Feast Day: June 24th | Patronage: Builders, Tailors, Nurses, Firefighters, Printers, Hermits & Godparents; at Baptisms & Conversions; and for those dealing with Storms, Seizures, & Heart-Conditions | Iconography: Bearded with Robe of Camel Hair (indicates prophet); Holding Staff with Cross & Flag, or Lamb, or pointing (all referencing his calling Jesus the Lamb of God), Head on Platter (depicting his martyrdom), Baptizing Jesus in the Jordan with the Spirit descending.
This past Friday, after all of us priests concluded our annual retreat, I drove North to Rochelle for the wedding of one of my cousins. At the reception after the Wedding Mass, I spent much of the evening carrying and dancing with my 1-year-old niece, Lucy. It let my brother and his wife have some time to dance with each other and allowed me to enjoy Lucy’s wonder at the music and bubbles and lights and antics all around her.
Couples married for decades were gliding around the room just enjoying being close to their spouses. Young people were showing off an endless variety of different dance moves to each other. The littler kids were leaping and laughing and jigging this way and that … and everything struck me as so right and delightful. Children are supposed to just throw themselves around each other and have fun, but young men and young women are at the age to learn what it looks like to dance with each other, with respect and care and the right balance of joy and an attentiveness to each other. Married couples should give devotion and attention to each other, loving and enjoying and engaging their spouse before anyone else.
Now, all of this leaves the priest in a bit of a conundrum as to how he’s supposed to join the dance … (something that I’m still figuring out!) but, this week it leads me to a realization about St. John the Baptist, who found himself in a similar conundrum.
Then Jesus came from Galilee to the Jordan to John, to be baptized by him. John would have prevented him, saying, “I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?”[Matthew 3:13-14, ESVCE]
Jesus comes down to the Jordan river where His own cousin is baptizing. Their paths have diverged quite a bit since they were little kids when they may have rough-housed and schemed and played with each other on occasions when their families were together. John now knows Jesus’ identity in a fuller way, and so, though he was happy to call everyone else to repentance and baptize those who approached him, when his cousin steps forward that simply won’t do. John cannot interact with Jesus with the same abandon that he did when they were both children, and he cannot engage Him like he did every other penitent. There’s a difference and not just in maturity, but he is now called to a different kind of reverence, respect, and obedience to his boyhood friend.
This isn’t comfortable or automatic! It’s a tricky enough thing to engage with other people and to feel-out how we are meant to interact with them, to hold in mind both who we are, and who they are, and the proper relationship between us. My newly married cousin had to act differently at her wedding than she did a month earlier at another such reception. She was now married to someone; her identity had changed and so must her actions and interactions. Same for me. I am one of the cousins in that group, but I am also a priest, and so I am called to a different kind of interaction with everyone than 10 years ago … or 20 years ago. The “littles” in the room can carry each other around all night long, but it would be improper and unloving for the teenagers to do so. AND, if we are all called (and challenged, and blessed) to constantly learn what love looks like towards the other people around us, we are even more called to learn what love looks like towards Jesus!
Jesus approaches each of us too, especially in Holy Communion. Do we routinely consider our disposition towards Him? Our posture and love and respect towards Him? If the greatest of the prophets, and his own cousin, John the Baptist, doesn’t dare to touch Jesus’ Body until directly told to do so, what about me? In the United States, we are uniquely allowed to receive the Eucharist in our hands, but do we take care to touch Jesus as we ought? Or, is our mindset much the same as when we handle anything else? St. Cyril of Jerusalem reminds us all: “When you approach [the Most Holy Eucharist], take care not to do so with your hand stretched out and your fingers open or apart, but rather place your left hand as a throne beneath your right, as befits one who is about to receive the King. Then receive him, taking care that nothing is lost.”
– Fr. Dominic must take to heart these words as well. How easy it is as a priest to become accustomed to touching God!