January 09, 2016 Saturday, After Epiphany
1st Reading: 1 Jn 5:14–21 Gospel: Jn 3:22–30
Now John’s disciples had been questioned by a Jew about spiritual cleansing, so they came to him and said, “Rabbi, the one who was with you across the Jordan, and about whom you spoke favorably, is now baptizing and all are going to him.”John answered, “No one can take on anything except what has been given him from heaven. You yourselves are my witnesses that I said: ‘I am not the Christ but I have been sent before him.’ Only the bridegroom has the bride; but the friend of the bridegroom stands by and listens, and rejoices to hear the bridegroom’s voice. My joy is now full. It is necessary that he increase but that I decrease.”
D@iGITAL-EXPERIENCE
(Daily Gospel in the
Assimilated Life
Experience)
Transition is a crisis situation. It involves the abandonment of an established pattern of doing things. It also requires adjustment to a new way of acting. These can bring pain. In certain cases, the pain is comparable to the pangs of birth.
The foregoing will help us understand the case of John the Baptist. When he heard that Jesus was already baptizing he took it as a sign that his time to bow out had come. The statement he issued does not show any sign of ill feelings at all. He said, “Now my joy is full.” His was a joyful transition. If transition is a crisis situation, isn’t a joyful transition an oxymoron?
The secret to John the Baptist’s joyful transition is humility. He understood and was happy about his role as herald. When his role was over, he bowed out like he had achieved everything there was to achieve in life.
Joyful transition happens only to those who live with a sense of mission. A person who lives with a sense of mission goes for substance and lives with a sense of priority. When the mission is done, the person is happy to bow out to the next stage. A person who does not have a sense of mission piles up unnecessary and non-essential commitments. When it is time to bow out, time finds him entangled in so many attachments while his mission lies unattended. Transition will be very painful for such kind of person. He will bow out to obsolescence for having lived a fruitless life.
One major transition we all undergo is death. Death is painful enough, what more when it punctuates a life lived without a sense of mission? The best antidote to this most painful transition is a life well lived. Let us love our role as John the Baptist did, and play it well. This way we can say with John the Baptist at our moment of death: “My joy is full now.”–Rev. Fr. Dan Domingo P. delos Angeles, Jr., DM. Email:dan.delosangeles@gmail.com. Website:www.frdan.org.
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