“I did not know Him.”

          John the Baptist’s statement today sounds eerily like St. Peter’s later denial of Christ: “surely, I do not know the man.” But while John’s repeated statement that he does not know Jesus is odd, since John and Jesus are cousins, there is something very different happening here. John knows who Jesus is, but before this moment, he did not know that Jesus is the Christ, the Messiah, the Son of God.

          St. Luke tells us twice, after the mysterious events of Christ’s birth and childhood that reveal His divine nature and awesome vocation, that the Blessed Mother “kept all these things in Her heart.” Mary treasures the secret of who Her Son really is. John, with his spiritual acuity, must have realized that there was something very special about his cousin, but he could never have guessed the full truth. It is not until that moment, when he sees the Holy Spirit descend upon Christ, that he recognizes the full reality of who Jesus is: the One who existed before John (even though John is six months older than Jesus, according to the flesh).

But this is not the strangest thing that John the Baptist tells us today. “The reason why I came baptizing with water was that he might be made known to Israel.” If you asked me, “Why was John baptizing in the Jordan?”, I would have told you that he is calling people to repentance, that there is a growing sense among the people of his time that something cataclysmic is about to happen, that the time of fulfillment of God’s promises is drawing near, and people felt the need to prepare through repentance. Just as before this moment, John “did not know” Jesus in that he did not know the full reality of who He is as the Son of God, even John himself did not know when he went out into the wilderness why he was preaching and baptizing. This is the moment of the revealing of God’s purposes.

At this moment, John recognizes what his preaching and baptizing are really about: making known the One whom God the Father has just revealed as His only Son. (Last Sunday we saw how the heavens opened after Christ’s baptism for that proclamation from Heaven: “This is my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased.”)

          “That He might be made known.” This is not just the reason for which John is baptizing, unbeknownst to him before this moment. It is the reason for everything. Everything finds its final purpose in this end: That He might be made known.

          We also hear today the introduction of St. Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians. He addresses them as, “you who have been sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be holy.” As we saw last Sunday, the mystery of Christian baptism gives us an awesome vocation, and a weighty task. You are re-made a king, who rules over sin and disorder in your life. You are re-made a priest, who offers the sacrifice of your own life, like Isaac, that first “beloved son.” In baptism, you were given the Holy Spirit and power to do this – a spiritual power permanently existing in your soul that nothing can ever wipe away.

          Today, we see why God gave you these awesome powers: So that He might be made known. Your calling to live a life of holiness, the power to be a king and a priest, is inseparable from a third call: to be a prophet. We think of prophecy as going into a trance and foretelling future events. This is not a prophet. It is a fortune teller. In the Scriptures, it is not the prophets who go into trances and foretell future events. It is people possessed by demons.

          Rather, the prophets use symbolic actions to show the powerful in Israel their need for conversion, to turn back to the One God. They speak boldly to those in power and call on their fellow Israelites to change their ways. They point to God’s kingdom by caring for widows, orphans, the poor, and those outside the people of Israel. Their purpose likewise is to make Him known.

          Everything we do as Christians should be directed to that end: To make Him known. It is this prophetic vocation that we tend to most miss out on as Catholics. When we did our parish survey last year, many parishioners expressed interest in reaching out to non-practicing Catholics, but only eighteen per cent of us identified evangelizing non-Catholics as a high priority. This isn’t surprising, because Catholics have been wired to see evangelization as the responsibility of clergy and religious. And indeed, when the Gospel was brought to the Americas, Africa, Asia, or our own ancestors among the heathen tribes of northern Europe, it was the courageous missionaries who made Him known for the first time.

          But the age of that first evangelization, for most of the world, is long past. In the new evangelization, making Him known must be the responsibility of every Christian. It is not an add-on or something that wins you Catholic extra credit. It is the bread and butter of who we are: To make Him known.

          Last year I heard a talk from the founders of Damascus, the camp that many of our on-fire teens and young adults have attended. They emphasized that their mission is to send young people back to their communities with a passion for this mission, ready to make Christ known to their classmates, families, and friends. Are they ready to explain the finer points of the Catechism? No. But, newsflash, you don’t really inspire someone to spread the Gospel by studying the finer points of the Catechism. You’re motivated to study the finer points of the Catechism because you encounter Christ, give your life to Him, and want everyone else to know Him too. And then, when you’re stumped by people’s questions, you’re motivated to learn. You can find the same pattern in the lives of the saints: Encounter, conversion, and mission.

          Is living that prophetic mission to make Him known scary at times? Yes, certainly. It makes us confront the parts of our lives where we know that we don’t measure up ourselves. You fear that you don’t know enough, that you aren’t good enough. But think about it this way: Maybe the mission of making Him known is precisely what you’re missing. Maybe it’s that mission that will actually give you the motivation to make time for Him every day in prayer, to turn your back on sin, to be the husband, wife, father, mother, son, daughter, and friend you’ve always wanted to be.

          Until recently, Catholicism’s influence in the United States was locked down by a White, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant (WASP) establishment. Ironically, it is now evangelical Protestants, the largest religious group in the US, who are jealous of Catholics’ cultural cache. One of the most influential evangelical thinkers in the United States wrote an article last month bemoaning the fact that the cultural escalator that used to move Protestants through varying levels of prestige in denominations (Baptist to Methodist to Presbyterian, etc.) now leads either to Roman Catholicism or secularism (a Scylla and Charybdis if there ever were one!). Catholics are leaders in politics, business, think tanks, and the academy in ways that make serious evangelicals green with envy!

          Of course, most of us here aren’t in that position, but all of us have a sphere of influence, whether it’s in your family, your workplace, your friend group, etc. What will you do to make Him known? In the past, the Church’s vision of the Gospel faced intense competition from other visions of the good life. But now, the wasteland of secularism has left the field clear. It’s not that the secular world doesn’t offer good answers to these questions. It’s that it doesn’t offer any answers at all. It is the Gospel, or nihilism – God or nothing.

But as Catholics, we have something to say. Our Church has a compelling vision and answer to the great question of modern man: Who is the human person? What is her place in the world? What is the meaning of his life? We have something good, beautiful, and true to propose! And to do so is not a heavy task laid upon the Christian. It is a power given to your soul by Baptism. The grace of your Baptism makes you a prophet. It gives you the power to make Him known.     

          That compelling, good, true, and beautiful vision can be summed up in the words of John the Baptist today: “The reason why I came baptizing with water was that he might be made known.” Our goal is the same, that we might be able to say about everything we do that it is so that Jesus Christ might be made known.

The Rev. Royce V. Gregerson

Parish Church of Our Lady of Good Hope, Fort Wayne

II Sunday through the Year, A.D. MMXXVI