Friday, December 23, 2011

Luke 1:57-66

Elizabeth never really got a middle ground - for that matter, Zechariah was punished rather harshly for trying to have one in a moment of doubt. Once her public shame is taken away she is almost immediately elevated to the mother of a prophet.

Jesus gets a fairly normal childhood, at least from what we've seen. Curiously confused parents who once left him behind, but they seem baffled to have that kind of behavior from Him, and He returned home and was obedient to them. Although Mary had all the trauma in the reveal of the pregnancy and Elizabeth all the relief, it is Mary who gets to have a normal childhood and adolescence, even a significant portion of the adulthood of her son in relative quiet.

From his birth and unusual naming, John the Baptist is marked as one who must be blessed by God. Which is, of course, in the playbook of the Old Testament prophets. The New Testament prophets, then, are the ones who come out of nowhere. Who heard a call on a beach one day and completely dropped their old lives (wives and mothers-in-law and all, fathers in the very same boat watching it happen) to follow God.

It's not a Marked from Birth thing anymore, once Jesus comes. You live an ordinary life, then one day on the road to Damascus, BOOM. You change. Of course, there are exceptions, but even those who start young have a moment that changes everything. Even the childhood visionaries are changed. They would be the last ones to tell you that since birth they were marked as special and devoted to the Lord.

Because it's not a birthright anymore - it's not a matter of one Chosen People. Being beloved by God is not something you are born into. It's something that Jesus spread to all people. So there's a moment when you choose, and then you are a New Testament prophet.

Of course, I love it because it privileges transformation over purity. Transfiguration over blessed cleanliness. All the cradle Catholics have thought it at one point - the converts are the strongest of us. Whether or not it's true, they are the new kind of prophet. The fishermen who were told abruptly and mysteriously one day as they went about their jobs that they would now be Fishers of Men.

The kind of person who was persecuting Christians until Jesus stopped him on the highway. A moment - when your life changed. You were plugging along, doing as best you could figure, and then suddenly God veers your life in a completely new and unthought-of direction. That is what it means to be a New Testament prophet, an Anno Domini prophet.

John was the last of the Old Testament prophets - the ones you saw coming a mile away. The ones kept pure from birth because they were foretold, because their parents were given explicit instructions in how to raise them, the ones that had a host of arbitrary things that demonstrated their purity and thus the clarity of their connection to God. Those who needed to renounce things to feel God's presence as we are privileged to do everyday at Mass if we choose.

The ones who had to be prepared and groomed, because it was so hard to find God in the muddle. Before the veil was torn. When priesthood ran in families, and everyone around you knew that you were going to be a prophet from birth and probably you knew that before you knew your name. Before belonging to God, before your life being lived in service of God, was a choice you made yourself only after you'd had an ordinary childhood. When your mother could trade you to God in exchange for other children and that was how you ended up as the mouthpiece of God.

And actually, this makes Mary and Elizabeth's meeting a marking of the turning of the tide. Elizabeth, the last of the surprised older mothers raising a divinely appointed child according to a strict diet, and Mary, the first who was told her life plan would change forever and to accept beautifully God's will. In the first chapter of Luke, there they are embracing - the prophets, who are born, and the apostles, who choose.

Now everyone gets a choice, after they've lived life. I imagine it's harder in a lot of ways, but it also means more. When people don't know from birth that God has chosen you, a lowly sinner, the humble to be lifted up, to be His voice to all nations.