Solemnity of the Nativity of Saint John the Baptist

http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/062412.cfm

O LORD, you have probed me, you know me:
you know when I sit and when I stand;
you understand my thoughts from afar.
My journeys and my rest you scrutinize,
with all my ways you are familiar.
Truly you have formed my inmost being;
you knit me in my mother's womb.
I give you thanks that I am fearfully, wonderfully made;
wonderful are your works.

The responsorial psalm is the 139^th. I think of it as the prayer that taught me to pray. In Washington DC, as a theological student – we called ourselves “theologians” in those halcyon days – I would occasionally pass an hour or more in the friary chapel. I had a lot of troubles then, though I can’t remember what they were. Eventually I would lose interest in my troubles but discovered that I was still there in chapel. My wandering mind began to recite prayers from our Divine Office, “O Lord, you have probed me, you know me. You know when I sit and when I stand….”

One evening I said, “What is that prayer?” and found it in the Psalter, Psalm 139.

The psalm certainly belongs to several biblical persons. The prophet Jeremiah, perhaps sacred history’s loneliest man, described his own calling:

The word of the LORD came to me:

Before I formed you in the womb I knew you,

before you were born I dedicated you,

a prophet to the nations I appointed you.

“Ah, Lord GOD!” I said,

“I do not know how to speak. I am too young!”

But the LORD answered me,

Do not say, “I am too young.”

To whomever I send you, you shall go;

whatever I command you, you shall speak.

As Jeremiah’s prayer, Psalm 139 is the prayer of the introverted prophet. He found something within himself that set him apart from his family, friends and nation at the very beginning of his life. He often complained of his loneliness and the enemies who surrounded him, and yet he loved to be in God’s presence.:

You seduced me, LORD, and I let myself be seduced;

you were too strong for me, and you prevailed.

All day long I am an object of laughter;

everyone mocks me.

Whenever I speak, I must cry out,

violence and outrage I proclaim;

The word of the LORD has brought me

reproach and derision all day long.

I say I will not mention him,

I will no longer speak in his name.

But then it is as if fire is burning in my heart,

imprisoned in my bones;

I grow weary holding back,

I cannot!

But no sooner did he finish his complaint than consolation came:

But the LORD is with me, like a mighty champion:

my persecutors will stumble, they will not prevail.

In their failure they will be put to utter shame,

to lasting, unforgettable confusion…

But his misery would return as surely as night follows day:

Cursed be the day

on which I was born!

May the day my mother gave me birth

never be blessed!

Cursed be the one who brought the news

to my father,

“A child, a son, has been born to you!”

filling him with great joy.

Jeremiah’s message was unbearable; he had to announce God’s punishment on Jerusalem. They would not outlast the army that besieged the city. Their walls would be breached; their men, slaughtered; their women, enslaved; and their city, destroyed. What pleasant, private blessing could offset such a curse? Rightly is Jeremiah called the most Christ-like of all the Hebrew prophets.

Catholics recognize three other persons who could own Psalm 139:

First there is Mary, the Immaculate Conception. She could say:

Truly you have formed my inmost being;
you knit me in my mother's womb.
I give you thanks that I am fearfully, wonderfully made;
wonderful are your works.

And in her Magnificat she would sing,

            All ages to come will call me blessed.

Sadly, Mary’s vocation is not well understood among Catholics, despite our doctrine of her immaculate conception. She is regarded as special, but we fail to see how the blessing God gave her graces the entire universe.

Secondly, John the Baptist could claim Psalm 139 as his own, for he recognized and honored the Messiah even before he was born. His own mother Elizabeth said “the infant in my womb leapt for joy” upon hearing Mary’s greeting. We celebrate his birth today, six months and one day before Christmas, because the Angel Gabriel told Mary that Elizabeth was in her sixth month.

Finally, and most importantly, Jesus found his calling in Psalm 139. (Traditionally we understand all the psalms are fulfilled in the person of Jesus, which is why the Church hesitates to translate the psalms using inclusive language.)

The Evangelists Matthew, Luke and John insist that God chose Jesus as the Only Begotten Son of God before he was born.

 Matthew recalled Jesus’ vocation,

When his mother Mary was betrothed to Joseph, but before they lived together, she was found with child through the Holy Spirit.

And Luke, of course, records Gabriel’s announcement to Mary:

Behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall name him Jesus. He will be great and will be called Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give him the throne of David his father, and he will rule over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.

John goes so far as to say,

In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God.

Psalm 139 belongs to every Christian who loves the Lord. We find our vocation, identity, purpose and meaning in the Word God speaks to us. The Word is our healing and wholeness; salvation and justification; sweetness and delight; privilege and pleasure. Praying the Word day by day it takes possession of our inmost being and reforms us in the image and likeness of Jesus. In the end each of us will pray:

you knit me in my mother's womb.
I give you thanks that I am fearfully, wonderfully made;
wonderful are your works.