Called to Be "John the Baptists"

Today is the feast of the Nativity of St. John the Baptist. I went to mass earlier and was struck by the homily I heard. In it, the priest said that we are called to be "John the Baptists." This reminded me of something I read in Neafsey's A Sacred Voice is Calling. We can have different callings at different times in or in different areas of our lives. We can also have multiple callings at any given moment. I don't know whether I should find this comforting or a little scary. Would having many different callings be confusing? Or should this variety be exciting? I can only assume that not all callings will require the same amount of effort. We can be called to do certain things or to be the best version of ourselves in relation to a variety of other people, in relation to all of God's creation, and in relation to different places and times in our lives.

Called to Teach? Maybe...But, What Else?

I would like to think that God does not give us more than we can manage. Saying this, however, doesn't mean that what we do "get" won't be difficult. The priest at mass today likened the world we live in to a modern day wilderness, a desert wasteland. There is so much sin and hatred in the world; we are to be the voice of peace. We are to bring the beauty back. We are to be like John the Baptist by heralding the coming of Christ and the coming of God's kingdom. No matter what we figure our vocation to be, we have a special vocation attached to our identity as members of the Christian faith- that being, sharing the Good News of God's love with others through our thoughts, words, and actions. 

As I reflected on John the Baptist and on Neafsey's book, I thought of the cover of this book. The photograph on the cover, titled "So That All Shall Know," reminded me of the "voice crying out in the desert." This voice calls to us to prepare for the coming of the Lord. When I came to the part in scripture that said "make straight His paths" I got a little confused. How could I, an imperfect human, make a straight path for the Lord? Shouldn't this task be handed to someone more capable? I decided to think of it like this- we should straighten ourselves out for the coming of the Lord. In doing this, we can also make a path through which God can reach others. 

I also decided to do a little more research on the photograph and found out it is the fourth in a series of photographs, collectively titled "Clarification." The first three photos depict the see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil philosophy that dominated in the cruel climate of the Guatemalan civil war. Hernandez-Salazar's photographs were going to be used for the cover of a human rights report, but the report was in four volumes. The final photograph was taken at a later date, and it depicts the need for history to be known. The fourth "angel" is shouting "So That All Shall Know" what happened, so that these horrors will never again occur. No longer could people turn a blind eye or a deaf ear to what happened to his people.  

"What happened here can't just be spoken. You have to shout it."
Daniel Hernandez-Salazar on the atrocities of the Guatemalan civil war

Bishop Juan Gerardi, who presided over the project to recover the historical memory of the civil war and the Guatemalan people, was assassinated two days after the report was released. As a result, Hernandez-Salazar decided to begin an effort to hang posters of the fourth angel all over the city. This effort has spread to sites in other countries where tragedy has struck, including concentration camps from World War II and Hiroshima, Japan. See these pictures and others in slideshow attached to this article, This reminded me of the "Cover the Night" event for the Stop Kony campaign that happened this past April, which was part of an effort to raise awareness about and put an end to the crimes of fugitive Joseph Kony. In both cases, visual media was used for social activism. Daniel Hernandez-Salazar uses his skills and work as a photographer to fulfill his vocation of human rights activism. He exposes the wasteland qualities of our world in an effort to bring justice and restore beauty.  

I was also fascinated by the way his artwork was able to bring new life to the bones exhumed from a mass grave. Hernandez-Salazar said of the bones, “They looked like butterfly wings. They looked like bird wings. I always associated the flight of birds with the search for freedom and freedom of expression. That was something that had been destroyed in the war. But they could also be angel wings. Angels are spirits, they are messengers. They are someone who lived and died.” This reminded me of our search for freedom from sin and our search for beauty and truth in our world. It also reminded me of our duty as Christians to be messengers of Christ, preparing the way of the Lord like St. John the Baptist did so many years ago. We must have eyes to see the world in which we live, ears to hear the voice of our fellow man, and mouths to proclaim the coming of the kingdom.