Nativity of John the Baptist - Cycles A, B & C
(Mass During the Day)
June 24, 2012
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Opening Prayer
First Reading: Isaiah 49:1-6
Psalm: 139:1b-3, 13-15
Second Reading: Acts 13:22-26
Gospel Reading: Luke 1:57-66, 80
- The beginning of the story of John the Baptist (whose birth we celebrate today) goes back to the first verses of Luke’s Gospel (Luke 1:5-25). The angel Gabriel appears to the aged priest Zechariah and announces to him that his wife Elizabeth will have a son in their old age who will be the one to herald the coming of the long awaited Messiah.
- That the Messiah would have a forerunner that would prepare God’s people to receive their Messiah was also prophesied in the Old Testament, most notably in Malachi 3, verses 1 and 23. (NAB).
- The angel tells Zechariah that the child will “be filled with the Holy Spirit even from his mother’s womb and he will turn many of the children of Israel to the Lord their God. He will go before him in the spirit and power of Elijah and to turn the hearts of fathers toward children and the disobedient to the understanding of the righteous, to prepare a people fit for the Lord.” (Luke 1:15-17). Because Zechariah greets this good news with doubt, he is stricken speechless until the time the promised son will be born.
- This Sunday’s Gospel picks up the story (after the events of the Annunciation and Visitation, Luke 1:26-56) when the time for the birth of John had arrived.
QUESTIONS:
- The 1st Reading is most often applied to the Messiah; however, the Church applies it in today’s liturgy to John the Baptist. Considering the Gospel reading and what you know of John the Baptist, in what ways can you say it can also apply to the precursor of Jesus?
- How did John’s birth fulfill the words of the angel in Luke 1:13-17?
- How did the neighbors and relatives respond to these events? How does this all begin to promote the Gospel?
- Toward the end of the Gospel reading, the people ask the question, “What, then, will this child be?” (verse 65). As Zechariah’s neighbor, what would you think about his son? What would be your answer to this question?
- Time permitting, read Zechariah’s Canticle found in verses 67-79. What, according to this canticle, is the purpose of salvation? How does it show God’s unfolding plan from Old Testament days to the coming of the Messiah? Of the promises listed in this song, which one means the most to you? Why?
Catechism of the Catholic Church: §§ 523, 535, 717-720
Rightly also, from that moment was his [Zechariah’s] tongue loosed for that which unbelief had bound, faith set free. Let us then also believe, in order that our tongue, which has been bound by the chains of unbelief, may be loosed by the voice of reason. Let us write mysteries by the Spirit if we wish to speak. Let us write the forerunner of Christ, not on tables of stone, but on the fleshly tablets of the heart. For he who names John [the Baptist], prophesies Christ. --St. Ambrose