Where does God or your faith “amaze” you? The neighbors and relatives of Elizabeth were amazed not only at the fact that the new baby was going to have a name different from his ancestors but also that Zechariah confirmed it by being released from his muteness—and the first thing Zechariah did was to burst forth blessing God.

“John the Baptist inaugurates the good news of God’s kingdom like a champagne bottle shattered against the hull of a new ship.” Catherine Murphy’s description of John, in John the Baptist: Prophet of Purity for a New Age, is my favorite. She might have added: The bottle doesn’t survive the inaugural ceremony, and neither does John.

John the Baptist said he was making way for someone greater, and over the centuries Christians have tended to take him at his word, maybe a little too much so, seeing him as a figure who played his part and exited stage left. To think of him this way, though, is to make him into exactly the opposite of what he stood for: a radically new way to relate to God.

In the spirit of repentance for sins Saint John the Baptist preached, we make known our failures to our merciful God.

"John was completing his course.” These five seemingly throwaway words, as well as some other passages in the readings for Mass during the day, can trigger the perennial Christian temptation to dismiss the Jews of Jesus’ time as shortsighted and law-bound. Indeed, we hear in Isaiah that it is “too little” for the prophet to “restore the survivors of Israel”; rather, salvation is to go to the ends of the earth.

Some Bible scholars believe Jesus had been a disciple of John the Baptizer during his youth before he began his public ministry. But once Jesus comes on the scene, John fades into the background. So today’s a good day to remember the importance of people who are seldom in the spotlight, whether others or ourselves.

Let your intentions be so pure that you reject from your actions any other motive than the glory of God and the salvation of souls. —Saint Angela Merici (1470?-1540)