Homilies preached by Father Robert Altier on the Solemnity of the Birth of Saint John the Baptist

Their births were extraordinary; consequently, the Church celebrates these three births in a very special way. For nearly all of the saints, we celebrate their birth into Heaven. For instance, on a martyr's feast day it is usually the day on which the martyr was killed. We celebrate the day the saint died or the day the saint's bones were moved, but we do not celebrate their birthday.

Sunday June 24, 2001

Feast of Saint John the Baptist

Reading I (Isaiah 49:1-6)

Reading II (Acts 13:22-26 )

Gospel (St. Luke 1:57-66, 80)

Today we celebrate in the Church a wonderful event: the birth of a child. When we think about the way things operate in our own lives, the day of one's birth is a very important day. We celebrate it with great joy. We invite friends over when the kids are young, we have parties for their birthday and all the other stuff that goes along with the birthday celebration. But in the Church, the celebration of a birth is a very rare thing. There are only three persons whose birthday we celebrate: Jesus Christ, the Blessed Virgin Mary, and Saint John the Baptist. These are the three people who were born without Original Sin. Their births were extraordinary; consequently, the Church celebrates these three births in a very special way. For nearly all of the saints, we celebrate their birth into Heaven. For instance, on a martyr's feast day it is usually the day on which the martyr was killed. We celebrate the day the saint died or the day the saint's bones were moved, but we do not celebrate their birthday.

But today, we celebrate the feast of Saint John the Baptist, of whom Jesus says, "He is the greatest man born of woman." Why would Jesus say that, especially when you consider that He Himself, who is God and man, was born of woman? The point He was trying to make is that of all the others, Himself excluded, there is none who is greater than John the Baptist. The reason for that is because he alone was born without Original Sin.

Now there are some distinctions that have to be made because, obviously, Jesus did not have Original Sin. Jesus is God and also man. Our Lady did not have Original Sin. In fact, from the first moment of her conception there was no sin. That is why hers is called the Immaculate Conception because it means no stain from the very moment of her conception. Saint John the Baptist, however, was conceived with Original Sin. He was conceived just like the rest of us. He had Original Sin, which was passed down from his father Zechariah to himself. But at the moment that Our Lady came to visit Elizabeth (remember the moment that John leapt in his mother's womb for joy), Original Sin was removed from his soul. So when the moment came for his birth, there was no sin upon his soul.

We see, in the second reading, the events that surrounded the birth of John the Baptist. We hear about the fact that his parents were going to call him John instead of Zechariah, we hear that the people celebrated because God had shown His mercy to Elizabeth. The name John, "Joannem" in Hebrew, means "God is gracious." God had extended His grace and mercy to Elizabeth. In this child, the grace of God was going to be seen in an extraordinary way. Indeed, because it was John who inaugurated the baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sin; so that grace could once again be flowing in the lives of the people; so that he could set up the stage for Jesus to be able to come into the world. When the people asked him, "Who are you?" - he would say, "Who you suppose me to be, I am not."

But the question is "Who was he?" That was the question people asked from the moment of his birth. "What will this child be?" Yet we see it foreshadowed in his own father. Remember that Zechariah did not believe the angel Gabriel when he came to announce John's birth to Zechariah when he was offering incense to God at the altar of sacrifice. Because he did not believe, the angel announced to Zechariah that Zechariah would have no voice until the moment the child would be born. At the very moment the child was to be circumcised, Zechariah finally made an act of faith and wrote: "His name is John." Then his tongue was loosed and he spoke, this was a foreshadowing of what the child would be.

In one of his homilies, Saint Augustine talked about the difference between John the Baptist and Jesus. The people thought that, maybe, he was the Messiah. But John himself said, "I am the voice of one crying out in the desert." What we hear in the readings today is the exact same thing. "He is the voice, but Jesus is the Word," Saint Augustine says. The voice speaks the Word. At the moment that Saint John the Baptist was beheaded, the voice went silent but the Word remained.

It is just like any of us, if you consider it. When we have a conversation, a person may say something that gets etched into your memory and the word remains with you, but the voice is silent. When you replay the conversation in your mind, you do not hear the voice of the individual, but you can replay the words. So, John's voice went silent.

And it was not just John's voice, it was The Voice that went silent. The Word remained. The Word had been etched into the hearts and minds of the people. The Word is eternal. The Word was spoken by God and the Word was reiterated by John. And that Word has been spoken by the saints and prophets throughout history. That Word continues to be preached by the Church. The Word remains, but the voice is only temporary. Whether it is the voice of Saint John the Baptist, the voice of the various saints, the voice of a priest or a preacher preaching today, or your voice when you talk to another person about Jesus, the voice is temporary but the Word remains. So John's voice was there only for a time. It was there to prepare the hearts of the people, to prepare the way for the Lord. We need to listen, not for his voice, but for the Word that he spoke. The Word is Jesus Christ. The Word must remain in our hearts and in our minds. The Word must be at the very center of our lives.

This birth we celebrate today of John the Baptist also calls each one of us to look at our own lives, to look at what we hold out to be important in the way we live. In the first reading today, we hear the Church placing before us the words of the prophet Isaiah. God says, through Isaiah, "You have made me a two-edged sword and hid me in the shadow of Your arm. You have made me a polished arrow but hid me in Your quiver." Here we have a sword, that if somebody who made swords were to make this, they would say, "This is my pride and joy. This is the greatest sword that I have made." God concealed it in the shadow of His arm. He made him a polished arrow, not just an ordinary one, but a fancy arrow; and then hid him in the quiver. He sent him out into the desert, he dressed in camel's hair, and he ate grasshoppers and wild honey out in the desert. He was not like other men.

Sirach (when he talks about the various patriarchs, saints, and prophets of old) says, "The world was not worthy of them." Certainly we can say the same of Saint John the Baptist. The world was not worthy of this man who was the "greatest man born of woman." And yet, he was rejected, misunderstood, and judged according to his appearance. Imagine what a man who lived out in the desert would look like. He lived down by the Dead Sea, the hottest place on earth, the lowest spot on the face of the earth. He lived out there where very little grows, he did not wear ordinary clothes, and he did not eat ordinary food. You can imagine the roughness in the way he would have appeared. What would we say about that? If a man came walking down the street past your house, wearing camel's hair, unshaven, perhaps unbathed, imagine what he would look like. We would call the psychiatrist and suggest that this man needs help. Jesus called him "the greatest man ever born of woman." When you look at the lives of any of the saints, they are not like others. But this man was not even like the other saints. He was truly extraordinary. He was the last of the Old Testament prophets and he was the first of the New Testament saints. He was the one who laid the foundation.

So we look to Saint John the Baptist and celebrate his birth today because he truly is not like others. We need to learn from that. God wants each one of us to be saints, as well. For each one of us, the day of our birth was an extraordinary day. If you have any doubt, just ask your mother. Your birth was extraordinary. Maybe it was not like Saint John the Baptist, maybe it was not accompanied by signs and wonders so that everyone wonders about what is going on, maybe you were not born of a woman in her 60's who was sterile up to that point; but nonetheless, every birth is a miracle. Every child is extraordinary and God wants every one of us to be a saint. He wants every one of us to be a voice that speaks His Word. We need to learn from John the Baptist that we do not need to be like everyone else. We need to be what God wants us to be.

We should not base our judgments on what the world holds up to be ordinary. Just think about it. If we made judgments based on what our society says is normal, we would say that people who have tattoos all over their bodies; pins stuck all over their heads, faces, and bodies; things in their mouths, ears, belly-buttons and everywhere else; wearing all kinds of odd things; hair in three different colors; we would say, "Look at that normal teenage kid, isn't that great!" Then we look at Saint John the Baptist and say, "He is nuts!" We have things a little bit mixed up in our society. It is about time that we say, "Society has it wrong, God has it right."

We need to be able to ask God: "What do You want of me?" Like John the Baptist, God will hide us away until the day of our manifestation. He hides us so He can form us, so He can prepare us to do the work He has in mind for each one of us. Then, when the time is right, He will put us where He needs us so that we can do His Will, so that we can be His voice, so that we can speak His Word. As we consider this wonderful feast of the Birth of the Voice, of the birth of the greatest man born of woman, the Birth of John the Baptist, we each need to ask the same question of ourselves that all the people of the time of John the Baptist asked. We need to sit before the Blessed Sacrament and we need to ask God: "What is this child to be? What do You want of me?"

Note:Father Altier does not write his homilies in advance, but relies solely upon the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.

This text was transcribed from the audio recording with minimal editing.

Monday June 24, 2002

Birth of Saint John the Baptist

Reading I (Isaiah 49:1-6)

Reading II (Acts 13:22-26)

Gospel (St. Luke 1:57-66, 80)

As we celebrate today the birth of Saint John the Baptist, we need to consider that question: What is this child to be? What this child is to be and who he is had already been revealed to Zechariah by Gabriel. It says, "He will be filled with the Holy Spirit even from his mother's womb, and he will turn the hearts of many of the children of Israel to their Lord. He will go before Him in the spirit and power of Elijah to turn their hearts toward their children and the disobedient to the understanding of righteousness, to prepare a people fit for the Lord." That was the purpose for which John the Baptist was sent. He came in the power of the prophet Elijah and he came to turn the hearts of the people toward their God.

Now we were told in the Old Testament times that Elijah was to come before the Lord. When Jesus Himself was asked, "How is it that you are the Messiah, isn't Elijah supposed to come first?" Jesus said, "Elijah has already come. They did with him what they would and they put him to death." The spirit of Elijah is one which is still in the world and it is one that is still to come because the spirit of Elijah will be here again before the Second Coming of the Lord to be able, once again, to prepare the hearts of the people, to be able to turn the people toward their God, and to prepare an obedient people fit for the Lord. That spirit is a spirit that does not have to reside in one single person. The spirit of Elijah was in Elisha in a twofold manner; it was in John the Baptist; and that spirit of Elijah is passed down through the various prophets and continues to our day. And so, it is for each of us to be able to listen to that prophet, to be able to listen to the voice spoken through the prophets, to turn our hearts to our heavenly Father. If we think of the day in which we are living, the voice of Elijah is very clear. It is calling people once again to repentance.

John, whom Our Lord Himself said is the greatest man born of woman, was consecrated to the Lord from the womb. He was born without Original Sin because, at the moment of the Visitation, Original Sin was removed from his soul - so from the very first moments of his life he was consecrated entirely to God. We look at the kind of life that he lived, a life that most of us would think would be thoroughly insane: a man living out in the desert eating grasshoppers and wild honey and wearing camel's skin. Today's psychiatrists would lock him up. Jesus said he was the greatest man born of woman and [there was] no one greater. We need to see things from God's perspective. In Scripture, there is not one single miracle ever attributed to Saint John the Baptist; yet he is the one that God sent to turn the hearts of the children back to their heavenly Father.

So too, in our day, we need to make sure that our hearts are turned toward God, and we need to look at the life of this man. It was a life of penance. It was a life that was spent in solitude. It was a life which most people would not be able to understand, and certainly most are not called to do. But all of us are priests, prophets, and kings through Baptism. And each one of us, then, needs to enter into that prophetic state - not meaning some sort of frenzied state where we are proclaiming future events; but rather, to be able, with Saint John the Baptist, to prepare the hearts of the people to meet their God, to be able to have an obedient people for the Lord, to fast and to pray and to do penance. Saint John the Baptist went out in the desert to pray and to suffer and to offer all that to the Lord so the lost sheep of the house of Israel could repent and could turn their hearts back to God. It is still the same. The only way there are going to be conversions is if the people of God are willing to pray, to fast, and to offer their sufferings to the Lord in the spirit of Elijah, in the spirit of Saint John the Baptist. That is what each one of us is called to do. When we see what this man did - we are not called to live it that radically, perhaps - but all of us are called to share in the same work to be able to prepare a people for the Lord, to prepare an obedient people for the Lord, and to help in the task of turning the hearts of the children back to our heavenly Father.

*This text was transcribed from the audio recording with minimal editing.

Tuesday June 24, 2003

Feast of Saint John the Baptist

Reading I (Isaiah 49:1-6)

Reading II (Acts 13:22-26)

Gospel (St. Luke 1:57-66, 80)

Today as we celebrate the solemnity of the Nativity of Saint John the Baptist, we recall that he is “the greatest man born of woman”, as Our Lord Himself testified about Saint John the Baptist, and that in the greatness of this man, not one single miracle is ever mentioned in Scripture about him. He was a highly unusual man according to worldly standards, living out in the desert in camel’s hair and eating grasshoppers and wild honey. Not the kind of guy that most people would be attracted to, and in our day they would probably put him into a hospital because they do not understand the holiness of God. They look only at the externals and not at the internals, and they miss the reality of what God is doing in the souls of His saints.

When we hear the question in the Gospel “What is this child to be?” Saint Augustine, some sixteen hundred years ago, answered the question in what I have found to be the most profound manner. Saint John the Baptist said, “What you suppose me to be I am not.” He was similar, but was not the one. And so Saint Augustine says of Saint John that he was the voice. Saint John himself said that: “I am the voice of one crying out in the desert, ‘Make straight the way of the Lord’.” So he is the voice, but Jesus is the Word. Saint Augustine says that the voice remains only for a moment, but the Word remains forever. One can hear a voice spoken and that remains just for an instant; but if the word is the Word of God, it remains etched into the mind and it never goes away. Saint John simply spoke the word, but Jesus is the Word Who was spoken. John is the voice, Jesus the Word.

He continues to speak to us today through the Church. In this particular time his role is extremely important because we are told that he will come before the day of the Lord. Just as John the Baptist was Elijah, so Elijah has to come again. John the Baptist came in the spirit of Elijah, that spirit which had been passed on from Elijah to Elisha and now had been given to Saint John the Baptist. John the Baptist, in that spirit of Elijah, continues on to this very day and the Church continues to proclaim the coming of Her Messiah.

I find it rather interesting (and we will see if in God’s Providence it was all arranged this way) but considering the events that are happening in our world, the things that are going on, I cannot help but to marvel that we celebrate this feast today and (as things happen in the Church’s calendar year) the feasts of the Sacred Heart and the Immaculate Heart are just two days away. As Saint John the Baptist was the herald of the coming of Christ, so too he is going to be the herald of the Triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, which is going to be ushered in through the Sacred Heart of Jesus. And so the fact that these feasts are arranged in such a way this year (only because of when Easter fell) is perhaps merely a coincidence, perhaps a little more than that, we will see. We will listen for the voice; we will watch for the Word; and we will hear the Lord speaking in our heart as He points us to His mother and the coming of the Triumph of Our Lady’s Immaculate Heart, which is soon to come upon this world. It is going to be heralded by none other than John the Baptist in the spirit of Elijah to turn the hearts of children to their heavenly Father, and the heart of our heavenly Father through Our Blessed Mother so that we will be saved, so that on the day of the Lord we will have our hearts turned the right direction. And the voice having been heard, the Word etched into our hearts, we will seek Him Whom our hearts love, and we will find His mother leading us to her Son.

*This text was transcribed from the audio recording with minimal editing.

Thursday June 24, 2004

Birth of Saint John the Baptist

Reading I (Isaiah 49:1-6)

Reading II (Acts 13:22-26)

Gospel (St. Luke 1:57-66, 80)

We hear in the Gospel reading today about the birth of Saint John the Baptist. As we celebrate this great solemnity of the precursor of the Lord, we see the signs and wonders that accompanied his birth such that all of those who were related and all in the neighborhood would marvel at what was going on. They would ask the question, “What is this child to be?” Now as we look at this child, as he grew up he would not have been like other people. Never once did he commit any serious sin. He was completely healed of sin in the womb, so he was born without Original Sin, and he was then free of any serious sin throughout his life. Because he was free of sin, he did not live his life the way other people did. Therefore, he would have been someone who was misunderstood, someone who was rejected, just like Our Lord and Our Lady. They would not have been accepted because the way that they lived was not the way other people lived, because their hearts were focused solely on God.

Saint John the Baptist is then called out into the desert; and there, fasting and praying, he simply seeks to do the Will of God. His task is singular, and that is to point out the Messiah when He is to come. He is the last of the Old Testament prophets, and he is the first of the New Testament prophets. He is the person upon whom all of that hinges. Yet we see in him no miracles; we see in him absolutely nothing that would attract anybody – someone out in the desert, in the lowest spot in the world out by the Dead Sea where it is very hot and very humid, wearing camel skin and eating grasshoppers and wild honey. If he were alive today, they would probably lock up the greatest man born of woman and say that he is crazy. Yet we recognize that there is no one greater than he because Our Lord Himself has spoken these words.

So when we look at Saint John the Baptist, it helps us to be able to understand what our own lives are all about. He recognized who he was, but, more importantly, he recognized who he was not. He was not the Messiah, he was not the one who was appointed, but rather he was the one who was called to be the prophet of the Messiah. He lived a life that was different from the norm, and if anyone is truly going to live their faith it is going to be the same thing. You may not be out in the desert in camel skin and eating grasshoppers, but if you are going to live a truly Catholic life your life is not going to be like the average American. You are going to be rejected; you are going to be thought to be strange – or even worse, perhaps. Yet, at the same time, if you are truly living the life there is only one thing that is truly important, and that is doing God’s Will. It is seeking the Will of God in prayer, in fasting, and it is about carrying out the Will of God.

We also need to learn from Saint John the Baptist a very important lesson: He lived a hidden life for most of his entire life just like Our Lord did. It is not about necessarily going out and doing great things. If that is what God is asking then that is what needs to happen, but Saint John the Baptist lived out in the desert and it was not until very close to the end of his life that he was finally made manifest to Israel and then very quickly put to death. We see that he fulfilled every single thing that God had asked of him. Nothing was left unfulfilled in what his vocation was, and most of that was to be hidden, to pray, and to do penance.

For ourselves too, the same is true. We will not know God’s Will unless we are deeply rooted in prayer. In our society filled with chaos and noise, there is only one way that we are going to know His Will, and that is only if we are spending substantial amounts of time in prayer and fasting so that we can seek the Will of God. Only when God says to do something are we to do it. And it does not matter how small it may seem to us or how big it might seem to us; all that matters is that we are doing what God wants us to do and that we recognize who we are – but, most importantly, that we recognize who we are not. We are nothing great; we are nothing impressive; we are little; we are small; we are insignificant; we are sinners. We are unworthy of the gifts that God has given, and yet in His mercy He has given those gifts. He is simply asking now that we would cooperate, that we would use those gifts for His glory. That is what is most important.

Saint John the Baptist did not seek his own glory, but rather only the glory of Christ. That is precisely what our lives are to be as well. While God has given us many wonderful things, and many of us get caught up in them to our own glory, it is only through prayer that we are going to recognize how God wants us to use these gifts, what it is that He is asking of us in our own lives, and how we are going to give Him the most glory. That is what we can learn from this great saint who, on a worldly level, would have been a flash in the pan. They wrote him off and they put him to death because he was a censure to their thoughts. Yet his voice continues to cry out, and it will until the end of time: Behold, the Lamb of God; behold Him Who takes away the sins of the world.

*This text was transcribed from the audio recording with minimal editing.

Friday June 24, 2005

Birth of Saint John the Baptist

Reading I (Isaiah 49:1-6)

Reading II (Acts 13:22-26)

Gospel (St. Luke 1:57-66, 80)

As we celebrate today the feast of the Birth of Saint John the Baptist, we hear all about the extraordinary things that took place at his birth and the question that the people were asking: “What is this child to be?” Our Lord Himself tells us that Saint John the Baptist is the greatest man born of woman, because of all human persons (other than Our Lady) he is the only one born without Original Sin. So, indeed, he is the greatest man born of woman in that way on the natural level. Yet Jesus tells us that the least born into the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.

Now when we think about this idea that he is the greatest man born of woman, therefore, on the natural level again, next to Our Lady, he is the highest human person ever to be born. When we look at both of them together, Our Lady and Saint John the Baptist, the two most perfect human persons ever, ask yourself, “If these are the two greatest human persons ever, what did they do to show their greatness?” They both lived hidden lives. Saint John the Baptist, we are told, was out in the desert until the day of his manifestation to Israel. We know he sat out there eating grasshoppers and wild honey just to sustain himself. He prayed and he fasted. Our Lady lived a hidden life. She prayed and she fasted. There is not one miracle that is given to either one of them in Sacred Scripture. Certainly, one could say that the divine maternity is the greatest miracle ever, but that is not even really attributable to Our Lady – she merely cooperated. And neither one of them worked extraordinary signs or wonders in the midst of the people.

Now if that is the case with the greatest of the human persons ever made, what does it say about the rest of us? Sometimes we think that greatness implies doing extraordinary things. Neither of these people was living in that kind of a manner. Both lived ordinary lives initially. Saint John the Baptist obviously lived a rather extraordinary life out in the desert, but not extraordinary in the sense that he was doing extraordinary things, working signs and wonders and miracles for the people. He was not. So, for us, we need to realize that as Saint John the Baptist (as we were told in the first reading) was called by God from the womb and given a name from the womb, so were we. God has called each one of us to greatness. Not worldly greatness, not necessarily to be noticed or to be known, but rather to be saints, to live ordinary human lives with extraordinary love. That is all it requires.

That is what we see in Saint John the Baptist. That is what we see in Our Lady. They did not go out working extraordinary miracles. They were not doing anything so that anyone would notice them, in fact, just the opposite. They both lived extraordinarily hidden lives, but they could not escape notice because they were so extraordinary even in their ordinariness. If we are living holy lives, it will be evident to anyone who looks, but it does not matter because we are not doing it to impress anyone. We are called to holiness for God, and we are called to holiness for our own sake. If God wants us to go out to do extraordinary things, like He has with some of the saints, then that is up to Him. And we need to leave that up to Him.

So none of us can compare ourselves to anyone else. None of us can try to size things up and wonder if we are greater than someone else. Can you imagine a thought like that ever crossing Our Lady’s mind? Or Saint John the Baptist’s? It would not. All they did was focus on God, and that is all we are called to do as well – to love God and to love those around us, to live ordinary hidden lives unless God calls us to something different. Do not worry about how great we might be or what position we might have; it does not matter. The only thing that matters is that we are doing the Will of God. That is the only thing that matters. If the two greatest human persons ever in history did the Will of God by living hidden lives, then why should we be surprised if we are called to something similar? If the greatest people ever lived reasonably ordinary lives, then why should we be surprised if we are called to something similar? All that God wants is for us to be holy. To be holy is to live an ordinary life with extraordinary love.

*This text was transcribed from the audio recording with minimal editing.

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