Saturday, July 5, 2014

1st St. Johnstide 2007, Body of Love

St. John’s
Mark 1, 1-11

Da Vinci
This is the beginning of the new word from the realm of the angels, sounding forth through Jesus Christ. Fulfilled is the word of the prophet Isaiah:

Behold, I send my angel before your face.
He is to prepare your way.
Hear the voice of one calling in the loneliness of the human soul
Prepare the way for the Lord within the soul,
Make his paths straight, so that he may find entrance into Man’s innermost being!

Thus did John the Baptist appear in the loneliness of the desert. He proclaimed Baptism, the way of a change of heart and mind, for the acknowledgement of sin. And they went out to him from all of Judea and Jerusalem and received baptism from him in the river Jordan and recognized and confessed their failings.

John wore a garment of camel’s hair and a leather belt around his waist. Fruits and wild honey were his food. And he proclaimed:
           
‘After me comes one who is mightier than I. I am not even worthy to bend down befpre Him and to undo the straps of His sandals. I have baptized you with water, but He will baptize you with the fire of the Holy [healing] Spirit.’

In those days it happened: Jesus of Nazareth came to Galilee, and was baptized in the Jordan by John.

And at the same time as he rose up again out of the water, he beheld how the spheres of the heavens were torn open, and the spirit of God descended upon him like a dove.

And a voice sounded from the world of the spirit:

‘You are my son, the beloved —in you is my revelation.’ [‘Today I have conceived (begotten) you.’ Luke 3:22]


1st St. Johnstide
Andrea del Sarto
June 24, 2007
Mark 1:1-11

The moment of Jesus’ Baptism is a crossover moment. For the man Jesus, it is the death of what he had been up until then. At the same time, for the Christ it was a moment of virginal conception. He was uniting for the first time with a human body and soul. Incarnating and excarnating, being born and dying, unite in a new way.

John’s form of baptism was a preparation of a vessel for Christ; for all those who had undergone his baptism were brought to the portal between life and death. There they could recognize their failings. But they could also sense the nearness of Him who would strengthen their powers of overcoming, who would guide them toward compensatory deeds in the future. Thus they were prepared to meet and recognize Him on earth. They would recognize Him who came to help us increase the power of the working of love.

Today we celebrate the birthday of John the Baptist, messenger and preparer of the birth of Love’s body on earth. After his death John became the inspiring and guiding spirit of a new body: the circle of the disciples. They were the first cells of the generating of a new kind of Christ-body, a body of love, composed of individuals united in His love, working together with peaceful hearts, as Christ’s hands and feet in the world.


May we be inspired by John to recognize our failings, and to overcome them through compensating in love. May we be a part of the community of the Christ, members of His body of Love, His hands and feet in the world.