As I mentioned in my homily on the First Sunday of Advent, this year we focus on Mark, with some of the Gospel of John. Because Mark is the shortest Gospel, we can expect to see more of the Gospel of John than we would in the other two years of the three year cycle. So today, we read from the Gospel of John and if you notice, it is similar to last week’s Gospel. We focus on the mission of St. John the Baptist whose call is to prepare Judah for the coming of the Messiah.

There is one sentence I want to focus on here: He was not the light, but came to testify to the light. We also see that John the Baptist describes himself as one not worthy to untie the sandal of the one who is coming.

Now we know from the gospels that although John and Jesus were cousins, they never met each other at least not since they were born, if they even met each other then. So John had no idea who the Messiah was. It was revealed to him from the Holy Spirit that the Messiah’s coming was imminent, but he had to learn from Jesus Himself that it was his cousin who is the Messiah. So at this point, he knows about the Messiah, but has never met him.

He also describes him as the light and it is important that we understand what this means. The one who is coming is the embodiment of divine wisdom. We call Jesus the Word of God and that means He is the embodiment of Divine Wisdom. That is what being the light means. He is the embodiment of wisdom itself. He is the embodiment of all truth and He is the goal of all reason.

This is the key element of our faith. We do not follow a system of morality, we are in relationship with the embodiment of  divine wisdom who is Jesus Christ. 

I want to illustrate what this means: If John the Baptist walked in here, actually he would more storm in here, and began to preach and to speak, which one of us would stand up and tell him he is wrong? Probably none of us. Who are we to tell John the Baptist reject his words? He is the last prophet of the Old Testament times. Jesus described him as the greatest man born of woman. So, who of us is going to be foolish enough to stand up to him?

John the Baptist describes Jesus as so much more than who he is that he is not worthy to so much as untie his sandal. This means he is not worthy to be his lowest servant, so much more than he is the messiah. Do we understand and we appreciate this?

The greatest sin in the Old Testament is idolatry. Greed, which is a form of idolatry, is the greatest sin in the New Testament. What is idolatry? The practice of worshiping something or someone as god that is not God. We often think of idolatry as worshiping idols such as Ba’al in the Bible, or the practices of the occult today or some other form of pagan worship. Some people do, especially those who engage in astrology which is a form of idolatry and is forbidden in the Bible. However, there is another form of idolatry today that is common in our world especially in the Northeast. In fact, the New England states are the most secular in our country, and I think it is due to this form of idolatry.

We look upon the educated and education as the greatest source of wisdom. Granted, they may be the greatest source of human wisdom, but if John the Baptist recognizes that the greatest source of all wisdom is so much greater than he that he must just kneel in awe before him and that John the Baptist is wiser than we are, who are we to dismiss the words of Jesus for what human wisdom tells us to do? Opening yourself to recognize Jesus as the embodiment of wisdom is part of preparing yourself for His coming. However, one form of idolatry we do practice in this country is to hang on to the word of every  person because he has a Ph.D. Often times, we listen to such a person preach about something that is not even their field of expertise, but because the person has a Ph.D or a degree from some major university, we figure this person is wise. No, that is not true, the person is educated, and may know more than we do in a field of study, but that does not mean that he or she is wise. Do I need to even mention the MIT Ph.D economist, educated at Harvard, who is a pariah in Washington, DC today?

Socrates taught what John the Baptist embodies: The wisest person is the one who knows that he does not know. It is that person who is humble before the greatest wisdom and is in a position to learn. This is what John the Baptist teaches. He recognizes that he is not wise in comparison to being in the presence of the embodiment of all wisdom. Meanwhile, the person who thinks he or she knows all learns nothing, for the person thinks he or she already knows. There are many fools who died of great errors thinking they were wise.

The more we turn from Jesus, the less wise we become. The more we humble ourselves before Jesus, the wiser we become. We begin to recognize that the world rejects the concept of sin because it is ignorant of sin by ignoring the source of all wisdom.

Do you understand that when you say that it is time to reject Church teaching for a more updated understanding of morality, you are actually calling yourself wiser than the holy Spirit and the embodiment of wisdom who is Jesus Christ? Are you really so wise that you can say that? John the Baptist would call you a fool.

St. John the Baptist is calling us to recognize Jesus as the embodiment of divine wisdom. We need to be humble that we may recognize Him and bow down before Him so that we may grow in the wisdom that He bestows on His disciples, whether or not they even can find Cambridge, Massachusetts on a map.