"The peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus." (Philippians 4:7)
In this Sunday’s second reading, a more literal translation than "minds" is "thoughts": God’s peace guards all our "thoughts in Christ Jesus". Is this excessive? Are not my thoughts my own? In fact, surrendering each of our thoughts to Jesus brings deep joy.
We have been created as God’s children to depend on Him and as His Body to preach Him. A voice is not the same as the words it projects, nor does a voice design what it utters. We are instruments of God, and find our greatest fulfilment when we freely abandon ourselves to His inspirations, even in our individual thoughts.
John the Baptist gives us an example: quoting Isaiah, he identified himself as the "voice" of God, crying in the wilderness. He was adamant that he was "not the Christ", but only His herald; his was the voice, but the thoughts and words were God’s.
Yet we see that John did not crush his personality under the weight of his mission: he is convinced that he is "not Elijah" (John 1:21) even if Jesus somewhat identified John with Elijah, as a forerunner of the Messiah (Matthew 17:12-13). John balances his unique personality and his vocation: the two mutually enrich, rather than erode, each other, since the more we develop our particular gifts, the better instruments we will be in God’s hands, and the deeper our happiness becomes.
John’s joyful surrender to his mission sprang from finding Christ hidden in the existing reality of his life. He said to the Jews that "among you stands one whom you do not know" (John 1:26), echoing the prophet Zephaniah: "The King of Israel, the Lord, is in your midst" (3:15). And he advised others to make the same discovery: he called tax collectors and soldiers to practise justice in their current circumstances, without needing to change their profession (Luke 3).
Only by intimate prayer can we find Jesus within our lives. Just before St Paul talks of God’s peace guarding our hearts and thoughts in Jesus, he gives us the means to this end: "do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God" (Philippians 4:6).
Jesus will respond with an intimacy greater than ours: the Baptist thought himself unworthy to untie Jesus’ sandal yet Jesus thinks each of us worthy enough to wash our feet.
The Baptist baptised with water alone, but adds that Jesus washes our souls with "the Holy Spirit and fire", like a man threshing wheat. Let us then allow Jesus to lift us up with His winnowing fan, His Cross, so that we can be stripped of our chaff by the breeze, the Holy Spirit, and all our sins can be burned away.
<em>Photo: detail of "The Virgin and Child with the young Saint John the Baptist" by Botticelli, displayed in the chapel of the Chateau de Chambord in October 2024. GUILLAUME SOUVANT/AFP via Getty Images.</em>