When Jesus breaks the emptiness of the desert landscape, John lets loose a long, repressed cry. “Here he is! Look there!” As soon as John spots Jesus he knows he is one for whom the world has waited. Without doubt Jesus is the redeemer, God’s Good News in our world, and John does not want his coming to pass unnoticed. His cry is a mixture of jubilation and relief. The long night time vigil has ended, with Jesus dawns the new day.
What is striking is how quickly John directs our attention away from himself to Jesus. When the Gospel story opens, our gaze is fixed on John. We see him keeping vigil, we are absorbed in his anticipation. But as soon as Jesus breaks through the desert horizon, John pleads with us to look not at him, but at the redeemer in our midst. We have a new centre. When Jesus comes forward, John steps aside. He urges us to understand that his whole purpose was to prepare us for this moment. John preached the coming of the reign of God, and now that reign stands before us in Jesus. John proclaimed the coming of God’s kingdom, and lets us know that in Jesus the kingdom has arrived.
With the coming of Jesus, John’s mission has ended. His role was to prepare us so that when the Lord came we would recognize him and follow him. The moment has come. The call to discipleship is now. We are not to follow John, the one who prepares the way, we are to follow Jesus who is the way. John tells us no matter what we might have thought of him, this Jesus ranks ahead of him. Throughout the entire Gospel passage, we see a tapestry of John waning and Jesus emerging.
But what is the purpose of this endless refrain to fix our attention on Jesus? Maybe because in Jesus something new really does begin. Life does not have to go on as before. Human existence does not have to be the drudgery of more of the same. Jesus frees us for new beginnings, more than anything he frees us for life. Jesus is the promise of victory over all that enslaves and diminishes. Jesus is the one who will slay darkness and death. His coming is a warning to all that is diabolical that evil will not prevail. Jesus is Gospel for us because through him God will battle the powers of darkness and survive. That is why Jesus changes everything. Prior to his coming, the thirst for freedom, joy and fullness of life is a hope that might never be eased. Prior to his coming it is possible to look at creation and declare it a lost cause. With the advent of Jesus, despair is no longer a fitting description of our world. It is no longer possible to say that hope is farfetched, love an untouched dream, or death the final truth of things. With the coming of Christ, the world has moved from a posture of anticipation to a posture of fulfilment.
It is through Jesus that all of us are reconciled to God. It is through this “light of the nations” that we come to know the love and joy and peace God wanted to share with us from the beginning. It is Jesus in whom the spirit of God is alive. He is the one who will set us free from the sadness and pain. Jesus is a promise to seize. But that suggests that our redemption does not happen magically, it happens through our ongoing participation in the life of Christ. As John the Baptist reminds us, we find fullness of life by allowing our whole life to be touched and transformed by his presence. Jesus is our way to oneness with God, but that means we enter God by following Jesus and making his life our own.
We find this certainty in the Gospel according to John. Jesus says, “As you, Father, are in me and I in you, that they may also be in us...I in them and you in me” (7: 21,23) The unity of disciple, Jesus, and the Father is a powerful theme in John. It is not a figure of speech; it is the goal of every Christian spiritual life. If it seems bold, perhaps that is only because we have for so long ignored it and put off transformation until after death.
The spiritual process leading to oneness with God has certain characteristics. First, spiritual growth is actual experience. It is not mainly words or theories. It is experience we can feel and know, even more powerfully than one can describe. When we enter the spiritual journey, we can expect to experience life differently. We can expect to be changed, inwardly first and then on the outside. Our beliefs will support us, but they are not the main element. That main ingredient is what Jesus in God gives us to experience and grow from in our own lives.
Those who sincerely participate in this process find that spiritual growth is the most magnificent adventure imaginable. It is full of fascinating events and challenging possibilities. Contrary to the views of some who claim that the journey is fraught with suffering, pain, difficulty and struggle, is completely false. The spiritual life is, in fact, an astounding quest. Every day will show its newness and freshness. Healing and comfort, blazing insight and strength, all come in their proper places. The human heart discovers its own splendid peacefulness. That peace is dynamic and flowing, like a fountain of living water springing up in the heart: “whoever drinks the water that I shall give will never thirst; the water I shall give will become, within, a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” (John 4:14)
The spiritual life is grounded in joy, for it’s basis is God’s very heart overflowing into our own. Jesus taught that his joy would be our joy and our joy would be complete. The more we open up to God’s joy, the more we receive it, until our life is always joyful.
Moreover, we discover love. When we are still, even though our circumstances may be unpleasant, we can locate within us that silent point where love always lives. Increasingly, we discover the actuality of the claim that the Holy spirit lives in us.
Our interior journey into God is lit by peace, joy and love. Life brings difficulties and pain. The spiritual process does not waste them but uses them for God’s own joyful proposes in our hearts. Obstacles become stepping stones, bringing us closer to God. We begin to welcome them as we learn that on the other side of our obstacles our joy deepens, our peace broadens out like a lake, and we experience more vitally the love of God. In the first chapter of Sacred Scripture, we read, “God created everyone in his image; in the divine image he created them; male and female God created them.” (Genesis 1:27) This means that at the very centre of our being something of God lives like a tiny flame. It seems tiny because it is hidden from us by layers of selfishness. In reality that image within us contains all that God is. The spiritual journey is the process of uncovering that incredible greatness of God in our hearts. He waits for us to find him there. In this sense everything that happens in the spiritual life aims at removing one more layer of grime, until nothing stands between our awareness and that fullness of life and love that is God himself. Thus understood, spirituality is an undoing more than it is a doing.
The undoing, centres around one issue: our selfishness, our ego centeredness, the part of us that cries, “Me! Mine! Keep!” This portion of ourselves must gradually be unwound from its grip on our heart so that our heart can open fully to the God within us.
Together with God we gradually oust the ego from its number one spot and put it quietly beside us, to be called upon when needed. Step by step God enters the number one spot, and we become free in God, full of God, one with God. This possibility is the Christian invitation. It is the reason for Christ’s coming. It is the purpose of God’s creation of us.