Testify to the Light

We are called to testify to the light. The world tells us we should be the light.  The world tells us we should shine.  And so we look for many ways to shine.  We want to be the employee of the month at work.  We want to have a bookcase full of trophies and a wall full of award certificates.  We want to have lists of accomplishments to brag about.  This starts from our earliest days of school and continues throughout adolescence and our teen years.  We want the best prom photos and then then the most elaborate weddings and then start the cycle all over again, raising our children to shine.  And so we have a society built not on the common good, but rather of multitudes of persons with their own agendas in order to look good, in order to be the light. So we wind up with a vast array of individual lights and we all are blinded.  It is like driving down a nighttime highway with traffic coming at you with high beams.

This Sunday’s Gospel reminds us that there is one true light.  Many were under the impression that John the Baptist was that light. The Jewish Leaders questioned him, especially about the Baptizing that he was doing.   They wanted to know who he was.  He was captivating.  They knew his prominence.  They knew his popularity.  He could have seized the opportunity and let his light shine for himself.  He could have made it all about him.  Yet he knew who he was.  He knew he was not the light, but that he was meant to testify to the light, to the savior Jesus Christ.

John knew his place.  He knew his role.  He said he was not worthy to stoop and untie the sandal straps of the one who would emerge, Jesus.  Perhaps so often we forget our roles in the divine story.  We often look at religion as a system of beliefs that we can buy into and put on so we can shine.  And that’s what we do.  We allow our ministries, our vocations, our services to be opportunities to shine.  Christianity is not meant to be a system of beliefs that we can embrace merely to inflate ourselves.  Christianity calls us into a relationship with a person - not any person, but the divine person, the very Word of God become flesh.  The one whom we are invited into relationship with is indeed the very light of the world.  Being in relationship with him is not a private matter.  It includes a call to bring others into that relationship.  This is what John understood.

John leaped in his mother’s womb upon encountering Jesus in his mother’s womb. John knew who Jesus was. Years later, when it was time, he would again be excited to encounter Jesus.  He was equally excited to point him out to others.  And so must we be.  We must first remember that we are not the light. We come to be the light only when we testify to the light.

- The Servant