Today’s readings: Isaiah 49, 1-6; Acts 13, 22-26; Luke 1, 57-66.80.

It may be a happy coincidence for the Church in the times we are in to celebrate the birth of John the Baptist on a Sunday. The Baptist came at a very particular point in time in the history of Israel and he knew well, in addressing the issue of his time, how to alternate between living in the wilderness and going public.

The birth of the Baptist, from the time he was formally announced to Zechariah in the Temple, was marked with very powerful symbolic gestures that need to be unpacked. His birth and the moment of his circumcision when they came to name him, were wrapped in mystery. The moment Zechariah, on the eighth day when they came to name the child, regained the power of speech is also a most powerful symbol.

Isaiah’s second canticle is actually a second and most important step in Israel’s gradual discovery of its call and mission. It took ages for Israel to grasp the real implications of what God was trying to transmit through his prophets. Israel, at a first instance, was too closed in on itself and in its suffering to understand its call to be “the light of the nations so that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth”.

Isaiah is addressing a people suspended between a God who is calling and a reality that was suffocating. God was saying one thing, reality was showing the opposite. But the faith-crisis of Israel alternated from times when it was difficult to believe because Israel itself was a victim of oppression and injustice, and times when Israel itself became perpetrator of injustice and oppression.

It was again mainly the religious crisis of Israel that made John the Baptist move to the wilderness. He heralded the coming of the Lord Jesus by proclaiming a baptism of repentance. As today’s gospel says, “He lived out in the wilderness until the day he appeared openly to Israel”.

True liberation for God’s people can come only from the wilderness. As we all have been seeing in this past decade in particular, the Church has been having its share of hard times and hard stuff to deal with. Like Israel, the Church had also its alternation from being victim to becoming perpetrator of what actually it is called to denounce uncompromisingly.

Starting with the sex abuse tragedy, and now with the Vatileaks drama, the Church cannot proceed with a business-as-usual attitude. Even for the Church, there are times when it needs to stop and refocus in order to regain the power of speech. The Church also is called to discern wisely how to alternate between moments of wilderness and moments of going public, and to know the difference.

Through discernment the Church should situate itself in the position to grasp the right and opportune moments when to be silent and when to speak out. This is basically what John the Baptist suggests to the Church of our times: to experience the wilderness. We cannot risk reducing re-evangelisation to an unending talk-show between ourselves.

The Church cannot be always silent and let things go their way. In our country, with all we’ve been seeing lately, the Church’s silence is deafening. On the other hand, the Church cannot be always talking.

Secularisation may put the Church in crisis; but what believers themselves are presently experiencing with the internal and multiple crises of the Church may be a worse provocation.

The Church is called to go to the wilderness, to go back to its true sources in the Fathers from East and West and in the great mystics who always provided road maps for the Church in crisis. The power of the Word can also be experienced by at times remaining silent.

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