Saturday, January 11, 2014

Homily: Saturday after Epiphany - "He must increase; I must decrease"

As we come to the end of the Christmas Season, we hear those powerful words of John the Baptist, words that are to be taken as a personal motto by every Christian, “He must increase; I must decrease”

We will experience peace and joy to the extent that we hand our lives over to God; that we die to our selfishness and self-indulgences, and give ourselves more and more to the work of Christ.  We experience the fullness of life only as we allow Christ’s attitudes and desires and behaviors to replace our own.

We see this evident particularly in the Blessed Virgin Mary, whom we honor on this Saturday morning; she who made herself low, who proclaimed herself to be the handmaid of the Lord.  In her receptivity to God, she did not attempt to interject her own willfulness, but humbly received the direction her life was to take from God.

For many in our secularized culture, Christmas has come and gone.  Christmas for many is an exercise in self-indulgence.  For Christians, Christmas is celebrated through an entire season in which we pray that the light of Christ illuminates our lives more and more deeply, dispelling the darkness of our self-centeredness, replacing it with God-centeredness.

Christ was born to die and bring us life.  We in turn must die to our selfishness to receive his life and his joy.  A deeper relationship with God comes from a readiness to give up everything else; to lose everything that Christ might be glorified in my life.

As we conclude this Christmas season, we do well to think of those areas in my life in which I still have much decreasing to do, much dying to do, and those areas in our life where Christ must increase.


The Feast of the Baptism of the Lord, which we celebrate this weekend, is to be a renewal of our own baptismal promises, where we renounce sin, and promise to live as children of light.  May we take seriously this call to decrease, so that in us, the light and life of Christ may increase for the glory of God and salvation of souls.

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