God's Vector

When I was a senior in high school, I took physics as an elective course. Several of my friends and I decided to take the plunge on this particular course not only because it was known to be particularly challenging but also because it was taught by a priest. Fr. Lawrence Frederick – or “Father Fred” as he was known to us – was not only a man of God; he was a scientist and an engineer. In fact, we knew that before he became a priest he had worked on the Gemini space project at NASA. Needless to say, this man of great learning was an attraction in himself.

The class itself was great. It was hard, but it taught me things that I still remember to this day. For example, one thing Father Fred taught us was that every force in nature – gravity, electromagnetism – is a vector: that is, it has both a magnitude and a direction. In other words, when you look at the natural world, you should think not only about the powers that are present there, but also in what direction those powers are aimed.

The same is true for spiritual powers. In the liturgy today, we celebrate the birth of a man of great spiritual power: John the Baptist. The Catholic Church, as you know, celebrates lots of saints in the course of our liturgical calendar. All throughout the year we celebrate various men and women who gave witness to Christ in a variety of ways. Typically we celebrate their feast days on the anniversary of their day of death, or on some other important day in their life. But only in two cases do we celebrate the birth of a saint. The first is Mary, the mother of Jesus, and the second is John the Baptist. What makes these two saints particularly important, such that we should celebrate not the end of their lives but the beginning? 

 Saint John the Baptist (1657) by Philippe de Champaigne

The answer, as you might guess, is Jesus. Mary’s birth marks the entrance into the world of she who accepted God’s will so completely, so faithfully that the Savior was born from her own humanity. The birth of John the Baptist also heralds the coming of Christ. The Son of God drew his flesh and blood identity from his Mother Mary, but the identity of his mission is one related to all that John the Baptist represents. Traditionally, the Church has celebrated John the Baptist as the last of the Old Testament prophets. He sums up the whole of God’s message to the Jewish people, and he is the one who prepares Israel for the coming of her Savior at long last. We might think of John as a kind of a vector, pointing others to Christ. In the words, of Isaiah, he is the “sharp-edged sword”, the “polished arrow,” directing all of his spiritual might toward the coming of One greater than he, toward the Messiah himself.

Celebrating the birth of John the Baptist would seem to make much more sense in the time of Advent, when we are preparing for the celebration of Jesus’s own birth. And yet, here we are in June, about as far removed from Christmas as one can be in the calendar. This feast falls smack dab in the middle of summer not only because tomorrow is six months from Christmas. It is also intended to be a reminder for us that God wishes at all times to remind us of the saving gift of his Son Jesus. Indeed, he desires to orient everything – all aspects of his creation, indeed each and every one of us – toward Christ himself.

As we heard in the first reading, God has created each us of us in our mother’s womb, and so he knows each of us individually, and he has created each of us with a particular identity for a purpose. God gave the prophets of old, John the Baptist, and especially Mary the privileged grace of having identities that pointed the way to Jesus in advance of his coming. The entirety of their being – everything that they were – was intended to be a kind of spiritual force directed at the Savior who would soon follow. Those of us who come after Jesus are nonetheless also to point the way to him, not chronologically but spiritually. God desires that we allow the capacity of our being – the whole of our spiritual identity – to be oriented toward Christ, recalling always the redemption that he has won for us and the salvation that we hope for. Like John the Baptist, we are called to be a kind of vector pointing toward Christ, so that we may always find our true bearings in him and so that others, through us, can also find him as well.

"Jesus Christ and Saint John the Forerunner", The Deësis mosaic, c. 1260, Hagia Sophia, Istanbul

Today’s solemnity is important enough that it takes precedence over the celebration of the Sundays of Ordinary Time. To my mind, at least, it is a welcome break. In the middle of summer, six months out from Christmas, today’s feast gives us the chance to ask ourselves anew: what does the coming of Christ really mean for me? In what way is my life directed toward Jesus, like John the Baptist was? How am I using the gifts that God has given me to direct others to Christ?
If those are the questions the Church wants to ask ourselves today, then we should be creative with our answers. Everything in our lives can become a sign to others of the love of Jesus, if done consciously with that intention, if we allow ourselves to be aimed toward Christ. Each relationship, each obligation, each burden or suffering, each joy and happiness, each viewpoint – all of them can be incorporated into our relationship with Jesus. Even more importantly, if we seek to orient ourselves to him, then Jesus will imbue each of those relationships, obligations, burdens, joys, and viewpoints with new and profound meaning, and he will make them an avenue for grace and for growth in him.

Friends, John the Baptist was born into our world for the sole reason of pointing others to Jesus, a mission that he carried out faithfully and well. That is our mission too; may we carry it out well. Father Fred taught my high school classmates and I a lot about physics. But he taught us far more by his simple presence in the classroom, by being a priest who loved science and wanted to share his knowledge with students. In his own way, he did what John the Baptist did – he directed us to Jesus, and showed us that all things find new meaning in him. The Lord can do great things in us if we accept the tasks of our daily lives with great humility and with deep faith, and if we remember that in all things, we too can help point the way to Christ.