Third Sunday In Advent – John The Baptist
(By Fr. Dexter Brereton)
[simpleazon-image align=”left” asin=”159325282X” locale=”us” height=”375″ src=”http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51qqTqnbHjL.jpg” width=”246″]In September 2003 while on my first visit to the presbytery (rectory) of the parish of Toco, to which I had just been assigned, my foot went through the rotted floorboards of the priest’s bedroom. Such were the untidy beginnings of my pastoral mission in Toco. The decay I had witnessed in the priest’s house, in my respectful view, to some extent mirrored the state of the parish. I found communities isolated from each other, leaders unmotivated or absent. Many of these were also completely dependent on “the presbytery” for directions and so took very little initiative on their own. There were youths but no youth groups, there were strange liturgical practices and along with the rest of the wider community, the entire area suffered from years and years of neglect at the hands of civil authorities. Over the next few years then, I set myself to repairing the house and doing what I could to “lift” the communities.
All along the journey, I had a keen sense that in my own way I was laying foundations for others to build on. Today, in the Gospel reading, John the Baptist says: “I baptize with water but someone is coming, someone who is more powerful than I am and I am not fit to undo the strap of his sandals; he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire…” Just as John did for Jesus, I was only laying the foundations, “baptizing with water” as it were, so that down the line, as the parish grew and developed, someone else could baptize with the Holy Spirit and fire.
That “someone” was the wonderful future that God had in store for the impoverished communities of Toco and Matelot. Others had laid the foundations for me, they had been ‘John the Baptist’ for me, and I was building on their foundations. Here I think of the legendary Fr Hyacinth Baryou, a man who administered the parishes of Toco and Scarborough (in the neighbouring island of Tobago, crossing the twenty miles of ocean by boat) and who according to the old people had phenomenal power over ‘evil-doers’ and persons involved in Satanic activity, or Sr Paul Clarke, who I think was one of the greatest parish administrators and social workers I had ever seen, or the Dominican Fathers who labored quietly for nine years in the isolated town of Matelot. Now I in my turn was paving the way for others. I was sure that if I worked well, they would take the parish to even greater heights. It was all God’s work.
Today we all need the ‘spectacles’ (glasses) of John the Baptist. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if all our leaders could see themselves as “John the Baptist” for others? Would it not be wonderful if as parents, teachers and administrators, we could see ourselves as ‘baptizing with water’ so that later on our children, our people could ‘baptize with the Holy Spirit and fire’? The greatness of John the Baptist for me was that he saw himself and his role with such clarity and humility. We know that many leaders today take on an air of invincibility and quickly come to see themselves as indispensible, the “best thing since sliced bread.” Here however was a man quite prepared to admit that he was not the ‘star’. In God’s long line of prophets but that he was only playing a small but significant role in the preparation for the Messiah, the savior of the world. I pray that we may always be blessed with such people. I pray that we will always be blessed with political and church and civil leaders who know when it is their time to go and give way to others who will build on the work that they have done. May we all see ourselves as clearly as John the Baptist saw himself.
