The Third Week Of Advent – John Paul ll And John The Baptist

Fr Dexter Brereton, CSSp

Luke 3: 10-18

In the final years of his life, our late Holy Father Pope John Paul II suffered grievously from many of the maladies associated with old age. His once mighty voice, which fearlessly proclaimed the supremacy of God in the face of Soviet-style communism in Poland, that powerful voice that defended the rights of the poor and the unborn, was reduced to a murmur. His speech slurred and his walk grew slow and unsteady. His hands shook. At that time many looked on in horror in in pity and asked why did he stay on? Why did he not retire? Yet, John Paul made of his life a teaching to the whole church on the dignity of old age and the need for the Christian to accept gracefully and humbly, the genuine suffering that God allows in his or her life. As I remember these things, it strikes me that in his own time, John Paul II spoke in the same powerful manner as did John the Baptist who stands at the centre of our Gospel reading today.

The “Johns and Jennies the Baptist” in our own lives are men and women who turn their own lives into a teaching, a parable. This parable is done at the service of a cause or a greater truth which is larger than themselves. As John says: I baptise you with water, but someone is coming, someone more powerful than I am, and I am not fit to undo the strap of his sandals; he will baptise you with the Holy Spirit and fire. This parable that they proclaim with their lives is so striking in its purity and integrity that it causes us to question our own lives and the way that we live. Deep in our hearts we look towards the lives and example and these persons and we ask them, like John’s audience, “what must we do?” The world is full of examples of people who are the John the Baptist of our time, or maybe at some point in their career WERE like John the Baptist. (People change over time and this is a fact of life). We may think of outstanding individuals such as Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela or Mahatma Ghandi or perhaps even a group of persons like the whole IPCC panel on climate change which is delivering a critical message on the environment in our own time.

I also want to say something about the content of John’s preaching today. He addresses persons of a number of different professions in his day as he answers the question “what must we do?” Running all through his answers is a central concept of Catholic Social Teaching. I am speaking of the concept of ‘Justice.’ In Catholic tradition, Justice has been defined by the Latin expression SUUM QUIQUE TRADERE which means “giving to each person what is his or her own.” John exhorts his hearers to lay claim only to what is validly due to them. As he says to the tax collectors and soldiers: exact no more than your rate. Some soldiers asked him in their turn, ‘what about us? What must we do? He said to them, ‘No intimidation! No extortion! Be content with your pay!’

In other words, demand of others, in the course of your business practice, only what is fair and just. In demanding only what is due to oneself, at the very same time, one hands over to the customer, what is due to them. According to this teaching, ‘price-gouging, that is the deliberate spiking of the price of goods, services and commodities is a deeply sinful practice.

Here in Trinidad and Tobago, there is much room for self-reflection on the part of members of the business community and also on the part of workers. Those who demand just and ethical behaviour from others, should themselves be just. Let us ask ourselves, when we look at the prices we are charged for example for medical services or legal services or for construction, are these fees just and commensurate with the work that is being done or does the fee structure reflect business owners who believe that they have a license to get rich? We can also ask questions especially of unionized workers. Is the point of one’s union activity getting the most amount of pay for the minimum amount of labour or does it reflect a genuine interest in the industry that one serves?

On this the third Sunday of Advent, let us allow the words of John the Baptist to resonate in our hearts, let it cause us to reflect deeply, and if necessary, to become converted to the ways of Justice and to the values of the Kingdom of God, where the Father, the Son and the Spirit live and reign for ever and ever. Amen.