Observations for the Celebration of the Nativity of St. John the Baptist
Check out today’s reading here.
“All who heard it took it to heart and said,
“So what’s going to happen to this kid?”
For surely the hand of the Lord was with him.
The child grows and becomes mentally stronger.
And he was in the desert.
and a testimony of the revelation to Israel” (Luke 1:66, 80).
It can be difficult to see God’s footprints in our lives as we experience them in the present moment, but some kind of mental reflection is often helpful.
As today’s Gospel tells us, the birth of John the Baptist was met with considerable excitement. His father, Zechariah, who had previously lost the ability to speak, chose a name for his newborn son that was different from anyone else in his family. When he wrote the name on a stone tablet, the Gospel tells us, “His mouth was opened, and his tongue was loosed, and he uttered words of praise to God.”
When a baby comes into the world, parents and family worry about who that baby will grow up to be, what kind of person he or she will become. They ask the same questions people asked baby John the Baptist 2,300 years ago: “So what is this child going to be like?”
I’m not a parent, but watching the people I’ve cared about in my life grow up gives me a little insight into what it’s like to have doubts and hopes.
I met my fiancé during the first week of our freshman year of college. On that day nearly eight years ago, we never imagined that a pleasant conversation in the dining hall and his offer to help me carry my books to my dorm would evolve into a promise to stay together until death do us part.
The few years between starting college and your mid-twenties are a formative time in your life, when there is a lot of change and growth. When I met my fiancé, he was a boy; now he is a man. He was already fun, smart, and kind when we met, but I never imagined how those qualities would deepen as he matured over the course of eight years, or how the new life experiences we gained as we became adults would influence who he is today.
When I look back at old photos and letters, I see the person I knew, but there’s also a big difference: it’s like seeing a seed that I never thought I’d see bloom into a flower.
The influence of God’s hand is intertwined; it has impacted his life and through his love and kindness, it impacts mine. Today, as I look back at the early days of our meeting and friendship, it is amazing how it has grown over time, and God’s fingerprints are everywhere.
Now that I know this about our lives so far in retrospect, I try to apply it as I think about the future. As I look forward to marriage, I often ponder what God has in store for us in this new phase of our lives. And like John the Baptist’s family and neighbors, I look at my now-fiancé, my then-spouse, and imagine and anticipate what he will be like in a few decades’ time. And I realize that who he is now is just the beginning of who he will be by then.
My prayer is that we would both heed the hand of God guiding us and connecting us, that our relationship would be, as John the Baptist says in the Gospels, “strong in spirit.”
