THE WORD AND THE FEAST
August 29, 2020: Remembering the Beheading of John, the BaptistJeremiah 1: 17-19; Mark 6: 17-29
St.Paul boasts often saying, there is a different kind of a logic that is at work in us... and the first person who lived by that logic even before Christ the Lord, was John! In fact Christ called him the greatest of those born of a woman. The sufferings of this world are nothing compared to the glory that awaits us in the Lord, St. Paul would remind us.
This special, if not strange, logic can be called Christ Logic... a logic that gets its stamp of divine approval from the words, life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. It is all about being the last and finding yourself the first; serving everyone and finding yourself the master of the moment; going about in silent righteousness and finding the entire world after you - after you either following you or trying to do away with you!
Be a servant to be the Leader, be the least to be considered the best, be ready for the Cross in order to taste the true love of God... identifying ourselves with Christ is a serious affair. We would either be judged "strange"or "challenging". Many went through this ordeal due to this Christ logic... Jesus himself was affected by that, wasn't he?...they called him 'possessed'...they called him 'out of his mind'...and finally villainised him and killed him, just as they did with John the Baptist.
The Baptist was an extreme illustration of Christ Logic, just like Jeremiah was in his time. And both of them were eliminated as early as possible by the world around them. The same happened to Jesus and in this, Jeremiah and John the Baptist had proved themselves to be prefigurements to Christ, the prototypes of those who live by Christ logic.
Applying today that Christ logic... what do we expect of the world? Persecutions and pressures...what would be our response to them? The prosperous evil ones against whom we need to be shouting from the dark, apparently in vain... what would we make of it? In today's culture of hatred and violence, what would our style be? Do we dare to make our own, the Christ logic?