Well, this is kind of a surprise. You come to celebrate Sunday and,
for some strange reason, the Church gives you a birthday party. We
celebrate the nativity, the birthday, of John the Baptist.

Let me give you three pieces of trivia about John the Baptist. First
of all, we are celebrating his birth, his nativity. Now, if you go
through all the calendar of all the saints in the Church’s year, and
not just the ones that are headliners, but all down the list, you
will find thousands of them. We never, ever, ever celebrate their
birthdays. We celebrate the day they died because we believe that’s
when they entered God’s kingdom. That’s when they found their
rewards. That’s when they finished their journeys. And we never
celebrate birthdays except for two, for Mary and John the Baptist.
So, if you are ever on Jeopardy and they ask, you know the answer.

Secondly, here we’re celebrating on June 24th. How did we know his
birthday? It’s not in the book. It’s not in the Bible and, as a
matter of fact, they didn’t have a June and they didn’t have a 24th
at the time of John the Baptist. Well, it’s the same with Jesus. We
don’t know when Jesus was born. Most scholars guess it was in the
summertime, but we don’t know for sure. When do we celebrate the
birthday of Jesus? At the winter solstice when the days get the
shortest of the year and the year is the darkest. In the darkness of
the year, we celebrate the coming of the Son of God, of Jesus. And
then, every day after that, there is more and more and more light.
The days get longer, until six months later, the Summer Solstice. And
we put the birth of John the Baptist there because John the Baptist
said, “He must increase. I must decrease.” So we celebrate near the
longest day of the year when there is lots of light and then we
notice, every day after, the days get shorter after the birth of John
the Baptist, a reminder that we are moving toward the darkness and
the need for Jesus. Interesting.... Two pieces of trivia.

The last piece of trivia is we are replacing the Sunday celebration
with the feast of John the Baptist. We don’t do that. We do it for
Jesus, for Christmas, for Christ the King. We do it for Mary. We
don’t do it for anyone else except John the Baptist. Now, he was very
important in the very early Church, so much so that, when Josephus,
the Jewish historian, wrote the history of the Jewish people, he
gives Jesus Christ one line and paragraph after paragraph about John
the Baptist because John the Baptist, at the time of Jesus, was the
Big Deal! He was the headliner. In fact, the Gospels repeatedly say
things like “I am not he. I am not the Messiah. He’s the Messiah.”
because people were getting confused. So many thought it had to be
John the Baptist. And Jesus comes along and Jesus says, “Among those
born of women there is none greater than John.” And yet, the least in
the kindgom of God is more important.

We are called to measure up to John the Baptist. In the Kingdom of
God, we are called, even though we are among the least, we are called
to be more important than John the Baptist, not by extraordinary,
outstanding things we do, but by the ordinary things we do that are
within our reach. We all have a different reach, each one of us. But
we are asked to do just what we are capable of. That’s all, to do
what we are capable of, acts of kindness, acts of witness, acts of
truths. No big deal, just what we can reach.

I’m thinking of the School of Americas, in Fort Benning, Georgia,
that our government has sponsored for years, and has trained military
security forces and police for all of Latin America, among whom have
been all the death squads who have killed the Jesuits, who have
killed the nuns, have tortured their own people with techniques that
they learned at Fort Benning. So, on occasion, some of us protest
that. One protesting it was Sister Doris Hennessey, a few years ago.
She did a very simple thing. She just crossed the line, which was
illegal and was arrested and sentenced to six months in jail, at age
88. And for her it was no big deal. She just said, “It won’t kill me.
I just hope they let me keep my hearing aids.” Another figure, my
friend and hero, Father Bill O’Donnell, was sentenced to six months
in Atwater Prison. And, when he got there, the warden said, “None of
this religious stuff. You are not allowed to say Mass. You are not
allowed to go to Mass.” When Gwen Watson and Father Timoney and I
visited him in prison, he said, “I have heard more confessions here
than I ever did in my parish and I have started a Bible Study group
for everyone. He was released in March of one year and, before the
end of the year, he died. He was sentenced when he was seventy-four.
And he didn’t think it was any big deal. In fact, he didn’t expect
others to do the same. He just asked people to do what was within
their reach.

I was thinking of this Sunday night because the American Film
Institute had the top hundred movies of the last hundred years. And
one of them was “Schindler’s List.” Remember Oscar Schindler, the
German business man, who saved so many in the concentration camps by
putting them to work in his factory. One of the directors of the
movie said, “He didn’t do anything big. He didn’t do big things ever
in his life. He just did small things of which he was capable. He
just did small things which were within his reach.” And you even see
it in the movie, that all he does is business as usual at his factory
but he gets some of the people who were in the concentration camp to
work in his factory. In one scene, he turns a hose on those who were
in trains going to the concentration camp and are suffering from
great heat. And at the end, he weeps because he says, “I didn’t do
much.” He didn’t do much but he did what was within his reach. That’s
what we are asked to do.

I’ll give you one more story, and it’s true. For five years, Loren
had been tormented with an eating disorder. At age fifteen, she was
hospitalized against her will to treat her obsession with gorging and
disgorging food. The reluctant and angry teenager found she had a
roommate who was drawn, haggard, and coughed uncontrollably. When she
saw Loren, a bright-light smile lightened her tired face. “Hi,” I’m
Julie and I’m ten years old. What’s your name?” “I’m Loren. I’m
fifteen.” “Want to play Crazy Eights?” Julie cheerfully chirped. As
Loren shuffled the cards, Julie chatted, “You know, Loren, I’m going
to die but I’m not scared. I was born with a disease and they can’t
cure it. It’s called ‘leukemia.’ I have learned that I have to be
happy every day that I wake up, and never take for granted what God
gives me. I can see you are hurting yourself, and my mom says that
people who hurt themselves are scared.” Two weeks later, Loren left
the hospital, her binging attitude towards food and weight under
control all because of a ten-year-old child who taught her more than
any doctor, any therapist , any counselor could. She began a new life
and she was healthy. A week later Julie died.

Well, we’re not called to do extraordinary things, just what’s within
our reach. We are just asked to really live as business as usual, but
to share acts of kindness, acts of witness, acts of truth. And if we
do that , we don’t have to look like John the Baptist. Thank
goodness, we don’t have to have long hair. (That’s good for me!) We
don’t have to dress weirdly. We don’t have to have a strange diet.
All we need are acts of kindness, witness and truth that are within
our reach. And we may surprise ourselves, but we won’t surprise Jesus
who says that every one of us, even the least, is just as important
as John the Baptist. Amen.