Who Art Thou?
The first line of today’s Gospel introduces us to St. John the Baptist. There he was, out in the wilderness, preaching to the people and baptizing them in the River Jordan. But who was this man? It was about thirty years since three wise men had come from the east, following a star and claiming that a new king had been born. King Herod had sent his soldiers to kill all the male children around Bethlehem, but rumors no doubt abounded that this newborn King had survived the massacre and was somewhere out there, the Messiah who would rescue the Jewish people from their tyranny. Now, great multitudes were flocking into the desert, wondering if this 30-year-old man was indeed that Messiah.
Whoever he was, he represented a threat to the status quo, and to no one more than the Pharisees in Jerusalem. They were the Deep State of their time, the equivalent of the Rothschilds, the Rockefellers, the Schwabs who dominate today’s political underworld. They were the personification of the status quo, and these rumors of a Messiah in the desert filled them with anger and dread. They felt it was high time to find out exactly who this man was or claimed to be, and so they sent out their priests and Levites to assess the situation.
Once they found John, they wasted no time in asking him, “Who art thou?” St. John knew what they were up to and did not beat around the bush, answering them directly that he was not the Christ. They followed up with more questions: “Art thou Elias? Art thou the prophet?” To all their questions, St. John the Baptist answered truthfully that he was none of the above. Finally, they repeat their first question, demanding that if he’s not the Messiah, not Elias, not the prophet, that he tell them who he actually is. John looks at them and pronounces very seriously that he is the voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, and that someone else is the Messiah, someone who “standeth among you, whom ye know not.” We can imagine how this was received when the priests and Levites reported back to their puppet masters in Jerusalem.
Our Gospel today is not a parable. There’s not really a moral to the story, one from which we can learn to live a better life. It’s more of a historical narrative. But we shouldn’t think that there’s nothing in this story that can be applied to ourselves. What St. John the Baptist teaches us through his responses is humility. He is given every opportunity to inflate his own importance, to pretend he’s someone he isn’t, and yet he chooses simply to tell the truth. The only embellishment he gives to his own role is in reference to the real Messiah, whose shoe’s latchet, he says, he is unworthy to unloose. The Baptist gives us a good and useful lesson, one which we can apply especially when we receive compliments and are in danger of feeling prideful. Non nobis, Domine non nobis, sed nomini tuo da gloriam—”Not unto us, O Lord, not unto us, but unto thy Name give the glory.” Any good thing we are able to do in this life, we should always attribute it to the graces of God. Without these graces we would be incapable of performing any meritorious act, any deeds of charity or mercy. Without God, we can do nothing that is good. Let it be known to those who seek to praise us, that there is someone else, someone they know not, who dwells amongst us and is the only one truly worthy of their praise. If we do anything “good”, we are only the instrument of our Creator. It is he who writes, while we are his pen.
This ability to give all the credit to God, the one who is truly responsible for anything good we do, frees us from any inclination to seek recognition for ourselves. Instead we find our joy in Bethlehem, kneeling like the Three Kings before the Christ Child and giving him the gifts of our obedience, loyalty and our own good deeds. And like St. John the Baptist we rejoice, and again I say rejoice, that there is indeed one who is soon coming to stand among us, greater than the greatest of prophets and certainly greater than us. To him be the glory, forever and ever.