"HIS NAME IS JOHN."

“HIS NAME IS JOHN”

June 24^th, 2020. Luke 1:57-66, 80.

AIM: To explain the significance of the Baptist’s name, and the implications for us.

 

Not quite 52 years ago, on the afternoon of October 28^th, 1958, an elderly cardinal named Angelo Roncalli was elected Bishop of Rome. When he was asked what name he would take as Pope, he replied: “I will be called John.” It was the first of many surprises. There had not been a pope of that name for over six hundred years. Almost all of them had short pontificates, John told his electors. He was then just short of 77. He would die only four and a half years later, on the day after Pentecost 1963.

“The name John is dear to me,” the new Pope explained, “because it was the name of my father, because it is the dedication of the humble parish church where I was baptized, and because it is the name of our own cathedral, the blessed and holy Lateran Basilica.” He loved the name John, he added, because it had been borne by the two men in the gospels who were closest to Jesus: John the Baptist, who prepared the way of the Lord and shed his blood in witness to the One he proclaimed; and John the Evangelist, called throughout the gospel which bears his name “the disciple whom Jesus loved.”

Today we celebrate the birth of the first of those two Johns. The saints are normally celebrated on the day of their death, called by the Church their heavenly birthday. The Church celebrates John the Baptist’s death on the 29^th of August. He is the only saint whose birthday is celebrated as a solemn feast, so that, like Christmas, it displaces even the weekly remembrance of the Lord’s resurrection on Sunday. 

The Baptist’s naming, like that of Pope John XXIII, was a surprise. Luke’s gospel tells us how it came about. Nine months before the child’s birth, God had sent the angel Gabriel to tell the baby’s father, the Jewish priest, Zechariah: “Your prayer has been heard. Your wife Elizabeth shall bear a son whom you shall name John.  Joy and gladness will be yours, and many will rejoice at his birth” (Lk 1:13f).  Zechariah found the news incredible. He and his wife Elizabeth were both far too old to have a child. “How am I to know this?” Zechariah asked. “I am an old man; my wife too is advanced in age.” 

Zechariah’s inability to believe the angel’s message meant that from that day he was mute, unable to speak. Clearly he was deaf as well. For at his son’s birth, today’s gospel reading says, they have to ask the old man by signs what name he wishes to give his son. His inability to speak meant that he had never been able to tell his wife that the angel had named their son John nine months before. 

Those gathered for the baby’s naming assume that he will have his father’s name. Great is their astonishment when the child’s mother Elizabeth insists on a name not borne hitherto by anyone in their family. “No,” she says, “he will be called John.” The astonishment becomes amazement when Zechariah, asked by signs what he wants to call his son, confirms his wife’s choice. Even though deafness prevented Zechariah from hearing what his wife had said, he writes the words: “John is his name.”

Immediately, Luke tells us, Zechariah’s “mouth was opened, his tongue freed, and he spoke, blessing God.” His words are omitted in today’s gospel reading. They are a hymn of praise, starting with the words: “Blessed be the Lord God of Israel; he has come to his people and set them free.” The Church has made these words part of her daily public prayer every morning. 

St. Augustine says that Zechariah’s power of speech was restored because at his son’s birth a voice was born. If John had proclaimed himself, Augustine says, he could not have restored his father’s speech. John’s role, determined by God from his first conception in his mother’s womb, was to proclaim another: the One who would not be, like John, simply a voice, but himself God’s Word: his personal utterance and communication to us.

The words of the prophet Isaiah in our first reading apply equally to John: “The Lord called me from birth, from my mother’s womb he gave me my name. ... You are my servant, he said to me, Israel through whom I show my glory.” The name John means, “God is gracious,” or “God has given grace.” The name was singularly appropriate for the man commissioned even before his birth to proclaim the One who would give God a human face, and a human voice.

God called each of us in our mother’s womb. He fashioned us in his own image, as creatures made for love: to praise, worship, and praise God here on earth, and to be happy with him forever in heaven.  Fulfilling that destiny, given to us not just at birth but at our conception, means heeding the words which today’s saint, John the Baptist, spoke about Jesus: “He must increase, I must decrease” (John 3:3).

Those are the most important words which St. John the Baptist spoke.  In just six words they sum up the whole life of Christian discipleship.  Imprint those words on your mind, your heart, your soul.  Resolve today to try to make them a reality in daily life.  Those who do that find that they have discovered the key to happiness, to fulfilment, and to peace. “He must increase, I must decrease.”