By F. Luis Casasus, General Superior of idente missionaries
Commentary on the XII Sunday in Ordinary Time, June 24n 2018, New York.
(Book of Isaiah 49:1-6; Acts of the Apostles 13:22-26; Saint Luke 1:57-66.80.)
What will this child turn out to be?
The neighbors and relatives of Zachariah and Elizabeth were asking themselves this question because they took the things they saw to their hearts. And the first conclusion was that surely the hand of the Lord was with him.
Some of the signs in the life of the newborn baby were more obvious than others:
* The birth of John was a special blessing to his parents, who were already advanced in age and childless for many years.
* Before he was born, he was visited by Jesus, in the womb of Mary. And he leapt out of joy.
* His name was clearly a prophecy. As we heard in the First Reading: The Lord called me from birth, from my mother’s womb he gave me my name. John means, the Lord is gracious, and God was not just being gracious toward Zechariah and Elizabeth in the giving of John, but he was also being gracious toward the world, paving the way to our complete redemption. The tongue of Zechariah was freed after his muteness and he was able to understand that his son had a mission to fulfill.
This is what we have to learn from Elizabeth and Zechariah: we receive in prayer the answer to our question about what we will do to bring our neighbor closer to God. We too must learn that our children, each and every person have a mission to fulfill. Otherwise, they could ask us, like John the Baptist in the Second Reading: What do you suppose that I am? Who do we think we see? A reed swayed by the wind? Do we doubt that the hand of the Lord is with them?
We have to continuously ask in our prayer: What will this child brother out to be? And then giving in our lives the proper testimony, if necessary with words, as Saint Francis said.
One of the main difficulties in our times is that young people today have few models to give them the strength to remain faithful in relationships, both with other person or with God. Therefore, apostolic prayer is the instrument necessary to find the way of setting the compelling example of something different; although they do not fully understand the message of Jesus, they need to see its incarnation in our lives and attitude, the lived-out
Gospel.
This is what our Father Founder says:
To contemplate is offering oneself and this how the state of prayer should be understood in the Institute, the apostolic prayer. This is why I gave not only the title of prayer, but apostolic payer because apostolate has to bloom out of prayer (July 30, 1961).
Similarly, for Saint Francis Assisi, to contemplate is to gaze attentively on Christ and embrace Him, with the desire to imitate Him. In Aleksander Solzhenitsyn’s novel A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, Ivan endures all the horrors of a Soviet prison camp. One day he is praying with his eyes closed when a fellow prisoner notices him and says with
ridicule: Prayers won’t help you get out of here any faster. Opening his eyes, Ivan answers: I do not pray to get out of prison but to do the will of God. The apostle asks every day in the desert of his silent payer: Father, how can I know the way? As the Gospel text says today: John the Baptist was in the desert until the day of his manifestation to
Israel.
We all remember, the prophet Elijah escaped to a cave in the mountain, because he was afraid. He knew that queen Jezebel’s men were searching for him and he wanted God to make present Himself in an overwhelming fashion, in the strong wind, earthquake or fire. He wanted God to help him to do some specific things to help others. But God’s answer was unexpected and precise: Go, return on your way to the wilderness of Damascus; and when you arrive, you shall anoint Hazael to be king over Syria; and Jehu the son of Nimshi you shall anoint to be king over Israel; and Elisha the son of Shaphat of Abelmeholah you shall anoint to be prophet in your place. Elijah certainly expected something to happen and when the moment came, he was obedient against his most generous expectations. After his days of profound prayer, he was able to teach others their spiritual path.
Sometimes, this teaching is long and painful. Initially, when Elijah came on Elisha the young man was hesitant about this choice. In another case, referred to in the Acts of the Apostles, we see how God gave John Mark a second chance. He was called by Paul and Barnabas to travel with them on the first missionary journey, but shortly after the trip began, he turned back. When the planning for the second journey was being discussed, Barnabas wanted to give John Mark another chance, which Paul refused to do. Barnabas ended up splitting with Paul and taking John
Mark with him. Paul admitted later on that John Mark was profitable to him for the ministry.
In God’s eyes we really matter. Our mistakes, our efforts, our dreams, our doubts and our hope:
It is a December afternoon. A group of parents are in the lobby of a nursery school waiting to claim their children after the last pre-Christmas class session. The young children run from their lockers each one carrying in their hands the “surprise”, the brightly wrapped package on which they have been working on for weeks.
One small boy, trying to run, put on his coat, and wave to his parents all at the same time slipped and fell. The “surprise” slipped from his hand landed on the floor and broke with the obvious ceramic crash. The child began to cry inconsolably.
His father, trying to minimize the incident and comfort the boy patted his head and said: Now that’s alright so. It doesn’t matter, it really doesn’t matter at all. But the child’s mother, somewhat wiser in such situations, swept the boy into her arms and said: Oh, but it does matter. It matters a great deal. And she wept with her son.
This illustrates how much in God’s eyes we really matter, how He cares for what happens to us in our troubles and their difficulties…and the way God shares with us His suffering, His tears, in a continuous and intimate link called mystical Affliction by our Father Founder. In this sharing is where we learn about our current mission and the mission of our fellowmen.
Not forgetting that, in our weaknesses and difficulties, we need more than a pat on the back and a few words of reassurance. We need to be blessed and confirmed. When in pain or confused, we long for that someone who falls to the earth beside us, picks up our torn, broken and bleeding spirits, and says: Oh, but it does matter. It matters eternally.
A mother innately knows that it matters a great deal, to gaze upon a little child and see pure innocence and hope. Mother Mary watched her child’s actions and treasured and pondered them in her heart. This is why we can call her Mother of Missionaries, Mother of Evangelization.
In the life of John, later, during a ball, his murder was perpetrated and consummated by Herod, a lustful and drunken king, urged on by two greedy women. Again, it may seem that God does not care about what happened to him…But when the people heard that John the Baptist had been killed, they turned from following him to the one who came after him. And Jesus had compassion on them and healed them (Mt 14:13-14). As is often the
case, His paths are not our paths.
As we celebrate the Birthday of John the Baptist, we are reminded of our responsibility through apostolic prayer to help each young person, each of our children to become what God had called him to be. And Pope Francis reminds us serenity, discretion, humility, detachment and union with God: The Lord says: ‘You are salt; you are light.’…
But do so in order that others see and glorify God. You will not even receive any merit.
When we eat, we don’t compliment the salt. No, we say the pasta or meat is good… When we go to sleep at night, we don’t say the light is good. We ignore the light, but we live illuminated by light. This impels Christians to be anonymous witnesses (June, 12, 2018). Allow me to become more personal and tell you something about one of my encounters with Fernando Rielo, our Father Founder. He was in his last years, visibly tired and sick.
But in his meetings with his missionaries, he used to share with us his spiritual experiences. One day he said: Everybody in the Institute is praying for my health…but me, adding: And it is not that I am happy with this suffering or I am very strong to withstand these pains. I do not need to be able to walk again or regain strength and energy. The point is that every day I ask our Heavenly Father how can I offer Him my life…and I always get a response.
