John the Baptizer and the Path to Freedom and Happiness

Let us follow his example during our Advent of preparation.

Our image of John is often as the austere ascetic, the odd fellow who lived in the desert eating a strange diet and 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.

CHESAPEAKE, VA (Catholic Online) - This is the Second Sunday in the Advent season in the cycle of Readings for the Catholic Mass. We are introduced to one of the two main personalities of our Advent season, John the Baptizer. The other is Mary, the Mother of the Lord. Our Gospel is taken from St. Matthew.

Included in the Gospel passage which I proclaimed at Mass are these words of the Baptizer, "I am baptizing you with water, for repentance, but the one who is coming after me is mightier than I. I am not worthy to carry his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire."

Our image of John is often as the austere ascetic, the odd fellow who lived in the desert eating a strange diet and 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.

Because He focused on Jesus Christ, he experienced true freedom and happiness.  He is held out to us as an example in Advent to show us how we can find this happiness and freedom as well.  John said "yes" - to who he was - and to who he was called to become. In that he is an example for each one of us to reflect on during this season of Advent, and to imitate.

John was a Man of Joy

When Mary, the Mother of the Lord, went to visit her kinswoman Elizabeth - she carrying the Incarnate Word, Jesus, 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 his mother's womb, this last Prophet of the Old Testament and First Prophet of the New Testament responded to the arrival of Jesus the Savior with a dance of Joy. St. John records John the Baptizer explaining 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 was a Man of Humility

He was a man of Joy precisely because he was a man of true humility! The two are connected.

John understood that life wasn't all about him. He emptied himself of himself willingly. His humility opened a space within him for true joy to take root and set him free! John is a sign of contradiction for an age drunk on self worship and lost in narcissistic self absorption.

He points all of us to the path of true freedom - living a lifestyle of self-emptying. He affirmed "He (Jesus) must increase and I must decrease". (John 3:30) Jesus must increase, I must decrease.

That is the attitude, the disposition, the way of life which can lead each one of us into to true freedom. This is the path to becoming the new creation we are called to become by living our whole life, as the Apostle Paul told the Christians in Corinth "in Christ" and becoming a New Creation! (2 Cor. 5:17)

John is Our Advent Model

John is a man to be imitated this Advent. We can learn from him how to live our lives as joyful penitents; ever aware of our utter dependency on God's grace at every moment - and ever aware of our sin.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church gets to the heart of the moral teaching of Christianity when it affirms: ‽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." (Romans 6:17) (CCC Par. 1733)

It is sin which leads us into slavery - and it is sin which takes away our joy. Only by being freed from its entanglements can we become truly happy and free. (See, Romans 6: 6, 7 and Gal. 5:1)

John always points to Jesus Christ. He did so his birth, his life and his martyr's death.  That was his Vocation. It also is our vocation - every one of us. Yes, we may live it differently, in accordance with our state in life and particular calling. but at the core, we are all called to live for, in and with Jesus Christ. That is what it means to be a Christian.

John Shows Us How to be Truly Free

We do not hear enough of a fundamental truth of the Christian faith; the Lord desires our human flourishing and happiness. He wants us to be truly free. The Apostle Paul proclaimed to the Galatians "It was for freedom that Christ set us free" (Gal 5:1)

John the Baptizer, by his example, invites us to choose the Lord Jesus Christ over our own selfish pursuits, in order to find that true happiness and freedom. Sin fractured our freedom and it is the wood of the Cross which must become the splint which restores it.

We often speak of receiving the "beatific vision" when we finally stand in His presence and enter into the fullness of communion.  The word "beatitude" means happiness! Living in the Lord will make us happy; not only in the life to come, but beginning now.

Too often we associate repentance with a kind of wrongheaded 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 freedom and true happiness.

St. Josemaria Escriva, a Saint of our own time, reminds us the universal call to holiness embraces every vocation and state in life. He once wrote these words, I am every day more convinced that happiness in Heaven is for those who know how to be happy on earth." (The Forge, 1005)

Conclusion

The late Pope St John Paul 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 daily for each one of us. The recurring questions our first parents faced in the Garden Eden of echo in our personal histories.

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 will it be 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)

How will we choose to exercise our "freedom"?

Let me conclude with words concerning true freedom 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).

John the Baptizer shows us the way to Happiness and Freedom. Let us follow his example during our Advent of preparation.

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Deacon Keith A. Fournier, the Editor in Chief of Catholic Online, is Founder and Chairman of Common Good Foundation and Common Good Alliance. Both organizations are committed to the conversion of culture. An ordained Roman Catholic Deacon of the Diocese of Richmond, Virginia, he and his wife Laurine have five grown children and seven grandchildren, He is a human rights lawyer and public policy advocate who served as the first and founding Executive Director of the American Center for Law and Justice in the nineteen nineties. 

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