As I take communion to carebound in our parish, I am frequently privileged to watch a process which is exquisitely beautiful. At some point after a temporarily debilitating fall or bout with infection…or some days after a diagnosis of terminal illness, a person begins to deeply question and answer the questions, “Who am I? Why did God make me? What is the sense and meaning of my life?”
Such questions lead to deep conversations. One woman recently said, “It is fascinating what I am doing. I am remembering things I have not thought about in years. I see them in a new light. Sometimes I see goodness in the middle of something that was only painful and hard at the time. Sometimes I realize that what I said or did was wrong—when I did not see it then. Sometimes I see what I said or did was exactly the right thing. But day by day I am putting my life together and examining it.”
John the Baptist
I do not know if John the Baptist had such thoughts as he waited in prison as Jesus “ascended” and he “descended,” but today’s celebration of the Birth of John the Baptist leads me to consider today’s psalm with a certain urgency. It is from Psalm 139, the pro-life psalm, one that I much love:
O LORD, you have probed me, you know me:
you know when I sit and when I stand;
you understand my thoughts from afar.
My journeys and my rest you scrutinize,
with all my ways you are familiar.
Truly you have formed my inmost being;
you knit me in my mother’s womb.
I give you thanks that I am fearfully, wonderfully made;
wonderful are your works.
My soul also you knew full well;
nor was my frame unknown to you
When I was made in secret,
when I was fashioned in the depths of the earth.
God’s Will
God does indeed make us and know us and understanding us–even before we are born, even if we do not know and understand ourselves. And in that knowing, God knows and has a plan for each of us. But how do we know that plan and follow it? How can we know and align ourselves with God’s will.
Sometimes, when I listen to people talk about “God’s will” and the meaning of life, it sounds like they believe in predestination—that God wills goodness for some people and trouble and evil for others. That is NOT what the church teaches. As the catechism says,
Of all visible creatures, only man is “able to know and love his creator.” He is “the only creature on earth that God has willed for its own sake,” and he alone is called share, by knowledge and love, in God’s own life. It was for this end that he was created, and this is the fundamental reason for his dignity… (CCC 356)
Yet There Is Goodness and Evil in the Events of Our Lives
Today’s Gospel recalls John the Baptist’s birth. You know the story in Luke 1. Elizabeth and Zechariah are childless and aging. An angel appears to Zechariah as he offers sacrifice in the temple. The angel tells Zechariah they will have a child. Zechariah finds that hard to believe. To help his unbelief, the angel makes him mute until the child is born. The couple conceives, and the angel tells Mary that her cousin Elizabeth is with child. Mary goes to see Elizabeth “who is in her sixth month” [hence, for the record, today is 6 months before Christmas Eve]. John leaps in Elizabeth’s womb when he and Elizabeth hear Mary’s greeting. In the womb, John is the FIRST to announce the Christ’s presence.
It was to announce “the Kingdom of God is at hand” that John was born. He went to work early! But how did he discover who God created him to be?
I had never noticed the final lines of today’s Gospel: “The child grew and became strong in spirit, and he was in the desert until the day of his manifestation to Israel.”
Power and Importance of Our Hidden Lives
God was working on John during his 30 or so years of hidden life. How did he become “strong in spirit”? Doubtless there were some tough experiences that helped make him strong. Did his parents die when he was young? How did it come to be that he fed on locusts and wild honey? How did that hidden life shape him to do what God called him to?
John was the last of the prophets of Israel. His message was “metanoia”–conversion. There was a belief at the time that the Messiah would come when there were enough holy people in Israel. John’s job was to motivate enough people to become holy that the Messiah would come.
My guess is, that since John started pointing people to Jesus when he was in the womb, that he worked hard at fulfilling his role in life. He was wonderfully made to do exactly that. The Messiah came–John must have followed God’s plan.
You—Me: Called to Share in God’s Divine Life
But you and I are no less wonderfully made. We are no less known to God. God did not make any of us to be the last great prophet of Israel. That was John’s job. But he made each of us to help create the Kingdom John preached.
What is my job? What is yours? How do our lives fit together? How do I look at my life as “in God’s hands” without falling into a quietism that says in effect, “God makes the choices. I just have to live what happens to me.”
I hear and see that in current Catholic literature and it disturbs me. God forms us and knows us and has a plan for us–but accomplishment of that plan requires our consent, our work, our “growing strong in the Spirit.”
It includes the hidden, the difficult, and the nurturing moments of our lives.
Now, how do I handle the events that caused harm in my life: childhood trauma, barrenness, early widowhood, the limits and glitches in my personality and mind? Do I say, “God willed these evils”?
No.
God wills life. And life includes evils. God does not seem to be thwarted and disturbed by those evils: look at John the Baptist’s life, Jesus’ life, and the life of literally any saint. Evils are in every one of those lives.
God wills exactly what the catechism says: we are called to share, “by knowledge and love, in God’s own life.”
Evils need not stop that. God’s own life includes the presence of evils. As much as I gasp at watching the news, how painful it must be for God to watch all the evils in the world!
The Triumph of Love
They are present so that love can triumph. In John the Baptist’s life. In Jesus’ life. In your life. In my life.
Probably, no one experienced a more a more nonsensical end than John the Baptist: to have your life end because a drunken, prideful monarch made a crazy public promise to a step-daughter at a banquet. Unless it was Jesus: to die for no wrong, mocked and naked on a cross.
But we know the whole story: John fulfilled his life…and went on to be St. John the Baptist. He found his place in heaven. He experienced evil, but God created good from it—for the Kingdom, for John, and for Jesus and his disciples.
Jesus rose from the dead–and thus triumphed over evil–forever. God’s love overcame the worst of it–to give us sinful humans the gift of Kingdom of God now and FOREVER.
So, the next time I drive away from a communicant who is musing about the meaning of life, and I question mine, I need to think: how is God using even evil to create good in me? How has God or can God create good, even from the sins, mistakes, and false roads of my life? How can I let him?
Prayer:
Lead me, guide me, Lord. I am weak and often blind, but I will to follow You. Amen
