MEDITATIO

John’s birth is full of the miraculous. An archangel announced the coming of our Lord and Savior and, in the same way, an archangel announces the birth of John. “He will be filled with the Holy Spirit from his mother’s womb”. The people did not recognize our Lord, who was accomplishing “great signs and miracles” and healing their sick, yet John leaps for joy while still in his mother’s womb. He cannot be restrained when Jesus’ mother comes along and tries to go out to meet him. “The moment your greeting reached my ears,” says Elizabeth, “the child in my womb leaped for joy” (Lk 1:44). While yet in his mother’s womb John had already received the Holy Spirit . . . Afterwards, Scripture says: “he will bring a great number of the children of Israel back to the Lord their God”. John will bring back “a great number” but the Lord will bring back, not just a great number but all of them! Indeed, it was his great work to bring the whole world back to God the Father. “And he will walk go before him in the presence of the Lord in the spirit and power of Elijah . . . There was power and spirit in Elijah, as in all the prophets . . . The spirit that rested on Elijah came upon John, and the power that inhabited Elijah was manifested in him. The former was lifted up to heaven (2Kgs 2:11) but the latter went before the Lord and died before he did that he might descend to the realm of the dead to announce his coming.

maronite readings – rosary,team

The Law was promulgated in the first place for slaves so as to instruct the soul by means of exterior and corporeal things by leading it with a chain, so to speak, towards that docility towards the commandments whereby a man might learn to obey God. But the Word of God set the soul free; it also taught it to purify the body, freely and voluntarily. From then on those chains of servitude, thanks to which man was able to enter into training, could be taken away and, from now on, he could follow God without chains. Yet, even as the precepts of liberty were held out to him, he needed to affirm his submission to the King so that no one might fall back or show himself unworthy of his Liberator… This is why the Lord gave us as for watchword: instead of not committing adultery, not even lusting; instead of not killing, not even falling into anger; instead of simply paying taxes, to distribute our goods among the poor; not just to love those close to us but also our enemies; not only to be “generous, ready to share” (1Tim 6,18) but even more, to give our goods freely to those who take them… Our Lord, then, God’s Utterance, first of all enlisted men who were in slavery with regard to God and then freed those who were subject to him. As he himself said to his disciples: “I no longer call you slaves, because a slave does not know what his master is doing. I have called you friends, because I have told you everything I have heard from my Father,” (Jn 15,15)… By turning his disciples into friends of God, he clearly shows that he is the Word, the Utterance of God. For it was because he followed his call in unfettered freedom, in the generosity of his faith, that Abraham became “the friend of God” (Jas 2,23).

maronite readings – rosary,team

Just as the head and the body of a person make one and the same person, so the son of the Virgin and his members, the chosen ones, make one and the same person and one single Son of Man. This is the total and complete Christ, the head and the body, of which Scripture speaks. Yes, all the members together form one single body, which with its head, constitutes the one and only Son of Man who, with the Son of God, constitutes the one and only Son of God, just as he together with God constitutes one single God. Thus the entire body, with its head, is Son of Man and Son of God, and consequently God. Whence this word: “That all may be one as you, Father, are in me, and I in you; I pray that they may be [one] in us.” That is why, in conformity with this frequent affirmation of Scripture, the body does not exist without the head, nor does the head exist without the body, any more than the head and the body exist without God. That is the total Christ… Thus the believers, the spiritual members of Christ, can all say in truth that they are what he himself is, which is to say, the Son of God and God. But what he is by nature, they are as associated members; what he is in fullness, they are through participation. In short, if he is the Son of God because of his origin, his members are sons of God… through adoption, according to what the apostle Paul said: “You have received a spirit of adoption through which we cry out, ‘Abba!’ (that is, ‘Father’).” (Rom 8:15) With this Spirit, “he empowered them to become children of God” (Jn 1:12), so that, according to the teaching of “the first-born of many brothers” (Rom 8:29), they might learn to say: “Our Father in heaven.” (Mt 6:9)

maronite readings – rosary,team

In his great priestly prayer our Savior requests that we might be with him where he is and behold his glory. He loves us as the Father loves him and desires to give to us everything the Father has given to him. He wishes to pass on to us in his turn the glory he possesses from his Father and to make us all one. He does not want us to be a great crowd anymore but that we should all together form a unity, brought together by his divinity into the glory of the kingdom, not by fusion into one substance but in perfection, the summit of virtue. This is what Christ announced when he said: “May they all be completely one!” Thus, made perfect by wisdom, prudence, justice, piety and all Christ’s virtues, we shall be united to the unfailing light of the Father’s divinity, ourselves become light through our union with him and fully children of God through our communion with his only Son, who causes us to participate in the splendor of his divinity. This is how we shall all become one with the Father and the Son. For just as he declared that the Father and he were one – “My Father and I,” he said, “are one” (Jn 10,30) – so he prays that we might share in the same unity in imitation of him… Not the unity of nature that he has with the Father but this one: just as the Father has made him share in his own glory, so he, in imitation of the Father, will pass on his glory to those whom he loves.

maronite readings – rosary,team