Last Sunday and each Advent the Church presents us with the powerful image of St John the Baptist. His whole mission in life was to prepare the way for the Lord in the heart of the people. He did this through his forthright preaching, calling the people to repentance and offering his baptism of repentance in the Jordan river. He calls the people to turn their hearts and minds from whatever they had as their goal and look only to God, for the Kingdom of God is at hand.
St John the Baptist is single-minded in serving God and he is living the very message he is proclaiming. He was totally detached from material goods, dressed in garments made of camel hair and living on locusts and wild honey in the desert. This was in stark contrast to the opulence of the time. Many went out to receive his baptism of repentance in the Jordan, confessing their sins. Even some Pharisees and Sadducees went to him and John reminded them, that no matter what their dignity, they too must repent and cannot just pretend to repent, but instead must produce good fruit as evidence of their repentance. John’s baptism was simply one of repentance and can’t be compared to Christian Baptism as instituted by Jesus.
John spoke out:
The one who follows me is more powerful than I am, and I am not fit to carry his sandals; he will baptise you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fan is in his hand; he will clear his threshing floor and gather his wheat into the barn; but the chaff he will burn in a fire that will never go out.
Advent is a time of more intense prayer and repentance, so that we can produce good fruit and separate the chaff from the wheat in our lives. We should level the hills of pride and fill the valleys, those voids of love and make up for the good deeds which are missing. All the times we haven’t made use of the grace God offers us.
In the USA there are a lot of megachurches. This phenomenon has been going on for the last thirty years or more. They are Bible-based Christian congregations that draw thousands of people to their weekly services. They aim to bring people back to a personal relationship with Jesus. There is one megachurch in Houston, Texas that attracts thirty-eight thousand people to its Sunday services and two hundred million to its TV broadcasts. Usually more than 25% of members of megachurches are former Catholics. One successful fitness expert in California recently explained why he left the Catholic Church. He said:
No one ever told me that Jesus Christ was offering me His friendship. When I found that friendship elsewhere how could I refuse it?
The megachurches will come and go, while the Catholic, the true and only one founded by Jesus Christ will remain. If former Catholics had really known their Faith, understood the Real Presence of Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament and had become involved in Eucharistic Adoration and prayed the Holy Rosary they would still be in the Catholic Church today. Jesus who is fully present in the Blessed Sacrament longs for us to grow in our personal relationship with Him. He is just waiting in every Catholic Church in the tabernacle for us to visit Him and develop a daily rapport of life with Him. The 25% of former Catholics lacked a proper catechesis and faith in the Real Presence. A problem today in the Church is poor catechesis and people can’t really love what they don’t know. When we receive Jesus in Holy Communion we should give Him permission to Lord of our lives. Cardinal John O’Connor of New York was consecrated a bishop in 1983 in Rome. On his way down the aisle after the consecration he blessed the people gathered in the Church. Suddenly he saw a famous face and went over to greet Mother Teresa of Calcutta. He gave her a blessing but was not prepared for what came next. She grasped one of his hands in both of her hands and said to him:
Give Jesus a free hand! Give Him permission!
Cardinal O’Connor never forgot those words, and he said he tried to make them a watchword for the rest of his life. Let’s also give Jesus permission, to reign in us with His Will. In addition, you should get to know your Faith better. Read the Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which in the format of questions and answers. For the better we know our Faith the more we will grow in our personal relationship with Him. Praise be Jesus Christ and His Real Presence in the Sacrament of Love.