The Byzantine icon called the Deesis, or in English, the Supplication, portrays Christ Pantocrator, flanked by the Theotokos, the Mother of God on one side and the Forerunner, John the Baptist on the other side, both praying to him for all humanity. The appearance of John the Baptist in today’s gospel and this week’s two Marian feasts – the Immaculate Conception on Tuesday and Our Lady of Guadalupe on Saturday – remind us that we have John and Mary as our Advent companions. The Friend of the Bridegroom and the God-bearer – these are our teachers in the art of waiting and preparing the way for the One who is to come.
On the face of it, these two figures make for a striking contrast: The desert ascetic – The young woman of Nazareth The voice – The handmaid The martyr – The mother
But we can also find points of convergence:
Virginity: John and Mary were consecrated from birth, given wholly in body, mind, heart and will to God. This is expressed in the tradition of John’s retreat to the wilderness as a boy, and Mary’s presentation in the temple as a young child. Both were given, made available, wholly receptive and so filled with the Holy Spirit. Many of us can look back to moments in our childhood when we perceived, however obscurely, that God was claiming us for himself. Our friend Jackie Picard shared a wonderful example of this. She described how Jesus at his baptism, pictured in a window at her church, appeared reflected in the ring she was wearing, and she took this as a proposal, responding with a wholehearted “Yes!” At that time, God’s invitation to us to belong to him did not take concrete form in withdrawal from ordinary life, and it may even have been forgotten, until the time came for the call to be reawakened. The Word came to John in the desert; an angel came to Mary in Nazareth. We, who have responded to a call to consecrated virginity also aspire to its fruit: total receptivity to God’s Word. If we are faithful to this call, we can become bearers of the Word to all people.
Patience: These two teachers of ours spent their lives waiting and preparing a way, in the desert and among the people, in one heart and one womb. John’s mission was “to turn the hearts of fathers toward children and the disobedient to the understanding of the righteous, to prepare a people fit for the Lord” (Lk 1:17). He suffered opposition, imprisonment and ultimately execution at the hands of Herod. His whole mission was thrown into question, and his end seemed total failure. “Are you the one who is to come or are we to wait for another?” (Mt 11:3) Mary, too, was sorely tried in patience: by the rejection and threats of violence from those around her because of her illicit pregnancy, by the discomforts and dangers surrounding the birth of her child, amidst the mysterious hurts and seeming contradictions of her son’s mission, and of course, when at last she received his body back into her arms, now cold and still. “Are you the one who is to come or are we to wait for another?” (Mt 11:3)
The following words placed in John’s mouth by the theologian Johannes Baptist Metz, could be spoken by John, or Mary or any of us: “I do not belong to myself; I am a stranger to myself, a destitute land between the past promise and the still to come fulfillment. I have nothing to make me strong or rich. Everything within me strains forward, is set on edge in prophetic anticipation – what poverty a prophet endures! – of an intangible future, and I am certain to find therein my true self, the promised land of my loving God.” (Johannes Baptist Metz, Poverty of Spirit)
Prophecy: Mary and John spoke words out of the abundance of a silent, pondering heart. They spoke fiery words, whose ramifications shake the world to its foundations.
John’s voice cries out: “In the desert prepare the way of the LORD! Make straight in the wasteland a highway for our God! Every valley shall be filled in, every mountain and hill shall be made low; the rugged land shall be made a plain, the rough country, a broad valley.” (Is 40:3-4)
And Mary’s voice joins him: “His mercy is from age to age to those who fear him. He has shown might with his arm, dispersed the arrogant of mind and heart. He has thrown down the rulers from their thrones but lifted up the lowly. The hungry he has filled with good things; the rich he has sent away empty.” (Lk 1:50-53)
Both John and Mary speak of God’s salvation made plain through the transformation of our world. We recognize all too clearly the need for radical reordering in our world, our lives and our hearts. As we hear these words year by year, we need to be reminded that this is fundamentally a message of comfort. John may not have chosen to quote the beginning of today’s reading from Isaiah, but we know that it is the context of his preaching: “Comfort, give comfort to my people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and proclaim to her that her service is at an end, her guilt is expiated; indeed, she has received from the hand of the LORD double for all her sins.” (Is 40:1) Christ is even now working in us and in our world to draw all things to himself. This is our faith. This is the meaning and purpose of our life. Like John and like Mary, we have only to allow ourselves to be taken over by this Word of comfort, this transforming Word, so that it may remake us as witnesses to all people.
Though Mary’s public role during her lifetime was more limited than John’s, she has continued to act as herald of the kingdom throughout history, in all the times and places she has made her presence known to the lowly with the message of God’s salvation. I leave you with these words she spoke to Juan Diego and to all of us, words of comfort to a world in pain:
“I am your Compassionate Mother, yours, for you yourself, for everybody here in the Land, for each and all together, for all others too, For all Folk of every kind, who do but cherish Me, who do but raise their voices to Me, who do but seek Me, who do but raise their trust to Me. For here I shall listen to their groanings, to their saddenings; here shall I make well and heal up their each and every kind of disappointment, of exhausting pangs, of bitter aching pain." (Guadalupe from the Aztec)