Clear Voices Resounding Still

Third Wednesday of Advent
    Saint John of the Cross


Lord God, you gave St John of the Cross the grace of complete self denial
    and an ardent love for the Cross of Christ.
Grant that by following always in his footsteps we might come to the eternal
    vision of your glory.
                                 Amen   (Church Prayer)

And you, child, will be called the prophet of most high:
     for you will go before the face of the Lord to prepare his path,                   
to let his people know their salvation,
      so that their sins may be forgiven.
Through the bottomless mercy of our God
       one born on high will visit us
to give light to those who walk in darkness,
       who live in the shadow of death;
       to lead our feet in the path of peace.
                                                                Benedictus  Canticle


“Behold the lamb of God” resounds John the Baptist throughout the ages.  I hear him even now, this obscure wild man of the desert calling a choice to action:  our day to day living quietly, small, serving our Lord and one another; a humble obscurity.  To those who live a life of baptism we must decrease, disappear as the Lord increases. As the Lord came into the world poor and vulnerable and placed in a feeding trough: He the lamb who will feed us daily. The light increases after the solstice, after the Lord’s birth.  John paves the way through humility and sacrifice and torture and giving of his very life.

The spirit of the Christ child; the spirit of God’s humility and Love.  God became a child to make us perfect. He was laid in a manger to be upon an altar. How we, so often, have no room for God in our inns but he offers us mansions of gold. We owe more to His suffering than all of creation.  We were born in vain if it were not for God’s redemption. Listening to John crying out in the wilderness this Advent and always.  The sound of his voice piercing our hearts across time and space; the stinging sands of our souls.

Saint John of the Cross embraces the Christ, God incarnate, and His cross; shows us the poetry of dying to self in the same blaze as the prophetic desert Saint who, through the threads of time, calls out still to each of us, unrolling the wild weaving before the footsteps of our Lord.