Praise be Jesus and Mary, now and forever.
Usually, when we celebrate the saints liturgically, we celebrate their birthday into heaven.
So saints' feast day is often celebrated on the day of their death, on the day that they were born into eternity, as we call it.
Liturgically, the church only celebrates three actual birthdays each year.
Our Lord's birthday on December 25th, Our Lady's birthday on September 8th, and St.
John the Baptist's birthday today, which is June 24th.
St. Bridget of Sweden was told by Our Lord that there were three saints who pleased Him above all the others, Our Lady, St. Mary Magdalene, and St. John the Baptist.
One of the ways, perhaps the best way you can tell if someone pleases Our Lord is how much they actually resemble Him.
So how did St. John the Baptist resemble Our Lord?
That's what we're going to look at in today's reflection and maybe apply some of it to ourselves as well.
So both the birth of Jesus and the birth of St. John the Baptist were announced to their parents by the Archangel Gabriel.
See that very clearly at the beginning of St. Luke's Gospel.
St. John's birth was miraculous since his mother was sterile and beyond the years of natural childbearing.
Our Lord's birth was miraculous too, being born without the intervention of man.
Both Jesus and John actually received their names from above, so their parents didn't name them.
Catechism at number 2158 says that the name is the icon of the person.
That means that a name is a word portrait of who someone is or who they're called to be.
So do we know what our name means?
First question, do I actually know what my name means?
Might be important to actually know that.
Life has meaning, names have meaning too.
Our Lord's name means Yahweh is salvation, John's name means the Lord is gracious.
So both names point to God, who's the author of all good things.
Both the birth of John and the birth of Jesus brought a sense of wonder and a sense of great joy to all those around them.
Our Lord's birth brought great amazement to the shepherds and to the magi who came and worshipped him.
John the Baptist's birth brought great joy to his neighbors and to his kinsfolk, we heard that just a moment ago in the Gospel.
And after each of their births, each child had to leave their hometown and flee to another country or flee into the wilderness.
Our Lord escaped into Egypt because King Herod wanted to put him to death, and it's said that John the Baptist also fled too into the wilderness, essentially because of the same reason, because his parents feared that Herod would put him to death as well, since Herod might have easily suspected him to be the Messiah.
Both Jesus and St. John the Baptist waited until the time appointed by God to actually begin their ministries.
So they both lived a quiet, humble, hidden life until they were about 30 years old, and then they began God's work for them.
That means that they didn't do things in their own time, they did things in God's time.
They were patient.
They had what we can call a patient zeal about them, zealous for the things of the Heavenly Father, patient to await His timing.
God's timing is usually not our timing.
You've probably noticed that by now, most of us, right?
But you learn that as you mature.
You learn to embrace and accept that as well.
Both John and our Lord actually never married, too.
Both of them remained virgins.
They lived a virginal life, totally dedicated to the service of God.
They lived for a greater, a more all-encompassing love, which is what the priestly and the religious calling is.
It's a higher calling.
The unmarried man says St. Paul is concerned about the Lord's affairs and how to please Him.
1 Corinthians 7:32.
St. Paul, of course, who chose not to marry as well for the same purpose.
So question, did Jesus have anything to say about renouncing marriage for His sake or is that just a Catholic invention?
No, He actually does talk about that in the Scripture.
In Matthew 19:12, we read, For there are eunuchs who have been so from birth, Jesus says.
There are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by men.
And there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven.
He who can receive this should receive it, Jesus says.
Meaning that if God calls you to the religious life or the priestly life, don't turn down that call.
Pick up the phone if the phone rings for you.
Don't let the answering machine get it.
Don't unplug the line, as some people try to do.
Get out of this, unplug the line.
Don't do that.
Answer the call.
When they began their ministries as well, both our Lord and John the Baptist preached repentance.
St. Mark says in Mark 1:4, John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness preaching the baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.
Jesus himself began his ministry saying the time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God is at hand.
Repent and believe in the gospel.
Again Mark 1:15.
And we read of the twelve apostles in Mark 6:12, They went out and preached that all men should repent.
But the heart of the good news of the gospel is that need for repentance.
And true, there's no good news without repentance.
If we set aside the need for repentance, the good news turns into, well it does kind of turn into fake news essentially, even though it's a bit worn out by now, that saying.
But yeah, you leave out repentance, the good news does become pretty fake, actually.
And the word that's used in the New Testament for repentance, which we've spoken of a number of times, is the Greek word metanoia or metanoia.
Metanoia means literally change direction.
Change your mind, change your ways, have a change of heart.
It means to think differently, to live differently.
To turn away from doing what's evil in God's eyes and to turn to what's actually good.
Repentance means not only admitting that you're a sinner, it's also resolving to turn away from sin against the sinful tendencies that we have.
Repentance is to the soul kind of like what water is to the body.
Without water, you don't live very long.
Without repentance, spiritually, you won't live very long, either.
No recognition of sin, no repentance, it equals no salvation essentially.
And I think, as we've said before, spiritual life, in general, isn't a walk in the park.
It's more like mountain climbing than walking in the park.
We climb higher in the spiritual life by repentance, repenting of our sinful habits, by growing in humility, by growing in charity, by growing in patience, kindness, by practicing the works of mercy with a generous heart, with a good heart, by becoming more like Christ in our thoughts, our words, our actions, our responses, and our reactions as well too.
And a repentant heart tends to understand all these things even if they stumble to follow our Lord.
A repentant heart also practices what we call anamneses.
At the Last Supper, our Lord said to his disciples, he says, this is my body which is given up for you.
Do this in memory of me.
That's Luke 22:19.
The Greek word used there for memory is the word anamneses.
It means to remember, to call to mind something.
A repentant heart calls to mind its own sins and fails and fallings, but it doesn't actually dwell on those or let them weigh them down.
They also call to mind God's patience, his love, his mercy, his goodness.
A repentant heart chooses to dwell on those things instead because it's much healthier to do that.
A repentant heart dwells on God, it doesn't dwell on itself.
And a repentant heart also remembers to go to confession frequently too.
What's the opposite of anamneses?
The opposite of anamneses is amnesia, really, it's the opposite of remembering.
Anamneses is remembering, amnesia, forgetting. Actually, they both have the same root word in Greek, interestingly.
Those who have a critical or self-righteous or condemning spirit tend to forget the mercy that God has shown them, they tend to forget or to ignore who God truly is, they tend to forget actually that the greatest task on earth is to reform ourselves, not to reform others.
You know, what do the saints do, as we like to say?
Saints reform themselves.
What do sinners do?
They complain about how everyone else needs to reform, how everyone else needs to change, right?
Everyone else is to blame.
It's not the right path for us.
Both our Lord and St. John the Baptist tell us, repent, which means reform yourself if you want to be of any good to anyone else.
Tied to the preaching of repentance, both John and our Lord preached against sin and warned of the danger of hell as well too.
Every tree that doesn't bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire, St. John says in Matthew 3 verse 10, depart from me, you accursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels, our Lord says to the wicked in Matthew 25:41.
So part of the good news of heaven, again, it's the bad news of hell, too, of eternal separation from God for those who choose sin over salvation.
That's why repentance is so, so important.
No repentance, no salvation, no good news.
So both Jesus and John testified to the truth in the world that was very hostile to the truth.
They refused to compromise God's standards when they were pressured or threatened to do so.
That might be a good question for us, right?
We refuse sometimes to compromise the truth in our dealings with others, do we refuse to do that, or do we prefer to compromise?
Do we hide, do we ignore the truth sometimes?
Are we ashamed to be followers of Jesus in some environments, in some places?
If we're ashamed of Him, there's bad news attached to that.
Jesus says He'll actually be ashamed of us too, which is fair enough, right?
He says whoever is ashamed of me and my words, of Him, the Son of Man, will be ashamed when He comes in His glory and the glory of the Father and of His holy angels, Luke 9, verse 26.
So don't be ashamed to stand up for the truth in a world that's really flooded with lies nowadays.
Okay, three last similarities, and we'll close with these.
One, our Lord and John the Baptist inspired people to higher ideals.
When people saw them, when they listened to them, when they interacted with them, and reflected on what they said, and they did, people were actually drawn towards heaven when that happened.
Our Lord and St. John were kind of like forces of gravity in that sense, they had the power to draw people away from lives of sin and thoughts of only personal gain and comfort and pleasure.
They drew people instead to the truth, they drew them to beauty, to goodness, to the freedom of the children of God.
So we ask ourselves, does my witness draw people to the Lord?
Or does it make people say, if that's what a Catholic is, I'm glad I'm not one of them, right?
Of course, some people, it doesn't matter what kind of witness you're going to give, they're going to say that anyway, but others who are more open actually need to encounter Jesus through us.
That's why our Lord, allowing Him to transform us, it's just so, so important to the spiritual life.
Both our Lord and John the Baptist were put to death for the sins of others.
So John the Baptist was executed by Herod the Tetrarch, basically as a fruit of Herod's own sins of adultery.
Our Lord was executed for all of our spiritual sins of adultery, for all of our unfaithfulness to God's commandments, and neither of their deaths was in vain.
St. John's death opened the doors to Christ's public ministry.
Jesus' death opened the doors to the gates of heaven.
And lastly, for today, both our Lord and St. John the Baptist were and still are lights to the world.
Of John, Jesus said, He was a burning and shining lamp, and you were willing to rejoice for a while in His light.
John 5, verse 35, of Himself, Jesus famously says, I am the light of the world.
He who follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life, John 8:12.
But remember, Jesus also says something else.
He also says to us, He says, you are the light of the world.
Let your light shine before others that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.
That's the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew chapter 5.
So someone might ask, well which is it, is Jesus the light of the world, or are we the light of the world?
It's both of us.
He's the light with a capital L. We are lights in as much as we share in His life, in as much as we are like Jesus, which is what John the Baptist was in so many important ways.
So let's ask Our Lady then today for the grace to truly become more like Her Son, as St. John the Baptist was, and if it's true, as St. Bridget tells us, that the three saints who pleased Jesus above all others were Our Lady and St. Mary Magdalene and St. John the Baptist, if that's true, I think St. Francis would be fourth, but if that's true, let's ask Our Lady then to be the fifth on the list, right?
Ask Her for the grace to be really up there with the great saints like St. John the Baptist is.
Praised be Jesus and Mary, now and forever.

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Ave Maria.