January 15, 2017
Second Sunday in Ordinary Time
Being Models of Christ
Is 49:3,5-6; I Cor 1:1-3; Jn 1: 29 - 34
 
First Reading: This section of Isaiah contains the Servant Songs. The servant is anyone or anything
charged to announce the message of God. On this day, we remember John the Baptist as one of those servant prophets, and his work is very simple: to point out the Lamb of God.
Second Reading: St. Paul is another charged to announce the Good News. Like John the Baptist, Paul calls all who will hear to a life of holiness.
Gospel Reading: It is one of the key moments in salvation history: John the Baptist pointing to Jesus so that we all might see and follow. John humbly offers up his own ministry in place of the ministry par excellence, the ministry of God made flesh.
Homily
Stanley Hauerwas, a Methodist and respected moral theologian at Duke University, was invited to speak some years ago at the University of Notre Dame. He looked out on what was probably a mostly Catholic audience and said: "You Catholics go to Mass all the time. What do all those Masses do for you?" What a great question. I wonder myself, how have all those Masses changed our lives? What evidence is there that what we do at Mass each Sunday has any effect on ourselves and those around us?
Father Ron Rolheiser once explained that it's one thing to impress someone with acts of faith and virtue and holiness. It's an entirely different thing to motivate someone to actually change her life, his habits, her decisions, and those things that so often stand in the way of being a saint. Like John the Baptist, we can point to Jesus, but unlike John the Baptist, we struggle effecting transformation in ourselves and others around us. Maybe that's why we need Mass over and over again. We try to be John the Baptist, but we don't always reach our potential, because rather than living our faith, we merely preach about our faith.
The irony is that we live in a time that is the most powerful in history. We have more technology, more
money, more food, more influence, and yet we are just as incapable as ever to change the world. We struggle with so many of the same calamities that humanity has endured for centuries: terrorism, poverty, racism, broken families, among so many others. What is it that we need to finally overcome the hurdles of our human condition and change ourselves, our families, our world?
This is the point of our Gospel today. As Father Rolheiser says, we aren't saints yet. We're trying to be, but we're still lacking. We're still grasping for the holiness needed for calling the world to authentic Christian change. He tells a wonderful story about the great Indian pacifist Gandhi. One day, a woman whose daughter was addicted to sweets approached Gandhi. Her addiction was starting to cause health issues. The mother asked Gandhi if he could help her daughter. Gandhi told her to bring the daughter to him in three weeks. After three weeks, the mother brought the daughter back to Gandhi. He took the girl aside and spoke to her for some time. Then he brought her back to her mother, and the girl said she was now ready to quit eating sweets. The astonished mother asked Gandhi why he didn't speak to her daughter three weeks earlier. Gandhi explained that three weeks ago, he also ate too many sweets, and he needed three weeks to quit.
We must do more than just point to the Lamb, more than just tell people what they ought and ought not do. We actually have to walk with them. The worthiness of our lives, the way we treat one another at work, at home, in school, will mark how people hear the preaching of our lives. Our actions are the preaching behind our words, as St. Francis' famous words explain: Preach the Gospel at all times and, when necessary, use words.
John the Baptist pointed to Jesus in everything he said, but more importantly he pointed to Jesus in
everything that he did, giving him spiritual credibility. Anyone who calls another to a holier life may only do so because he or she is already living a life of holiness. The question for you and me is this: Do we have the spiritual credibility to call others to look and see that he is, in fact, the Lamb of God?