Pe Daniel Ribeiro, SCJ
GOSPEL REFLECTION – 3RD SUNDAY OF ADVENT YEAR C
(LK 3:1-6)
The central theme of this Sunday’s Gospel continues to be conversion. After a significant time in the wilderness, John the Baptist’s preaching was heard and admired by an ever-growing group and different types of people. The text shows that he had a natural power of attraction, his words were listened to attentively by the people who also accepted the baptism he proposed. All this happened for a special reason, he lived what he preached.
Today’s Gospel highlights three of these groups who, in addition to listening to him, came to seek advice from John the Baptist. The first group was the general crowd. Like the other groups, they asked how they should proceed, to which he suggests not to forget charity in sharing, whether it be the tunic or food. St. Basil the Great says that here “we are taught that of all that exceeds the necessity of our own life, we are bound to give to him who does not have, for God’s sake, who generously bestows upon us all that we possess.”
The publicans also took counsel from the forerunner on how they should do it. He replies that they should not demand more than what was prescribed. In a society where tax collectors used to exploit fellow countrymen to commit acts of injustice, the prophet does not attack taxes per se, but criticizes unjust theft and exploitation. Thus, he makes it clear that immoral enrichment is contrary to divine law.
The soldiers also approached John the Baptist asking how they should act. Wisely, John says that they should not use violence or abuse force so as not to commit injustice. In other words, here we see the condemnation of the abusive use of power and violent acts that propagate dehumanization. Interestingly, the precursor’s answers are simple and practical, always focused on the concrete reality of each group of people. His advice is based on the natural virtues that everyone possesses, and we can live them.
Reflecting on St. John the Baptist’s attractiveness, I remembered that I once read a book written by a secular author explaining leadership and mentioning the difference between power and authority. He stated that power is something we receive externally due to a position or title we hold. A person who has power will be respected for his visible strength. With authority it is different. This is not based on titles and positions in society, but on the respect that someone acquires for their coherence of life. An employee can obey his boss because he has the power to fire him, but he can also obey because of the admiration he has by him, the fruit of a moral authority based on his coherence of life. Thus, we can say that Zechariah, father of John the Baptist, had power, as a result of his religious functions exercised in the temple, but the one who had moral authority and was listened to with the heart was his son. In a world with so much search for power, we must follow the example of intimacy with God and coherence of St. John the Baptist to be heard by our witness. This will make a great difference for priests to form their parishioners, parents their children and educators their students.
In this period before Christmas, we must reflect on how we could convert to be more faithful in our vocation, work and social relationships. We could begin by asking ourselves how John the Baptist began his mission as a precursor of the Savior. The answer is simple: before preparing the ways of the Lord, he stayed with the Lord and took care of his own conversion. Even though he was the son of Zechariah, a priest with functions in the temple, he did not cling to this title and chose to assume his mission with discretion, simplicity and in the silence of the desert. This example is very valuable and deserves our attention, because it is exactly what happened to Jesus. After 30 years of anonymity, everyone hoped that Jesus, after being baptized by John the Baptist, would begin his apostolic life with tireless preaching and miracles, however, the Spirit of God leads him into the desert, where he ended up spending 40 days.
God shows us that every mission, in order to be fruitful, must begin with a deep silence of ourselves, without external distractions, in a place where we can hear what God wants to speak to us and we can understand only in silence. Another example of the value of interior preparation in silence is St. Paul. After his conversion and before being called by Barnabas to be a missionary, he spent three years in Arabia and still about 10 years in anonymity in Tarsus. In addition to the great examples of the Desert Fathers, in the sixteenth century the gentleman Ignatius of Loyola, after feeling touched by God for a special mission, before preaching and proposing rules of discernment and founding the Society of Jesus, felt the need to go through a period of silence to meditate and be alone with God.
The moral authority and internalization as the basis for any fruitful missionary life can be seen repeatedly in the lives of the great missionaries throughout the history of Christianity. With us it must be no different, in addition to coherence of life, before we speak of God we must recollect ourselves in the silence of contemplation, as a true disciple of the Lord. And this is what the season of Advent pedagogically teaches us, that before the feast of Christmas we need to silence and convert our hearts so that we can overflow the fruit of our intimacy with God, as happened with John the Baptist, who managed to attract so many people with his words, because they were consistent with his way of being and reflected his way of life. Let’s let God be born and grow more and more within us, so that we can let Him shine to the world.
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