Living Faith: John the Baptizer teaches us the Way to Happiness and Freedom

He was a man who understood that life wasn't all about him

He was a man who understood that life wasn't all about him. He emptied himself willingly and was thus able to reveal Jesus to others. He was the "best man" at the wedding. His humility opened a space within him for true joy to take root and set him free! John is a sign of contradiction for this age, drunk on self worship and lost in narcissistic self absorption.

P>CHESAPEAKE, VA. (Catholic Online) -  On June 24, the Western Church celebrated the Birth of John the Baptizer. Other than the Lord Himself and His Blessed Mother, John is the only Saint for whom we celebrate both his birth and his death. In a beautiful excerpt from a sermon of St. Augustine on this Feast, excerpted in the Office of Readings for St. John's Day, the great Bishop of Hippo calls us to pause and reflect on why:

"The Church observes the birth of John as in some way sacred; and you will not find any other of the great men of old whose birth we celebrate officially. We celebrate John's, as we celebrate Christ's. This point cannot be passed over in silence, and if I may not perhaps be able to explain it in the way that such an important matter deserves, it is still worth thinking about it a little more deeply and fruitfully than usual."

Our image of John is as the austere ascetic, the odd fellow who lived in the desert eating an odd diet thundering to Israel about repentance. We forget the joy that was associated with his birth and the happiness which accompanied his prophetic life and vocation. He always pointed the way to Jesus.  So must we in our own age. When we begin to really understand this we will also comprehend the freedom he experienced in both life and death. He simply said yes to who he was born to be and continually said yes to who he was called to become. He is an example for each one of us.

When Our Lady went to visit her kinswoman Elizabeth - she carrying the Incarnate Word and Elizabeth carrying John - the Gospel tells us: "When Elizabeth heard Mary's greeting, the infant leaped in her womb, and Elizabeth, filled with the Holy Spirit, cried out in a loud voice and said:"Most blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb.

And how does this happen to me that the mother of my Lord should come to me? For at the moment the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the infant in my womb leaped for joy. Blessed are you who believed that what was spoken to you by the Lord would be fulfilled." And Mary said: "My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord; my spirit rejoices in God my savior." (Luke 1: 41-47)

Living in the first home of the whole human race, his mother's womb, this last Prophet of the Old Testament and First Prophet of the New responded to the arrival of Jesus the Savior with a dance of Joy. St. John the great theologian records in his Gospel where John the Baptizer explained the reason for his joy, "The one who has the bride is the bridegroom; the best man, who stands and listens for him, rejoices greatly at the bridegroom's voice. So this joy of mine has been made complete. He must increase; I must decrease." (John 1:29 - 30) John the Baptizer was a man of Joy because he was a man of true humility!

He was a man who understood that life wasn't all about him. He emptied himself willingly and was thus able to reveal Jesus to others. He was the "best man" at the wedding. His humility opened a space within him for true joy to take root and set him free! John is a sign of contradiction for this age, drunk on self worship and lost in narcissistic self absorption. He points to the path to true freedom, living a lifestyle of self emptying." He must increase and I must decrease". This leads to ongoing conversion; becoming a new creation. (2 Cor. 5:17)

John is a man to be imitated in both life and death. We learn from him to live our lives as joyful penitents; ever aware of our utter dependency on God's grace. It is sin which leads us into slavery and takes away our joy. Only by being freed from its entanglement can we become happy. (See, Romans 6: 6, 7 and Gal. 5:1)  John still points to Jesus, in both his birth and his martyr's death. That is why we celebrate both.

The Lord desires our human flourishing and happiness. He wants us to be free. He invites us to choose Him over our own selfish pursuits. In that continual choosing we are freed and made new.  In Jesus Christ we have been given all that we need to overcome the obstacles which impede us. Notice the language with which we discuss eternal life.

We speak of receiving the receiving the "beatific vision" when we finally stand in His presence and enter into the fullness of communion.  The word "beatitude" actually means happiness! Living in the Lord will make us happy. Not only in the life to come, but beginning in this life. Too often we associate repentance with some kind of wrong- headed self hatred. To the contrary, for those who have been schooled in its lessons like John the Baptizer, the way of voluntary penitence and conversion becomes the path to true joy.

The Venerable John Paul II wrote frequently about human freedom. In one of his letters of instruction on the Christian family he wrote these insightful words: "History is not simply a fixed progression toward what is better - but rather, an event of freedom. Specifically, it is a struggle between freedoms that are in mutual conflict: a conflict between two loves - the love of God to the point of disregarding self and the love of self to the point of disregarding God (John Paul II, Christian Family in the Modern World, n. 6)"

This "conflict between two loves", this "event of freedom", is played out on a daily basis. The recurring questions of Eden echo in our personal histories. How will we exercise our "freedom"? At which tree will we make "our" choices? Will it be the tree of disobedience, where the first Adam chose against God's invitation to a communion of love, or the tree on Golgotha's hill where the second Adam, the Son of God, brought heaven to earth when He stretched out His arms to embrace all men and women, bearing the consequences of all their wrong choices and setting them free from the law of sin and death? (Romans 8:2)

Let me conclude with some words from the Catechism of the Catholic Church: "Freedom is the power, rooted in reason and will, to act or not to act, to do this or that, and so to perform deliberate actions on one's own responsibility. By free will one shapes one's own life. Human freedom is a force for growth and maturity in truth and goodness; it attains its perfection when directed toward God, our beatitude.

"As long as freedom has not bound itself definitively to its ultimate good which is God, there is the possibility of choosing between good and evil, and thus of growing in perfection or of failing and sinning. This freedom characterizes properly human acts. It is the basis of praise or blame, merit or reproach. The more one does what is good, the freer one becomes. There is no true freedom except in the service of what is good and just. The choice to disobey and do evil is an abuse of freedom and leads to "the slavery of sin." (CCC 1731 - 1733).

The choice is ours. Just as it was with John. He shows us the way.

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