Christ must increase and I must decrease

Nativity of St. John the Baptist - 24/6/2015

Today, we celebrate the Solemnity of the Nativity of the Birth of St John the Baptist. The Nativity of St John the Baptist on June 24 comes three months after the celebration on March 25 of the Annunciation, when the Archangel Gabriel told Our Lady that her cousin Elizabeth was in her sixth month of pregnancy, and six months before the Christmas celebration of the birth of Jesus. The purpose of these festivals is not to celebrate the exact dates of these events, but simply to commemorate them in an interlinking way. Therefore, for those of you who can’t get enough of Christmas and those who bedeck your homes with Christmas decorations all year round, today’s feast provides the first rumblings of the coming storm of Christmas.

I guess you might be wondering the significant of the birth of St John the Baptist in order for the Church to celebrate this date with its most solemn category of feast days, one which even supplants the liturgy of Sunday. But it is not only the Church that pays tribute to this man. It appears that the cosmos adds its eulogy to the event. Perhaps the greatest tribute still remains in the hands of our Lord. We remember the words of Jesus in the gospel of Luke, “Among those born of women no one is greater than John” (Luke 7:28). But this further begs the question:  What’s so great about John the Baptist?

The first answer lies in human destiny and God’s plan of salvation. When the Church celebrates the feasts of saints, it celebrates the victory of the Paschal event that is the eternal life that has been won by these men and women by virtue of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Thus each feast reminds us of our destiny. As a rule, the church celebrates the feast of a saint once a year, on the anniversary of the saint’s death. Death marks the entry of the saint into eternal life, into the economy of salvation. Although this is the general rule, there are two significant exceptions. Apart from Christ, there are only two others persons whom the Church accords its greatest festal honour to celebrate the event of their conception or birth. These are none other than the Blessed Virgin Mary and St John Baptist. 

We celebrate the conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary as a Solemnity to denote the Church’s understanding of her immaculate conception, that is Mary tasted the fruits of redemption not at death but from the very moment of her conception. Although we also celebrate her birthday, it is of a less solemn feast because Mary had already experienced salvation at the moment of her conception in St. Anne’s womb. On the other hand, we celebrate the birth of St John as a Solemnity because at the time of his birth, he had already been admitted into the glorious company of the saints and a full participant in the economy of salvation. This took place during the visitation of Mary to his mother, Elizabeth. Luke’s gospel records the experience and words of Elizabeth who speaks of this event by stating that the child within her womb leapt for joy.

The greatness of St John the Baptist can also be seen in his unique and singular role of linking the Old Covenant or Old Testament to the New. According to St. Augustine, John is the hinge that represents both the old and the new. John the Baptist is the hinge between the Old and New dispensation, the Old and New Testaments. On one side of that door is the Law and the Prophets of Jewish history and tradition. On the other side of that door is Jesus. 

But perhaps the greatest contribution of St John is seen in his relationship to Christ. He is the one prophesied from of old to be voice crying in the desert calling people to prepare the Way of the Lord. He is the finger that distinguishes and points out the Lamb of God from the crowd. He is the one that announces the greater personage who will come after him, the one who will baptise with fire and the Holy Spirit. He is the one who delivered the message of repentance in order to prepare people to believe in the one who will inaugurate the Kingdom of God. He is the first to lay down his life prefiguring the death of his Master. He is the one whose light must dim, whose influence must decrease, in order that the light of Christ may increase. His greatness lay precisely in this – his very existence, his life was lived wholly for the other. And it was only in the other, in the person of Christ,  that he discovered greatness.

As we celebrate this Solemnity, our testimonies too must join that of the Baptist, who points to Christ and away from himself.  Christ ‘must increase and I must decrease’ must be a constant life commitment. In a culture that idolises the subjective self, where man has enthroned himself at the centre of his universe, the prophetic witness of John the Baptist reminds us once again that even the greatest among us must fall on our knees to acknowledge the One who is greater. Christ must increase and I must decrease.