in this dispirited scenario, neighborhoods and workplaces are radicalized and become battlegrounds. If autonomist values are formally legislated or extensively commercialized, and if ordinary people care little about those who govern them, it can be difficult if not impossible to grasp how this alienation occurred. The pursuit of pleasure devolves to a thirst for power; both are inherently individualistic. Self-professed utilitarians fail to grasp the irony that the unrestrained pursuit of pleasure and power leads to the collapse of creativity and regeneration.

13. Arrogation is fundamentally regressive, abhoring as it does the genuine activity of the giving of self. The imperial self^[3] is the ultimate user, even to predatory consumption. He is immersed in a regressive behavior which, if unchecked, leads to social paralysis. Militant autonomists demand that things be done to them and for them but never genuinely with them. History is replete with examples of societies mired in anomie and unable summon the will to separate themselves intellectually and morally from their own tyrannical acts, especially assaults against human life. There is perhaps no circumstance more melancholy than that of human beings who are convinced of their own irrelevance.

MESSAGE MUST GET OUT

14. The gospel writer Luke establishes clearly that the Word of God--blazing like a meteor--pierces the mantle of human affairs, irrespective whether one is Emperor Tiberius Caesar or the high priests Annas and Caiaphas. Note that Luke judiciously avoids linking John the Baptist to passivity or to meaningless institutional credentials. Nor is John's identity established by a theophany (Gk. manifestation of deity) or Aaronite priesthood. The evangelist does not say that God approached the Baptizer and spoke directly to him, nor does he ascribe to John any links to Israel's religious leadership. Purposefully, yet indirectly, Luke writes that the "word of God came to John". [Lk 3:2] Hence, the baptizer acquires his true identity by receiving the word of God and taking action. The baptizer "was not the light, but came to bear witness to the light". [Jn 1:8]

15. John scarcely could receive the Word of God without preparing himself by personal asceticism, a life of renunciation in the Judean desert and communion with God through prayer. All this readied John to listen to God and to suffer transformation from desert hermit to public prophet. By being aware, sensitive to others, and committed to action,^[4] the prophet launches God's Word through the stifling atmosphere of human convention to enlighten the hearts of believers in centuries to follow. John indeed was a man sent from God. [cf. Jn 1:6]

16. John did not follow Jesus because their ministries happened to coincide. Belief is more than mere convenience in the sense of being a fellow-traveler in the company of a more powerful person. Rather, belief presupposes that one has interiorized profound and enduring convictions expressing the truth of his existence, purpose and personal destiny. Moreover, intellectual and spiritual honesty compel us to admit that knowledge--even spiritual knowledge--is by no means sufficient unto itself. Without exteriorization the interior message is stillborn. The message must get out. It must be translated into the active business of one who accomplishes his personal salvation in the context of his home, school, marketplace and church.

SPIRIT OF THE AGE

17. St. Paul clearly identifies belief with the activity, that is, the virtue of obedience. Listen to his words: "Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, so now, not only as in my presence but much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for God is at work in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure." [Phi 2:12-13] The Son of God certainly presents the Church and her members with sufficient opportunities for discipleship and salvation. In the matter of complacency, the early Church evidences its unequivocal rejection of indifferentist interpretations of faith. Stripped of the normative doctrine and practice of the Church, faith is incapable of saving anyone, declares the Epistle of James: "Even the demons believe - and shudder." [Jas 2:19] Why does our Lord wield the two-edged sword in such a way? [cf. Heb 4:2] Recall the opening meditation of the fourth gospel.

18. Christians are called to believe and to interiorize the truthful message that all things were made with Christ, in Christ and through Christ. [cf. Jn 1:3] The word through clearly refers to the mediation of Christ who, with the Father and the Spirit, accomplishes the creation of all that is seen and unseen.^[5] This theme is given repeated emphasis in the prologue of John's gospel: the Logos (Gk. Christ as word, truth, reason) "was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world knew him not". [Jn 1:10] The Word of the World, while resigned that everything ends in death, cannot reconcile itself to this finality. Rather, it directs man into an abyss of self-delusion; the reality of death and man's own incontrovertible mortality is glossed over even as he embraces the cultural dissolution that hastens his demise. In an exercise of ultimate self-parody, man deludes himself into thinking that he is one with the spirit of the age.

BY THE SAME ROUTE

19. The fullness of God's generative power was commissioned through Christ to accomplish the creation of the world and the redemption of mankind. Man, for his part, must return to God using the same Christological route. He must accept and love the Logos to live eternally with the Father. To sever human particularity from divine context is to degrade the meaning of personhood. It is to withhold from the human person indispensable knowledge necessary for his fulfillment and immortality. By receiving him and believing in his name, Our Lord shares with us the fruits of his sonship: "For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ." [Jn 1:17] On the cross, Jesus Christ won the right to be revered among his followers as their elder brother: "...for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you". [Jn 15:15]

20. Our Lord empowers everyone who receives his gospel to become children of his Father. [cf. Jn 1:12] Do you have the courage to journey through him, with him and in him^[6] to make your home in the Father's glory? This cannot happen if you believe human superiority is self-generating and self-fulfilling. To be a true disciple, you are "born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God". [Jn 1:13] "A Christian has only to be in order to change the world, for in that act of being, there is contained all the mystery of supernatural life."^[7]

STERILE PASSIVITY

21. A Christian spends a lifetime understanding what it means to be named by God. Only after he directs the fulfillment of his humanity to the things of heaven, can others grasp the meaning of his Christian life. Righteous deeds, a life of prayer, and humble obedience to Jesus' Church are not ends in themselves. They are the means by which followers of Jesus accomplish their salvation. [cf. Jam 2:14-26] Works of justice and submission to the authority of the Church allow a disciple to grow in and put on the "mind of Christ". [1Cor 2:16] As well, these activities, prompted as they are in faith, build up the body of Christ.

22. Finally, authentic humility and ethical deeds through, with and in Christ assist the believer to accomplish his salvation through hard work: "For to every one who has, will more be given, and he will have abundance; but from him who has not, even what he has will be taken away." [Mt 25:29] Many persons presume that their personal contribution to the good of God's kingdom is irrelevant, that their human behavior and activities have little or no relation to God's behavior and activity. Lamentably, they are trapped in a sterile passivity which encourages intellectual and spiritual indolence. Moral ambivalence, personal autonomy and civic complacence may disguise themselves as expressions of liberty, but it is impossible for them to remedy unhappiness.

NOT A MOMENT TO LOSE

23. We shudder to think that God would expect the best of us, desiring to be the shepherd of our immortal souls. We swallow the conceit that God--however one may perceive him--has retired far away from world to contemplate his own tired ideas. Or perhaps like a dying star, he possesses just enough light to illumine celebrity justice projects such as ecology and third-world factory conditions. John the Baptizer explodes the fiction that God is merely a passive observer who long ago gave up active and direct intervention in the moral affairs of man. He travels throughout the territory of the Jordan River proclaiming a baptism of repentance. He calls mankind out of its lethargy; his message is urgent. Examine your lives. Repent of your sinful ways. Seek the forgiveness of God. The baptizer testifies that one cannot obtain meaning in life by living as if the moral did not exist; rather life acquires its meaning precisely through the voluntary renunciation of the imperial self and embracing moral self-discipline.

24. The baptizer directs the weary people to turn directly to God, the source of blessing, to slake their thirst for consolation. Personal repentance is vital for individuals to grasp the truth of God with desert-like clarity; sincere repentance is essential for re-aligning one's personal destiny with the Divine Will. At the heart of the baptizer's proclamation is the truth that human freedom and spiritual fulfillment are ordered to man's universal nature. These created realities exist to serve the needs of God's human creatures. Only by conversion can one secure spiritual freedom and thereby critically judge the worth of his personal character, his contribution to society and the efficacy of social institutions which claim to serve him. Time is not an apostle of salvation. There is not a moment to lose.

CONTINUES TO INSPIRE

25. The Church continues to proclaim the Divine Truth from which the baptizer's mission sprang forth. It denounces any attempt to sever man's rights and freedoms from their Divine Origin, the greatest of these being the protection of human life itself. Further, the well-being--even the continued existence--of peoples and nations is dependent upon repentance and forgiveness. Through the humanity of the desert prophet, God permitted that his own divine mystery be shared more fully with mankind. Although John's mission was perceived by many to be crude and unworthy of God and man, his advent message captured the vitality of the prophets of old, nourished the spirits of those who sought him out in the Judean wilderness in his own time and continues to inspire Christians in the present to accept the light of God's glory.

26. In our own day, the herald's voice has been heard in our world, seeking those without hope and prepare them as an advent people. The herald is heard in the voice of the Holy Father whose good works Christ will carry through to completion. [cf. Phi 1:6] With courage and fortitude, our Holy Father proclaims the truth in season and out of season.^[8] His principled and articulate message soars above the meretricious, self-serving politics of the day, beyond the runnel of accusations spewed out by ambitious men and political factions.

27.  The Holy Father is a man raised up by God to shepherd the visible Church. Heed his message, for he writes: "At the heart of every situation of sin are always to be found sinful people. So true is this that even when such a situation can be changed in its structural and institutional aspects by the force of law, or as unfortunately more often happens by the law of force, the change in fact proves to be incomplete, of short duration, and ultimately vain and ineffective not to say counter-productive if the people directly or indirectly responsible for that situation are not converted."^[9]