Jan. 19, 2014: 2nd Sunday in Ordinary Time A
Do you like pizza? A while back when a new pizza place opened its doors in our small town on the corner directly across the street from another pizza place, a new marketing campaign was deployed--a dancing employee holding a sign of the new pizza place. It is the hope of the management that people will be drawn into the store.
Believe it or not, most of us are walking advertising signs for various companies. Although we may think that what we buy indicates our sophisticated and discerning taste, in reality, we are like that dancing employee, holding up a sign for a particular lifestyle that companies have promoted in order to sell their product. Did you ever imagine that a $300 headphone would ever become a must have accessory for teenagers? With the companies paying certain well-known athletes and musicians to wear their headphone in public--despite looking so goofy--the sales took off and many parents’ wallets were empty. However, all this pursuit of a certain look and lifestyle can leave us empty. In the end, one feels used by the marketing forces and the emptiness that we feel indicates to us that our lives should point to something greater and more noble.
Some years back, a man who was a high profile person in the country of Brazil wrote a letter to Mother Teresa. He explained in the letter that he had lost total faith in God and in man, and he gave everything up—his position and everything. He had felt so empty that he had a great desire to end his life. Then one day, as he was passing by a shop, his eyes suddenly fell on a television and there was a news clip of Mother Teresa’s sisters looking after the sick and dying in their house in India. He went on to explain in the letter that after seeing the news clip, he then, for the first time after many years, knelt and prayed. He wrote that the incident turned him back to God and to have faith in humanity because he saw that God still loves the world—he saw this on the television.
What did that man see? He saw women whose lives of sacrifice and compassion pointed to someone greater than themselves; their lives pointed to the Lamb of God. In a sense, their lives proclaimed a sign with this simple message, “Behold, the Lamb of God. Behold Him who takes away the sin of the world. Blessed are those who are invited to His Supper.” As much as we are encouraged in this world to perform, to earn, and to do things that bring the spotlight to ourselves, we learn quickly that it leads to emptiness. The author of the Book of Ecclesiastes proclaims this self absorption writing: “Vanity of vanities! All is vanity! I said in my heart, ‘Come, now, let me try you with pleasure and the enjoyment of good things...’ I amassed for myself silver and gold, and the treasures of kings and provinces. I accumulated much more than all others before me in Jerusalem...But when I turned to all the works that my hands had wrought, and to the fruit of the toil for which I had toiled so much, see! all was vanity and a chase after wind. There is no profit under the sun.” (cf. Eccl. 1-2)
In the Gospel today, John the Baptist offers us a very different approach to living our lives here on earth. His vocation from the very beginning moment of his life was one thing: to be a sign pointing to Christ. “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world,” John cried out to everyone. Pope Francis said about John: "John seems to be nothing. That is John’s vocation: he negates himself.” Pope Francis said that John modeled for us how we should negate ourselves, so that we could always be at the service of Christ. What is it about the life of John the Baptist that attracted people to see and yearn for Christ? It was not his fine clothes, which he had none. It was not his wealth, which he had none. It was his life of sacrifice and compassion, lived for Christ. It was his life which echoed the Responsorial Psalm today: I have waited, waited for the LORD, and he stooped toward me and heard my cry. And he put a new song into my mouth, a hymn to our God. Here am I, Lord; I come to do your will. Let us remember that our lives should be a sign to attract and move people to Christ’s love and mercy. Will they be moved by our lives to visit and encounter Jesus in our church?
