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Today's Gospel
Turn Back to God
5 min
Gospel
Mt 3:1-12
In those days came John the Baptist, preaching in the wilderness of Judea, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” For this is he who was spoken of by the prophet Isaiah when he said,
“The voice of one crying in the wilderness:
Prepare the way of the Lord,
make his paths straight.”
Now John wore a garment of camel’s hair, and a leather girdle around his waist; and his food was locusts and wild honey. Then went out to him Jerusalem and all Judea and all the region about the Jordan, and they were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins.
But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sad′ducees coming for baptism, he said to them, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruit that befits repentance, and do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father’; for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham. Even now the axe is laid to the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.
“I baptize you with water for repentance, but he who is coming after me is mightier than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry; he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and gather his wheat into the granary, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”
Readings are from Dynamic Catholic’s New Testament Bible: RSV Catholic Edition
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Transcript
Turn Back to God
There are so many fabulous concepts in our culture that have their roots in Catholic spirituality. And today we discover one of them. In the gospel, we encounter John the Baptist. It's one of the most common readings that we hear throughout the church's year. And of course, John the Baptist's message is repent, which means to turn back to God. And the danger is to think, "Oh, yeah, I did that once." And the reality is that we have this constant need to turn back to God. We are constantly turning away from God, even in micro ways. Even in the tiniest ways with our thoughts, our words, our actions, we do turn away from God. And so John the Baptist's challenge, his call, his invitation to turn back to God is a real one. It's a needed one. And it's one that we constantly need. The saints and the mystics of our great faith, they spoke about the need for continuous conversion, and not just in behavior, not just in action, but conversion of the heart. The saints and mystics talked about our need to be constantly open to conversion of the heart. And of course, this is the invitation of John the Baptist. Now, in business and in personal development and in our culture, there's these ideas of continuous learning or continuous improvement. And the reality is that these ideas have their roots in Catholic spirituality.
This, of course, will never be mentioned in the business world or in the world of secular personal development. But the reality is the ideas of continuous improvement, the ideas of continuous learning, have their roots in the genius of Catholicism. They have their roots in the genius of our spirituality. And they have their roots in this idea that we are constantly being called to conversion, conversion of the heart, not just to change the way we act, because that's just pretending. And we see that in this Sunday's Gospel as well, because the next thing that John the Baptist goes on to do is to talk to the Pharisees. He calls them a brood of vipers. I think John the Baptist would do pretty good in a social media age. He's got some of these fantastic phrases. He calls them a brood of vipers. Why? Because they're pretending. Because they're not committed to conversion of the heart. They're not committed to this continuous conversion. They're committed to pretending. They're committed to doing the right thing for the wrong reasons. And of course, this is why John the Baptist gets after them. This is why Jesus gets after them. This is why they're constantly part of this narrative. And they're dangerous to think, "Oh, yeah, those Pharisees." The invitation is to see ourselves in those Pharisees. The invitation is to see, okay, how am I pretending? How am I doing the right things for the wrong reasons? Because the reality is, just like we're all constantly turning away from God in even micro ways, we all pretend in different ways. We all do the right things for the wrong reasons.
And then John talks about baptism, and he says, "I'm baptizing you with water, but there is one infinitely greater than me coming, and he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit." And we have been, and it's important to recognize that, in holy moments, I talk about the idea. You're created in the image of God. Act accordingly. You've been baptized in the Holy Spirit. Act accordingly. And the reality is very often we don't. Very often if someone just looked at the way we're behaving, the way we're acting, the way we're speaking, the way we're approaching and encountering people, their conclusion would be that person is not created in the image of God, or that person is not and has not been baptized in the Holy Spirit. Every day, every phrase, every verse, every line of the Scriptures is an invitation to continuous conversion of the heart. Continuous conversion of the heart. How do we do it? Holy moments. Some moments are holy. Some moments are unholy. And we get to decide.
