Jesus said to the crowds about John the Baptist, “Then what did you go out to see? A prophet? Yes, I tell you, and more than a prophet. This is the one about whom Scripture says: Behold, I am sending my messenger ahead of you, he will prepare your way before you.”
In today’s Gospel reading, Jesus has just answered the question the disciples of John the Baptist has asked him: “Are you the one who is to come, or should we look for another?” Jesus makes clear his relationship to those listening by saying of John that he was “more than a prophet,” that he is the messenger that prepares a way for the Lord. The Pharisees and scholars of the law, he says, who were not baptized by John rejected God’s plan for themselves. How is it, God, that I routinely go to great lengths to see and do what is trivial but struggle to bring you into the present moment each day?
God, help me understand the restlessness that the crowds felt is little different from the restlessness I feel each day, whether at work or at home. It takes very little to unsettle me when comfortable habits are disrupted. If I had less to cling to, I’d have less to let go of. What is it about John the Baptist that prepares the way? He lived in the desert, he ate locusts and wild honey, and he lived apart from the comforts of civilization. He lived a life of detachment. Lord, let me know you are with me today. I hear in this the words of Saint Paul: “You must increase; I must decrease.”
Quiet my soul, Lord. See me in the great and small distress of the day. From the first reading, let me keep within my soul this consolation: “But with enduring love I take pity on you, says the Lord, your redeemer.”
Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.
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