City of Joy

Recent studies reveal that 45-55% of married women and 50-60% of married men engage in extramarital sex at some time or another during their relationship (Atwood & Schwartz, 2002 - Journal of Couple & Relationship Therapy). The recent flooding of news on Woods brought out a kind of worry in moral conduct of people! But this time the moral conduct is connected to the 5 million or 55 million business deal. Here we reflect ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make straight his paths’. No wonder John the Baptist was far off in the wilderness and the Word came to him there!

Certainly the Greek architecture and the Roman civilization come in handy here that a city is being planned and built: both the 1^st and 3^rd readings today reveal that a lot of work is put in leveling ground, paving roads. JRS is preparing for a new king, the Messiah of a political nature. It is certainly a moment of great joy. Ironically enough no one was informed of this Messiah: Caesar, Pilate, Herod, Philip, and the 2 high priests were ignorant of his arrival, but preparation has to be done by a strange man who lives in the forest. All the planning has to necessarily start with a symbolic cleansing of a bath.

There are couples coming to see us at the rectory requesting baptism for their children. They have never seen me since they don’t come to church but they have to baptize their children to keep the tradition going! I almost always forget in asking them if they need the baptism of John the Baptist! The task of the Baptist is to bring people to God through baptism by water. The Gentiles wanting to become Jews had to be circumcised, had to fast and be cleansed in the Mikvah – ritual bath. John was also baptizing the Jews as the Jews though a covenantal people, were far from God like any other gentile and be reconverted.

CCC 1256 affirms that ‘in case of necessity, anyone, even a non-baptized person, with the required intention, can baptize’. This uncertainty in meaning caused a lot of damage to the Universal church. How many people were killed and nations waged war, temples desecrated, religions ridiculed thinking that ‘they were going to die unless they are baptized!’ That’s exactly what we don’t want to see in our Church – portraying Jesus as a political ruler with inhuman ideologies and rules that separate people and give a wrong signal to the world that we got everything and they have nothing!

Our baptisms have effect only if we live out our values not so much as just Christians but as good people. Christ was baptized to show us his humility that he will go through this process of John’s baptism is necessary to our Christian calling. Church teaches us that from His pierced side flowed blood and water through which are baptized and be born of water and the Spirit. But before that happens, we adhere to the person of John the Baptist and his call to repentance! If John the Baptist were to be a Catholic, he would have called all the baptized Catholics for a baptism of reconversion.

Let us work together in preparing the way of the Lord! In order to plan the City of Joy, we need to know what we have to start with. Every crooked ways, every mountains and hills, every winding roads, rough ways have to be cleared and be ready to welcome a little child eager to smile and play, hold our fingers and sleep peacefully at our manger! The Dawn of the City of Joy is at hand!