HOMILY PRONOUNCED BY MONS. DIEGO MONROY PONCE; GENERAL AND EPISCOPAL VICAR OF GUADALUPE, RECTOR OF THE SANCTUARY.
THE BIRTH OF SAINT JOHN THE BAPTIST

Sunday, June 24th of 2007

PROFILE OF A PROPHET

My dear brothers and sisters:

This Sunday is a day of celebration. We remember and celebrate with joy the birth of Saint John the Baptist, who is that man that from his infancy caused much happiness between the neighbors? Who is that man that at an early age provoked so many expectations? Who is this man to whom his parents insisted on calling Juan to him? The Gospels gave us some facts: he is the son of an old priest called Zechariah and of a sterile woman of old age called Elizabeth (cfr Lk 1, 7). He is a consecrated man to God; he is filled with the Holy Spirit from before his birth (Lk 1, 16-17). He is a man that has the important mission of leading many people in Israel to turn back to God, the mission of reconciling the parents with their children, the mission of inculcating the wisdom of the just ones in the rebel ones... in short, the mission of preparing (for God) good people with a good will to receive the Lord. (Lk. 1, 16-17).

He is a prophet of the highest one that announces the salvation of the people through the forgiveness of the sins and of the deep mercy of God; but he also denounces the twist of the people and of his authorities: the monopolizing, the corruption, the extortion... (Lk 1, 76-78, 3, 11-14). He is a man that lived in the desert until the day in which he shows himself the Israel town, and that he preached a baptism of conversion of which the same Jesus participated (Lk. 1, 80; 3, 21). Before the questions about his identity, he answers with the words of the prophet Elijah “I am the voice of the one that cries out in the desert: rectify the way of the Lord” (Jh 1, 23). He is the one that indicates that God is the messiah, the Lamb of God, the one to whom we have to follow (Jh 1, 23). As an example of John Baptist, we are prophets of our epoch.

Dear brothers, the prophecy is a necessity of our time, but it is already a reality, because God never stops calling us to the conversion through the words of people that he sends us to orient our steps by the way of the salvation. Today, when the church celebrates solemnly to John Baptist, it invites us to center our attention on the God, and merciful father that leads the history through the people that He chooses. He prepares them to be effective in the performance of their mission in expectation to our eternal salvation in Christ.

For that reason Isaiah appears in the readings from today, whose figure projects his light to understand the physiognomy of John the precursory Baptist of Jesus as the messiah of God. It is to understand, in its entire dimension, specially the character of this prophet of the Old Testament that indicated with the finger to the unique prophet and the first of everybody, Jesus Christ.

The understanding of the prophetic work of the Baptist and of the Jesus will help us to recognize, brothers, the true prophets of our time among many voices and proposals of salvation that offer themselves to us in everywhere.

The prophet Isaiah is the resource that the liturgy of the word offers to us today to understand the importance and the prophetic character of John the Baptist of whom Jesus says that there is not any one greater than him (Lk. 7, 28).

The text about Isaiah that today we have listened and that we are trying to understand and to explain, it is known as one of the singing of the Servant; the second of four that we find in the second part of the book of Isaiah. This singing presents a series of ideas and affirmations that end at the announcement of the universal salvation when they talk at the beginning and at the end to the nations of the earth, which are receivers of the work of God.

As Jeremiah, the prophet Isaiah talks about his vocation of which he has been object by God from the womb of his mother, and about the divine help that guarantees his success. Indeed, brothers, God prepared the prophet Jeremiah, the prophet Isaiah and the Baptist for him making a sharp sword or a pointed arrow to announce like a light the salvation to the whole world. So, as the great personages of the history of the salvation, John has a very special place between the prophets that are called in a special way, as today Saint Luke describes it to us in his Gospel.
The Baptist appears in the second reading taken from the Acts of the Apostles, as somebody that prepared the coming of the salvation in the person of the redeemer, Jesus, according to the most primitive Christian preaching, the one that was given after the death of Jesus. That preaching began affirming that the precursor had the mission to prepare the people to receive Him through a Baptism of penance. It is a rite that he made for the ones whom accepted to enter in this dynamics of the salvation. The Baptist thought, that with the rite of the Baptism, the salvation is a gift of God that it is not something that somebody can gain. It is God who sanctifies through a minister who is designated by God, as John was. As a true prophet, my brothers, Saint John the Baptist seems like somebody that not only announces the future, but also somebody that mainly gives testimony with the word that God puts in his mouth, and with his style of life, that God is always present in the human history; that He is faithful to his promises because he is (before everything) a merciful God.

But it is important to notice for our spiritual benefit, my dear brothers, that the prophet has to answer in the obedience and in the promptness to carry out what is requested to him.

We can conclude, my brothers that the prophet is born as prophet by free and sovereign decision of God but also it is made when they accept freely and in love their mission and their destiny. We also have to notice that God prepares his prophets (according to his consent) to be effective in their mission that has been entrusted to them, as dynamic factors in the history of the salvation of the humanity.

Thus, we can say with all property that they are instruments that are chosen by God to his service. It is important to say, as it appears in the Gospel, the apparent obstacles just emphasize the providence and the power of God. John says in the second reading, the prophet is not somebody that usurps a place or a mission that does not correspond to him, but he recognizes, in the humility, that he is only an instrument of God. These would be some characteristics of the true prophets.

But it is in the Eucharist, my brothers, where we listen the exhortation of the prophets: change the way you live! After considering the greatness and the wonders of the mystery of the redemption that Jesus carried out with his death and resurrection, we just have to let ourselves surround in the mystery that announces the Eucharistic celebration, if the prophets as John the Baptist give us testimony with their word and their life, of a God that in his mercy calls us to the eternal life, Jesus, the prophet and messiah, he surpasses all them in everything.

Today, our little girl and sweet mother also carries out a very important task in the prophetic line, because in her Guadalupano mystery she wants to show us the sweetness of a God that is interested in us.

Amen.