No, Elijah was not reincarnated in John the Baptist

In my homily yesterday, I quoted these words of Jesus in regard to Saint John the Baptist:

All the prophets and the law prophesied up to the time of John. And if you are willing to accept it, he is Elijah, the one who is to come. Whoever has ears ought to hear” (Matthew 11:13-15).

From these words, a few people received the impression that I implied that John the Baptist was the reincarnation of the Prophet Elijah. This is, of course, not what I meant and is certainly not Jesus said.

This misinterpretation is not new to our day, and is one that Saint Jerome confronted in his Commentary on Matthew. He said:

So John the Baptist is called Elijah, not in accordance with foolish philosophers and certain heretics who introduce the topic of metempsychosis (transmigration of souls) but because, according to other evidence of the gospel, he came in the spirit and goodness of Elijah and had either the same grace or power of the Holy Spirit. The austerity of their life and firm resolve were equally strong in Elijah and in John. Both lived in the desert. The former girded himself with a belt of skins, and the latter had a similar belt. The former was forced to flee because he accused Ahab and Jezebel of the sin of impiety in their lives. John was beheaded because he accused Herod and Herodias of unlawful marriage. There are those who think therefore that John is called Elijah because, just as Elijah would lead the way in the second coming of our Savior (according to Malachi) and would announce that the judge is coming, so John acted at the first coming and because each was a messenger of the first or second coming of our Lord (2.11.15).

This is why the Lord said to Zechariah, the father of John the Baptist, that his son would go before the Lord “in the power and spirit of Elijah to turn the hearts of fathers toward children and the disobedient to the understanding of the righteousness, to prepare a people fit for the Lord” (Luke 1:17).

Homily - Camel's hair is a sign of, and a call to, repentance

The Second Sunday of Advent (A)

Dear brothers and sisters,

It is a rare moment in the Scriptures when we are told what someone wears, but two of the four Evangelists - Matthew and Mark – take the time to tell us Saint John the Baptist “wore clothing made of camel’s hair and had a leather belt around his waist” (Matthew 3:4; cf. Mark 1:6). If both Evangelists make explicit reference to John’s clothing, there must be something significant about it; but what? What is noteworthy about a tunic made of camel’s hair?

Saint John Chrysostom tells us, “John’s clothing itself was symbolic of nothing less than the coming kingdom and of repentance.”[1] We know this is true become there is another man who wore similar clothing in the Scriptures, one who lived many centuries before John’s birth. To this man the angel of the Lord said:

Go, intercept the messengers of Samaria’s king, and ask them, ‘Is it because there is no God in Israel that you are going to inquire of Baalzebub, the god of Ekron?’ For this, the Lord says: ‘You shall not leave the bed upon which you lie; instead, you shall die’” (II Kings 1:3-4).

This man warned of impending death for the grave sin of idolatry, of turning to false gods for help.

Hearing these words, the king’s messengers returned to him. King Ahaziah asked them, “What was the man like who came up to you and said these things to you” (II Kings 1:7). “‘Wearing a hairy garment,’ they replied, ‘with a leather girdle about his loins’” (II Kings 1:8). Hearing this description, the king knew at once the name of this man and cried out, “It is Elijah the Tishbite” (II Kings 1:8)!

By donning a garment made of camel’s hair and securing it with a belt of leather, John the Baptist demonstrated in a clear way his prophetic calling. We learn through the prophet Zechariah that this form of dress was customary for the prophets: “On that day, every prophet shall be ashamed to prophesy his vision, neither shall he assume the hairy mantle” (Zechariah 13:4). But more than this, John showed through the use of his clothing, that he was Elijah.

That Elijah would return was foretold by the Lord God through the Prophet Malachi:

Lo, I will send you Elijah, the prophet, before the day of the Lord comes, the great and terrible day, to turn the hearts of the fathers to their children, and the hearts of the children to their fathers, lest I come and strike the land with doom (Malachi 3:24).

The mission of John the Baptist was the same as that of Elijah, to turn back hearts. This is why he cried out in the desert, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” (Matthew 3:2)! Because John the Baptist’s life so clearly reflected that of Elijah, Jesus said of John, “All the prophets and the law prophesied up to the time of John. And if you are willing to accept it, he is Elijah, the one who is to come. Whoever has ears ought to hear” (Matthew 11:13-15). What are we to hear? His call to repentance, for John came “to give his people knowledge of salvation through the forgiveness of their sins” (Luke 1:77).

Regrettably, too many people have accepted the lie that sin is unimportant; too many people say something like, “I’m a good person; that’s all God wants.” This is simply not true; God desires – and even commands – that we be holy, that our lives look like that of Christ Jesus.

To sin is – in Greek – “to miss the mark,” hamartia. It is an archery term used by Saint Paul to describe our offense against the law of God, our failures to love by God and neighbor. Put simply, to sin is to miss the mark. What is the mark for which we are aiming if not the life of Jesus? We our lives fail to reflect his, we miss the mark; we sin.

As I said, lots of people today refuse to acknowledge their sins. They think because they have not committed physical murder or adultery, or because they have not robbed a bank, that they have not sinned. This is only because they fail to realize the reality of sin; every sin is a failure to love, and each of us fails to love several times each day. Saint Augustine put it this way:

So long as a person bears flesh, he cannot but have some at least slight sins. But don’t belittle what we are referring to as these slight sins. If you belittle them when you weigh them, shudder them when you count them out. For many slight ones make a great one: many drops fill a river; many grains make a mass. And what hope is there? Confession above all.[2]

Confessions are heard here before Mass, but few people come; next week, another opportunity will be had. Will you hear the cry of the Baptist to repent and take advantage of this opportunity to prepare the way of the Lord?

When it comes to confession, people generally have a few basic questions, the first of which goes something like this: “Why do I have to confess my sins to a priest?” The short answer is because Jesus wants us to confess our sins to a priest. When he breathed the Holy Spirit upon the Apostles, Jesus said to them, “Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them, and whose sins you retain are retained” (John 20:23). If Jesus did not want the Apostles to forgive sins, he would not have given them power and the authority to do so; he did nothing needlessly. If the Apostles are to know which sins to forgive and which sins to retain, they must know what the sins are and this requires confession.

The second question wants to know something like, “Won’t Father treat me differently? What if he remembers my sins?” The likelihood that a priest remembers who goes to confession is small; we enter the confession to lift the burden of sin, not to keep a tally of who comes. However, even if a priest does remember who comes to confession, he cannot treat that person any better or any worse because of what he learns in the confessional. It’s rare that a priest might remember who confessed what sin. You enter the confessional to get of your sins; why would the priest want to keep them?

A third question is, “It’s been a long time; how do I go to confession.” The process is very simple. Enter the confessional and tell the priest how long its been since your last confession. “It’s been while,” means different things to different people; has it been two months, or thirty-seven years? Next, confess your sins are best as you able; there is no need to euphemisms; let the priest know you are finished by saying something like, “These are my sins,” so he doesn’t accidentally interrupt your thoughts. The priest may then give a few words of counsel and will give you a penance. If you think the penance is too severe or too light, let the priest know. Next, make an act of contrition by acknowledging your sorrow for sin; it can be as simple as, “Jesus, have mercy on me, a sinner.” The priest will give you absolution and send you on your way with your burden lifted.

When Saint John tells us to prepare the way of the Lord, he intends for us to prepare and cleanse our hearts, for by cleansing our hearts we also cleanse our lives. This is – frankly – the only preparation for Christmas that matters. As beautiful as the lights and trees are, as tasty as the cookies are, if our hearts and souls are not prepared, all of the preparations of our homes will be vain and will not produce the full joy that is desired.

In what remains of Advent, “what we really must do is clear the way for the Lord who is good and powerful. We are disposing our hearts for an encounter of love with him, and in this way we are encouraged to undertake the needed purification.”[3] Ask the Lord, then, to help you recognize your failures to love, your failures to love both God and neighbor, in ways both large and small. Enter into the confessional with these failures to love and ask for the grace to make a good and worthy confession. By doing so, you will encounter Love himself, who will fill you the joy and peace he longs for you to have because his kingdom is indeed at hand. Amen.

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[1] Saint John Chrysostom, The Gospel of Matthew, Homily 10.4.

[2] Saint Augustine of Hippo, Homilies on the First Epistle of John, 3.14.

[3] Albert Vanhoye, S.J., Daily Bread of the Word: Reflections on the Weekday Lectionary Readings (Chicago: Liturgy Training Publications, 2019), 2.

Homily - The Second Sunday of Advent - 4 December 2016

The Second Sunday of Advent (A)

Dear brothers and sisters,

In these days, we make use of the color violet – which we usually call purple – because of its long association with a spirit of repentance and royal majesty. Advent is marked by a joyful penitence because we await with eager expectation the coming of Christ our King. Our hearts are joyful because we know the Lord is coming again in his glory, yet our hearts are also filled with trepidation because “with the breath of his mouth he shall slay the wicked” (Isaiah 11:4).

The Lord will not judge us as we so often judge others, which is cause for joy; he will not judge us on our appearance or on what others say about us, but on the measure of our love, which is cause for trepidation (cf. Isaiah 11:3). Justice shall indeed flourish in his days because he is himself the Sun of Justice, the Radiant Dawn to whom we look, “his dwelling shall be glorious,” and in his light all things will be revealed (cf. Malachi 3:20; Isaiah 11:3-10). This is why we must heed the words of the prophets Isaiah and Saint John the Baptist to “prepare the way of the Lord [and] make straight his paths” (Isaiah 40:3; Matthew 3:3).

We prepare his way when we repent, when we turn from our sins and turn again toward Christ. This is the very message of the Baptist: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” (Matthew 3:2)! The Baptizer does not make a mere suggestion, but speaks a word of command; he speaks in the imperative, saying, metanoeite, a word that means “to change one’s mind or perspective.” John “is calling for a complete change in thinking and conduct – [a] decisive, fundamental change of direction in one’s life.”[1]

Saint Bonaventure tells us John the Baptist “admonished us to prepare ourselves according to the threefold excellence of [Jesus’] qualities,” saying:

First because [Jesus] is the wisest master, we prepare ourselves as disciples longing to believe the master, who teaches through the submission of the intellect. Second, because he is the most powerful king we prepare ourselves as dutiful servants to obey the commander in carrying out actions. Third, because he is the most just judge we prepare us as penitent men to respond to the judge by correcting shortcomings.[2]

This is the proper task of these days of preparation for the great solemnity of Christmas; everything else is secondary.

The people responded in great numbers to John’s call to a complete turnaround in life because they recognized him not simply as a prophet, but as the prophet – indeed, the last of the prophets – who heralded the coming of God himself. They recognized this in three ways: in his preaching, in his clothing, and in his location.

In that passage gloriously rendered in Handel’s Messiah, Isaiah said, “Get you up to a high mountain, O Zion, herald of good tidings; lift up your voice with strength, O Jerusalem, herald of good tidings, lift it up, fear not; say to the cities of Judah: ‘Behold your God’” (Isaiah 40:9)! When he pointed to the Lord Jesus near Bethany, John the Baptist cried out, saying, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world” (John 1:29)! He went on to say, “And I have seen and have borne witness that this is the Son of God” (John 1:34). The people also recognized the great prophet had come in Saint John’s clothing. They knew the great prophet Elijah “wore a garment of haircloth, with a belt of leather about his waist” (II Kings 1:8). The Lord God also revealed through his prophet Malachi, “Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and awesome day of the Lord comes” (Malachi 4:5 [3:23]). Even the location of John’s preaching signaled a moment of great importance, for it was at the River Jordan that the Lord healed Naaman of his leprosy, where Elijah was taken up to heaven in the fiery chariot, and through which the Lord led his people after their wandering of forty years into the Promised Land (cf. II Kings 5:1-4, 2:1-11, and Joshua 3:1-17). Later in his ministry, Jesus made the connection between John the Baptist and the return of Elijah explicit when he said, “For all the prophets and the law prophesied until John; and if you are willing to accept it, he is Elijah who is to come” (Matthew 11:13-14; cf. Matthew 17:10-13).

Recognizing the truth of John’s words, they streamed toward him to receive his baptism “as they acknowledged their sins” (Matthew 3:6). We, too, need to hear the call of the Baptist to acknowledge our sins and confess them to the Lord; we, too, need to repent and reorient our lives toward Jesus; we, too, need to make the decisive, fundamental change to believe, to serve, and to follow Jesus in all things. By doing so, we prepare the way for him and make our hearts worthy of becoming glorious dwellings for the Lord. We must remember that “if the way of interior dwelling is not prepared well, Christ will not come to us nor will we be able to meet Christ.”[3] We spend so much time and energy preparing to receive and welcome our family and friends into our homes, and rightly so; but how much more time and energy ought we spend preparing our souls to receive the Divine Guest!

We best prepare the home of our hearts for him by hastening to the confessional to make a good confession of our sins. When we do so, he removes whatever keeps us from him. In the honest and humble confession of sins, the Lord’s justice flourishes, his peace is felt, and we are strengthened by his love to “produce good fruit as evidence of [our] repentance” (cf. Psalm 72:7; Matthew 3:8). Beg the Holy Spirit, then, to help you examine your conscience, to reveal your sins to you, your failures to love, and to help you make a worthy confession of your sins; if you open your heart to his promptings, he will lead you to be reconciled to the Lord and to his Church so you can look with wonder upon the Face of him who is love together with all who are his friends. It is only when we are reconciled to the Lord and to one another that can we truly await the coming of the Lord with the joy and eagerness proper to this season of Advent.

A few days ago, I met with a young couple to begin preparing them for their marriage. At one point in our conversation, they asked if I would hear confessions after their wedding rehearsal. They asked this because they want to enter the sacrament of marriage cleansed of their sins to be able to reflect the love of Jesus to each other and to the world. It was a beautiful and humble request, one I will be very happy to honor. How I wish we would all imitate their example in these days of Advent to prepare our hearts to be worthy dwellings for the Lord when he comes!

Saint John warns us today that “even now the ax lies at the root of the trees” and that “every tree that does not bear good fruit will be cut down” (Matthew 3:10). A great error has emerged today and is present in the minds of too many people. This error says something like this: “God is great. He knows us, so sin does not count; in the end God will be kind to us all. It is a beautiful hope,” but it misses something rather important. It forgets that “both justice and true guilt exist. Those who have destroyed man and the earth cannot suddenly sit down at God’s table together with their victims. God creates justice. We must keep this in mind.”[4] We must remember that, as Pope Francis reminds us, “everyone, sooner or later, will be subject to God’s judgment, from which no one can escape.”[5] This is why Saint John warns us today that the Lord’s “winnowing fan is in his hand” (Matthew 3:12) and why he calls us to repent. His call to repentance is one of hope, because the same Lord who comes to “strike the ruthless with the rod of his mouth” also comes with “faithfulness [as] a belt upon his hips” (Isaiah 11:5).

Let each of us, then, prepare the way of the Lord by entering the confessional to cast off all that is unworthy of Christ and so live fully, truly, and joyfully as we await the blessed coming of the Lord Jesus Christ, of him who is our only true and lasting hope. Amen.

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[1] Curtis Mitch and Edward Sri, Catholic Commentary on Scripture: The Gospel of Matthew (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Academic, 2010), 62.

[2] Saint Bonaventure, Sermon for the Fourth Sunday of Advent, 7. In Works of St. Bonaventure: The Sunday Sermons of St. Bonaventure. Timothy J. Johnston, trans. (Saint Bonaventure, New York: Franciscan Institute Publications, 2008), 104.

[3] Saint Bonaventure, Sermon for the Fourth Sunday of Advent, 11.

[4] Pope Benedict XVI, Address to the Clergy of the Diocese of Rome, 7 February 2008.

[5] Pope Francis, Misericordiae vultus, 19.

Archbishop Aquila: Heroism IS for the average Christian, even married couples

His Excellency the Most Reverend Samuel J. Aquila, Archbishop of Denver, in a strongly worded defense of the Church's teaching on marriage, has asked, "Did Thomas More and John Fisher die for nothing?"

Permit me, please, to share his words at some length, beginning with this excellent historical background to the question currently on the minds of many people within - and without - the Church:

The idea that Catholics should be allowed to remarry and receive communion did not begin with the letter signed by Cardinal Kasper and other members of the German episcopate in 1993. Another country’s episcopate – England’s – pioneered this experiment in Christian doctrine nearly 500 years ago. At stake then was not just whether any Catholic could remarry, but whether the king could, since his wife had not borne him a son.

As with those who advocate for communion for the civilly remarried, the English bishops were uncomfortable with embracing divorce and remarriage outright. Instead, they chose to bend the law to the individual circumstances of the case with which they were confronted, and King Henry VIII was granted an “annulment” — on a fraudulent basis and without the sanction of Rome.

If “heroism is not for the average Christian,” as the German Cardinal Walter Kasper has put it, it certainly wasn’t for the King of England. Instead, issues of personal happiness and the well-being of a country made a strong utilitarian argument for Henry’s divorce. And the King could hardly be bothered to skip communion as the result of an irregular marriage.

England’s Cardinal Wolsey and all the country’s bishops, with the exception of Bishop John Fisher of Rochester, supported the king’s attempt to undo his first – and legitimate – marriage. Like Fisher, Thomas More a layman and the king’s chancellor, also withheld his support. Both were martyred – and later canonized.

In publicly advocating that the king’s marriage was indissoluble, Fisher argued that “this marriage of the king and queen can be dissolved by no power, human or Divine.” For this principle, he said, he was willing to give his life. He continued by noting that John the Baptist saw no way to “die more gloriously than in the cause of marriage,” despite the fact that marriage then “was not so holy at that time as it has now become by the shedding of Christ’s Blood.”

Given some of suggestions raised at the Ordinary Synod concerning a possible admission to the Holy Eucharist to those who are divorced and remarried - that is, living in a public, adulterous relationship - Archbishop Aquila asks, "Do the German bishops [and their supporters] believe that Sts. Thomas More and John Fischer sacrificed their lives in vain?"

After demonstrating the errors in such an argument, the Archbishop of Denver says something very important and should be rather obvious to every Catholic of good will:

On remarriage, and many other issues, no one would say that the Church’s teaching, which is Christ’s, is easy. But Christ himself did not compromise on core teachings to keep his disciples from leaving him – whether it was on the Eucharist or marriage (Jn 6: 60-71; Mt 19: 3-12). Nor did John Fisher compromise to keep the king Catholic....

As disciples we are always called to listen to the voice of Jesus before the voice of the world, culture or history. The voice of Jesus sheds light on the darkness of the world and cultures. Let us pray that all concerned will listen to those words of eternal life, no matter how difficult!

 Be sure to read the entire piece.

On locusts and wild honey, and then some

From the archives, with a few edits:

When he appeared to Zechariah, the angel of the Lord prophesied of John the Baptist, “He will drink neither wine nor strong drink,” thus indicating the kind of life he would live (Luke 1:15).

Here John appears like Samson and Samuel, who, like John, took the nazirite vow and were consecrated to the Lord (cf. Judges 13:4-5; I Samuel 1:11). Those who took this vow were regarded as prophets as long as they remained under the vow.

The word “nazirite” comes from the Hebrew word, nazir, meaning, “set apart as sacred, dedicated, vowed.” Even from the womb, then, John was dedicated to the service of the Lord.

This vow of the nazirite was given by the Lord through Moses:

When a man (or a woman) solemnly takes the nazirite vow to dedicate himself to the Lord, he shall abstain from wine and strong drink; he may neither drink wine vinegar, other vinegar, or any kind of grape juice, nor eat either fresh or dried grapes. As long as he is a nazirite he shall not eat anything of the produce of the vine, not even unripe grapes or grapeskins. While he is under the nazirite vow, no razor shall touch his hair. Until the period of his dedication to the Lord is over, he shall be sacred, and shall let the hair of his head grow freely. As long as he is dedicated to the Lord, he shall not enter where a dead person is. Not even for his father or mother, his sister or brother, should they die, may he become unclean, since his head bears his dedication to God. As long as he is a nazirite he is sacred to the Lord (Numbers 6:2-8).

From his birth, then, we see that John was set apart for the Lord, to be the “voice of one crying out in the desert, ‘Prepare the way of the Lord’” (Isaiah 40:3).

There is more that we can learn of the Baptist if we consider not only what he did not drink, but also what he ate. Both Matthew and Mark tell us that John’s diet consisted of “locusts and wild honey” (Matthew 3:4; Mark 1:6).

Under the Old Covenant, locusts were among the insects that could be eaten (cf. Leviticus 11:22). By eating locusts, John remained faithful to the Law and also renounced worldly pleasures.

The locusts may also call to mind the eighth plague visited upon the Egyptians for their stubbornness to release the Hebrews (cf. Exodus 10:4-6). Peter Chrysologus tells us that “locusts intended for sinners worthy of chastisement are rightly considered to be food for repentance, so that bounding from the place of sin to the place of repentance the sinner may fly to heaven on the wings of forgiveness.”[1]

Yet Origen suggests a further reason for John to eat locusts: “John ate locusts, suggesting that the people of God were being nourished by a word that traveled high aloft in the air and had not yet passed over the earth.”[2] It was John the Baptist, after all, who said of this Word made flesh, “Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world” (John 1:29).

The reason that John ate locusts, then, is threefold:

1. to remain faithful to the Law;
2. to call the people to repentance; and,
3. to point out the coming of the “living bread that came down from heaven” (John 6:51).

But what of the honey that John also ate? It surely alludes back to the Promised Land, to the land “flowing with milk and honey” (Exodus 3:8). This land the Lord promised his people, but they lost it by disobeying his commands. Baruch says to the people:

And the evils and the curse which the Lord enjoined upon Moses, his servant, at the time he led our fathers forth from the land of Egypt to give us the land flowing with milk and honey, cling to us even today. For we did not heed the voice of the Lord, our God, in all the words of the prophets whom he sent us, but each of us went off after the devices of our own wicked hearts, served other gods, and did evil in the sight of the Lord, our God (Baruch 1:20-22).

Simply through his diet, John the Baptist reminds the people of Israel of the promise of God given through Moses:

For the Lord, your God, is bringing you into a good country, a land with streams of water, with springs and fountains welling up in the hills and valleys, a land of wheat and barley, of vines and fig trees and pomegranates, of olive trees and honey, a land where you can eat bread without stint and where you will lack nothing (Deuteronomy 8:7-9).

But the eating of honey was not only for the Promised Land; together with curds, honey was the food prescribed by the Prophet Isaiah for those who remained in Israel after the devastation of the exile (cf. Isaiah 7:22). Either way, honey is intimately connected with the promises of God.

John’s eating of the honey, then, reminds us of the promise of redemption given by God, a promise so near to fulfillment with the advent of the Baptizer. His eating of honey is also a call to heed well the words he preaches and to answer his call to repentance lest this promise be taken away at the coming of the one whose “winnowing fan [is] in his hand to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his barn” (Luke 3:17).

When the prophet Ezekiel ate the scroll containing the message of doom, he found that it tasted “as sweet as honey in my mouth” (Ezekiel 3:3). It is this same message that the Psalmist sings is “sweeter also than honey or drippings from the comb” (Psalm 19:11). Elsewhere the Psalmist sings, “How sweet to my tongue is your promise, sweeter than honey to the touch” (Psalm 119:103). This honey also calls to mind the words of Psalm 81: “But Israel I would feed with the finest wheat, satisfy them with honey from the rock” (Psalm 81:17).

In his proverbs, King Solomon says, “If you eat honey, my son, because it is good, if virgin honey is sweet to your taste; such, you must know, is wisdom to your soul. If you find it, you will have a future, and your hope will not be cut off” (Proverbs 24:13-14). John surely has not been cut off, but has now entered that Promised Land where he “will lack nothing.”

We also know that John, together with his disciples, often fasted (cf. Mark 2:18). His fasting pointed to the reality that precisely because the promises of God were soon to be fulfilled in the Messiah, now is the time of repentance. For this reason he came preaching and baptizing.

[1] Peter Chrysologus, Sermons 167.9.
[2] Origen, Fragment 41.

A visit to the skull of Saint John the Baptist

With the praying of first Vespers this evening, we have entered (or will soon enter) into the Solemnity of the Nativity of Saint John the Baptist, the patron of the parish to which I belonged as a boy. Consequently, this day - and the memorial of his passion on August 29th fills my heart with many happy memories of people whom I have loved and who loved me.

Many of my fellow parishioners under the Forerunner's patronage were models of Christian living and gave me a clear example of faith, hope, and love to follow. In fact, it is because of my fellow parishioners that I was able to discern the Lord calling me to share in his priesthood, especially through their encouragement and prayers.

At the same time, though, both of these two days also fills my heart with a certain grief over what has been lost. St. John the Baptist parish was merged in 1999 with St. Rose of Lima parish to form All Saints parish while continuing to use both churches. All Saints parish merged with Immaculate Conception parish in 2006 to form Blessed Sacrament parish and the church of St. John the Baptist was sold. It is a sadness I still carry with me.

Still, I consider Saint John the Baptist to be one of my principle patrons - together with Saints Francis of Assisi, Clare of Assisi, Damien of Molokaii, Marianne Cope, and John Bosco. Since tomorrow I will be in Belgium visiting the birthplace and tomb of the Leper Priest, I decided this evening to visit the church of San Silvestro in Capite (which is dedicated to Pope Saint Sylvester I, who baptized the Emperor Constantine), just a few minutes' walk from the Casa Santa Maria, to pray evening prayer in the chapel that houses the skull of Saint John the Baptist:

To the right of the church is the post office that always gives me so much trouble

The initial church was built in the eighth century over the remnants of a temple dedicated to Sol Invictus (yes, the Sol Invictus we inevitably hear about before Christmas) to house relics of the martyrs that at the time were being translated from some of the catacombs. How fitting, then, that it also houses the skull of the great witness to marriage:

While in the chapel, I especially remembered my fellow parishioners who were so very good to me and showed me how to follow the wisdom of Saint John: "He [Jesus] must increase; I must decrease" (John 3:30). I do not always succeed in this, but still I try.

In one of his sermons for the Solemnity of the Nativity of Saint John the Baptist, Saint Anthony of Padua says:

Note that Elizabeth conceived in the seventh month, September, and gave birth birth in June. Even so, the soul conceives in the 'seventh' (the sabbath), that is, in stillness, by devotion of mind; and she bears her son, good work, in June, called 'Siban' in Hebrew, meaning 'rightness of gift'. The gift of grace which she conceives in her mind, she brings forth in rightness of action.

While in the desert, Saint John devoted his mind to the will of the Lord and emerged to call everyone to repentance, even an adulterous king who would later take his head. Let us ask Saint John to intercede for us, so that we, too, always bear witness to the truth, no matter the cost.