Rethinking the Baptist, Rethinking Me

I have always imagined John the Baptist as grizzled and middle-aged. But he wasn't. He was only six months older than his Cousin. And he died before Him. How old would that have made him? 31 or 32? He sat in a jail cell while Christ ministered to others. And he is blessed in his obscurity. He is blessed in becoming less and less. His star fell. And he, happily, though sometimes without understanding, fell with it until his very life was extinguished. And the world went on, following its own path or, even, following Christ. But no longer following John.
     John the Baptist decreased. John the Baptist's life is an exemplar of his teaching. He bowed before obscurity that the Light of the world might be seen all the more clearly.
     I read this morning St Ignatius of Loyola speak of three humilities. I could barely classify myself in the first and lowest humility - the humility to have Christ as Lord. The second and third love obscurity and poverty and the cross. But I am not so humble. I still want to be rich more than I want to be poor. I would still rather be somebody than nobody. I am not a humble man. I am not sure that I want to be. I am not sure that I want to want to be. But therein, I believe, is my salvation.
     This life is not about what we do with ourselves so much as it is about who we are. That is not to say that this life is not about loving. Of course it is. What I mean is that it is not about becoming a success in whatever profession I profess. I count it all as nothing that I might gain Christ. My success is not my ambition. So I change poopy diapers, I attempt to teach pronouns to one daughter and patterns to the next. I clean up other people's messes. Here in this obscurity and lowliness, and only here, can I learn to love and serve God. I am not Christ's unless I am Christ's. And I cannot give Christ to others if I do not possess Him.
     I am a proud man. I sometimes think that I am too proud to be able to call myself a follower of Christ. So now, with no coffee yet in me this Labor Day morning, I want to tell you that I need this blessed obscurity that I have for so long resisted and despised and feared - that I still struggle against. If I were to be famous, perhaps even successful, I would lose my soul.

The Baptist's Task

"The task set before the Baptist as he lay in prison was to become blessed by this unquestioning acceptance of God's obscure will; to reach the point of asking no further for external, visible, unequivocal clarity, but, instead, of discovering God precisely in the darkness of this world and of his own life, and thus becoming profoundly blessed. John even in his prison cell had to respond once again and anew to his own call for metanoia or a change of mentality, in order that he might recognize his God in the night in which all things earthly exist. Only when we act in this manner does another - and doubtless the greatest - saying of the Baptist reveal its full significance: 'He must increase, but I must decrease' (Jn 3.30). We will know God to the extent that we are set free from ourselves."

- Pope Benedict XVI