{"id":4691,"date":"2023-12-16T13:30:51","date_gmt":"2023-12-16T13:30:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.stmarys-tallaght.ie\/site\/?p=4691"},"modified":"2023-12-16T13:30:56","modified_gmt":"2023-12-16T13:30:56","slug":"commentary-on-the-3rd-sunday-of-advent-b-17-12-2017","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.stmarys-tallaght.ie\/site\/commentary-on-the-3rd-sunday-of-advent-b-17-12-2017\/","title":{"rendered":"Commentary on the 3rd Sunday of Advent (B), 17.12.2023"},"content":{"rendered":"

Commentary by Donagh O\u2019Shea OP, www.goodnews.ie <\/a><\/h3>\n

Jn 1:6-8, 19-28<\/b><\/p>\n

There was a man sent from God, whose name was John.\u00a0 He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him.\u00a0 He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light.\u00a0 This is the testimony given by John when the Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, “Who are you?”\u00a0 He confessed and did not deny it, but confessed, “I am not the Messiah.”\u00a0 And they asked him, “What then? Are you Elijah?” He said, “I am not.” “Are you the prophet?” He answered, “No.”\u00a0 Then they said to him, “Who are you? Let us have an answer for those who sent us. What do you say about yourself?”\u00a0 He said, “I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way of the Lord,'” as the prophet Isaiah said.\u00a0 Now they had been sent from the Pharisees.\u00a0 They asked him, “Why then are you baptising if you are neither the Messiah, nor Elijah, nor the prophet?”\u00a0 John answered them, “I baptise with water.\u00a0 Among you stands one whom you do not know,\u00a0 the one who is coming after me; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandal.”\u00a0 This took place in Bethany across the Jordan where John was baptising.<\/em><\/p>\n

The first line of last Sunday’s gospel reading introduced “Jesus Christ, Son of God.”\u00a0 Today’s readings (particularly the first, and also the responsorial psalm) show him as “Saviour”.\u00a0 These together were the earliest affirmation of faith in Jesus: “Jesus Christ, Son of God and Saviour,” in Greek, \u0399\u03b7\u03c3\u03bf\u03c5\u03c2 \u03a7\u03c1\u03b9\u03c3\u03c4\u00f3\u03c2 \u0398\u03b5\u03bf\u1fe6 \u03a5\u1f31\u03cc\u03c2 \u03a3\u03c9\u03c4\u03ae\u03c1 – Iesous Christos Theou Uios Soter.<\/em>\u00a0 The initial letters of these words taken together \u2013 ICHTHUS \u2013 happen to mean ‘fish’.\u00a0 And so the fish became the secret sign of being a Christian in the times of persecution.\u00a0 It can be seen scratched on the walls of the catacombs in Rome.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

John the Baptist was a rough-cut individual, appearing from the desert, fulminating against the people, and offering a “baptism of repentance.”\u00a0\u00a0 We mustn’t think yet of Christian baptism.\u00a0 John’s was a kind of moral baptism.\u00a0 They were turbulent times, and people were looking for a powerful and charismatic leader.\u00a0 John could be the one.\u00a0 The people thronged the him, wanting to signal their identification with him through a symbolic cleansing of sin: immersion in the Jordan (the word ‘baptism’ means ‘plunging’).<\/p>\n

But John was clear about the limits of his own message.\u00a0 He pointed to another and greater leader to come.\u00a0 “I baptise with water\u2026 he baptises with the Holy Spirit” (Jn 1:26, 33).\u00a0 In other words, I plunge you in water, but he will plunge you in God’s Spirit.<\/p>\n

There is a world of difference between what we might call ‘salvation from below’ and ‘salvation from above’.\u00a0 Today there is a great attraction in the first: our world has countless self-improvement programmes, and many people are greatly helped by this or that one.\u00a0 However, there is some built-in limitation in all of these.\u00a0 What if I were to succeed in improving myself, according to own view?\u00a0 It is always in danger of being a Pyrrhic victory, because the ‘I’ that is improving itself may be entrenching itself even deeper in itself.\u00a0 In Zen they call it ‘polishing the tile’, after an anecdote about a monk who was attempting to turn a tile into a mirror by polishing it.\u00a0 The best things, we discover, are given<\/em>, not produced<\/em>.\u00a0 In Christian terms we speak of the “grace of God”.\u00a0\u00a0 The word ‘grace’ means ‘gift’.\u00a0 A gift is from beyond, so I can receive it in simplicity of heart, without the ego’s double-binds.\u00a0 This is ‘salvation from above’.\u00a0 Far from excluding the other, it comes most often when the other has been taken to its limit and has run aground.\u00a0\u00a0 If I improve myself I can experience a certain satisfaction<\/em>, but when the grace of God floods me I know what is meant by joy<\/em>.\u00a0 Joy is from beyond.<\/p>\n

The contrast between John the Baptist and Jesus is fascinating, and the Liturgy gives us many opportunities throughout the year to study it.\u00a0 Jesus once said, “Truly I tell you, among those born of women no one has arisen greater than John the Baptist; yet the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he” (John 11:11; Luke 7:28).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Commentary by Donagh O\u2019Shea OP, www.goodnews.ie Jn 1:6-8, 19-28 There was a man sent from God, whose name was John.\u00a0 He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him.\u00a0 He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light.\u00a0 This is the testimony<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4693,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4691","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-commentary"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stmarys-tallaght.ie\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4691","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stmarys-tallaght.ie\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stmarys-tallaght.ie\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stmarys-tallaght.ie\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stmarys-tallaght.ie\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4691"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.stmarys-tallaght.ie\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4691\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8064,"href":"https:\/\/www.stmarys-tallaght.ie\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4691\/revisions\/8064"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stmarys-tallaght.ie\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4693"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stmarys-tallaght.ie\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4691"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stmarys-tallaght.ie\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4691"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stmarys-tallaght.ie\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4691"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}