January 3, 2010. Homily, January 9, 2010.

John 3, 22-30.

Jesus and His disciples went into the region of Judea, where he spent some time with them baptizing. John was also baptizing in Aenon near Salim, because there was an abundance of water there, and people came to be baptized, for John had not yet been imprisoned. Now a dispute arose between the disciples of John and a Jew bout ceremonial washings. So they came to John and said to him, "Rabbi, the one who was with you across the Jordan, to whom you testified, here he is baptizing and everyone is coming to him." John answered and said, "No one can receive anything except what has been given from heaven. You yourselves can testify that I said that I am not the Christ, but that I was sent before him. The one who has the bride is the bridegroom; the best man who stands and listens for him, rejoices greatly at the bridegroom's voice. So this joy of mine has been made complete. He must increase; I must decrease."

The Gospel of the Lord.

John’s gospel makes the ministries of Jesus and John the Baptist overlap, while Mark says (1:14) that it was only after John had been put in prison that Jesus began his own ministry. John’s gospel may have wanted to put them together in order to contrast them. “No one can receive anything except what has been given from heaven” (v. 27). In another translation it says: “One can lay claim only to what is given by God.” This is something you could spend days thinking about – or perhaps a lifetime. We generally lay claim only to things we believe we have achieved by our own effort. Everything else we call luck, or chance...or ‘providence’. But this reading suggests that the things most distinctively my own are the purest gift of God; the more they are mine the more they are God's, the more they are God's the more they are mine. If a person’s work is to live, it must come from the depths of him – not from alien sources outside himself – but from within.” "[T]he best man who stands and listens for him, rejoices greatly at the bridegroom's voice. So this joy of mine has been made complete." Elizabeth to Mary at the Visitation, "When the infant in my womb heard your voice, he leaped for joy." When the priest, or the deacon, mixes the water and the wine, he says, "By the mixing of this water and wine, we join in your divinity as you have joined in our humanity."