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John the Baptist
Nativity of John
the Baptist: The Exigency to Prophesy
Isaiah 49:1-6 | Acts 13:22-26 | Luke 1:57-66, 80 |
“Among those born
of women no one is greater than John” (Luke 7:28). These words which our
Lord said about John the Baptist are probably behind the solemn feast of the
birthday of John the Baptist which we celebrate today. As a rule, the church
celebrates the feast of a saint once a year, on the anniversary of the saint’s
death. In the case of John the Baptist we celebrate his death as well as his
birth. John is the only saint after Christ whose birth we celebrate with a
solemn feast. This is the church’s way of saying with Jesus that “among those
born of women no one is greater than John.”
The gospel story of the birth of John focuses on
the naming ceremony. Why does the gospel show such an interest in the naming of
the child? We tend to ask Juliet’s famous question to Romeo in Shakespeare’s
Romeo and Juliet, “What’s in a name? that which we call a rose/ By any
other name would smell as sweet.” But not everybody would agree with this view.
In biblical times, and still today in many African cultures, personal names
function the way business names do, that is, they aim to convey what the bearer
of the name stands for. When Simon shows that he could be relied on as a leader
of the apostles, he gets the name “Rock.” When the sons of Zebedee, James and
John, petition Jesus to call down lightning from heaven to burn up the
inhabitants of a Samaritan village who do not welcome Jesus, they get a new name
“Sons of Thunder.” Names reveal an essential character or destiny of the
bearer.
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Scholars seek to correct Christian tradition on Mary Magdalene | ||||
They are also trying to set straight centuries of erroneous Christian tradition regarding her that developed, especially in the West. In A.D. 591 Pope St. Gregory the Great preached a sermon in which he identified as one person the New Testament figures of Mary Magdalene, the sinful woman who anointed Jesus’ feet and washed them with her tears, and the Mary who was the sister of Lazarus and Martha of Bethany. Although he was only reflecting a tradition that had gained some ground in the West (and was resisted by many of the church’s early theologians), the sermon became a reference point for later scholarship, teaching and preaching in the West, Father Raymond F. Collins, a New Testament scholar at The Catholic University of America, said in an interview. |