Dear Saints,

John the Baptist would have been an affront to polite society. He was a disruptor with little patience for convention; when he wasn’t making people uncomfortable, he was outright offending them.

But John didn’t shuffle the societal deck just for the fun of it. And he didn’t push boundaries just so that he’d go down in history as an agitator. God gave him a mission and equipped him with the character to accomplish it. He upset the social order because it had become complacent and self-serving. He cried loudly because the people had grown deaf to the cry of justice. And he moved with urgency because there was no time to wait.

G. K. Chesterton once said: “It is the paradox of history that each generation is converted by the saint who contradicts it most.” John the Baptist stood fast as a contradiction to the forces of his time so as to usher in a new day. By preparing our hearts to receive Jesus as John did, we ready ourselves to become generation-changing saints too: where the world clamors for retribution, we show forgiveness; where there’s an appetite for darkness, we bear the light; and where there’s hatred, we love like John.

Christ’s Peace,

Father Daniel

δοῦλος Χριστοῦ Ἰησοῦ