Destiny

“God has created me to do Him some definite service; He has committed some work to me which He has not committed to another. I have my mission... He has not created me for naught.” (Saint John Henry Newman).

Saint John the Baptist (Mattia Papp)

Saint John the Baptist is such a remarkable Saint.

His whole life was one of penance.  He was never rich.  He was never comfortable.  He lived in the desert and ate honey and locusts.  We are told he ate actual bugs.  He did not do this because he was strange.  He did this because he was hungry and there was no food.  And so, I collected locusts and ate those with natural honey or sap from the plants around him.  He wore uncomfortable itchy clothes that were not flattering to his figure.

“John’s clothes were made of camel’s hair, and he had a leather belt around his waist. His food was locusts and wild honey.  People went out to him from Jerusalem and all Judea and the whole region of the Jordan.  Confessing their sins, they were baptized by him in the Jordan River.” (Matthew 3:4-6).

In other words, Saint John the Baptist lived a very hard life.  And what was already hard in his life, he made more difficult by the sacrifices that he chose to add to his day…  And I have been thinking very much about what it was that allowed Saint John the Baptist to remain so determined in his vocation.  I know – of course – that he was a sinless man.  During the Visitation, which we commemorate in the Second Joyful Mystery of the Most Holy Rosary, when the child leapt within Saint Elizabeth’s womb, he was leaping for joy as the Christ Child – infant in His own Mother’s womb – baptised him.  Thus, Saint John the Baptist was born without Original Sin.

But this is not enough of an explanation for his true holiness.  After all, Adam was also born without Original Sin, and this did not make him sinless – it was no protection against the temptation of the serpent and Eve.

I think, perhaps, that it was Saint John the Baptist’s ability to understand his destiny that allowed him to remain on so fixed a course…

“They came to John, and said to him, ‘Rabbi, he who was with you beyond the Jordan, to whom you bore witness, here he is, baptising, and all are going to him.’ John answered, ‘No one can receive anything except what is given Him from heaven. You yourselves bear me witness, that I said, I am not the Christ, but I have been sent before Him. He who has the bride is the bridegroom; the friend of the bridegroom, who stands and hears Him, rejoices greatly at the bridegroom’s voice; therefore this joy of mine is now full. He must increase, but I must decrease.” (John 3:22-30).

Saint John the Baptist knew that he was here for a purpose.  As Saint John Henry Newman said, “God has created me to do Him some definite service; He has committed some work to me which He has not committed to another. I have my mission... He has not created me for naught.”

And Saint John the Baptist understood that his vocation was a calling as Thomas Merton says, “It comes from a voice in here calling me to be the person I was born to be, to fulfil the original selfhood given me at birth by God... For each one of us, there is only one thing necessary: to fulfil our own destiny, according to God’s will, to be what God wants us to be.”

And so today, as I pray, I ask Saint John the Baptist, to pray for me, who has recourse to thee, so that I can hear the voice of my vocation and fulfil the destiny, the purpose, that God has set for me…

For with prayer, I stand on Holy Ground where everything is clear. Here. At the Foot of the Cross.