2 January 2025 - Memory of Saint Basil the Great and Saint Gregory of Nazianzus
Homily
Yesterday's Gospel (1 January) presented Mary, the contemplative, who kept in her heart and pondered everything she heard about her son. In today's first reading, John, another great contemplative, invites us to do the same: ‘ As for you, let what you have heard from the beginning remain in you. If what you heard from the beginning abides in you, you too will abide in the Son and in the Father’. Now that we are approaching the end of the Christmas season, we must ensure that all these beautiful celebrations are not simply joyful moments whose memory gradually fades, but that they produce lasting fruit in us. And John invites us to remain in God, since his ‘Anointing’ remains in us.
And then, in today's Gospel, the emphasis suddenly changes. From the accounts of Jesus' childhood we are already moving towards his baptism. And the question of Jesus' identity still arises. Just as we wondered who this child was who had just been born, and whom few had the grace to recognize, the question of identity will also arise at the moment of baptism. There is someone among you whom you do not recognize’, said John the Baptist. And he will continue: ‘There is one of my disciples’ (for this is how the expression ‘there is one who comes after me - or one who follows me’ should be translated) who is greater than I am. So the Word of God, who became a tiny child in order to become one of us, began his public ministry by first becoming a disciple of John the Baptist.
Just as the question of Jesus' identity raised the question of John the Baptist's identity (Tell us, finally, who are you?), it also raises the question of our own identity. ‘ Who are we? ’ -- Created in the image of God, we can only ever perceive who we really are by penetrating ever more deeply into the mystery of Jesus. Like Mary, let us keep all these events and meditate on them in our hearts.
Armand Veilleux