“Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb.”  We hear the origin today of these sublime words which have become so central to the pious prayer of the Christian Church.  “Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb.”  We see the beautiful scene today in which these words are prompted in the heart and the lips of St. Elizabeth, the cousin of the Blessed Virgin Mary.  We’re told that Elizabeth, seeing Our Lady, was filled with the Holy Spirit and given a deep insight and awareness of what was going on.  But what prompted her to realize this, to see the importance of this moment and recognize who was truly in her midst, was the activity of her own child, the infant inside her, St. John the Baptist, already hard at work as a herald of the Lord.  When Our Lady greeted Elizabeth, St. John leapt in her womb, and it was then that Elizabeth was filled with this profound sense of meaning; it was then that she recognized Our Lady for who she was: the most blessed, the bearer of the Eternal Word, the Ark of the New Covenant.  It was John the Baptist who made this happen.  Despite being hidden away, tiny and unseen in the womb of Elizabeth, nothing could stop him from doing what he was created to do, from fulfilling his mission in life already: the mission of pointing out the Savior to the human race, to help others to see who the Lord is, and inspire their hearts to receive the Holy Spirit.  This is his job, his role in salvation history, to be the last and the greatest of the prophets.  And it’s a role that he performed with incredible zeal, faithfulness, and courage.  So much so that our Lord would describe him as the greatest man ever born of a woman.  He led an intense life of sacrifice and service, of preaching and exhortation.  When the time came, he gave the greatest possible witness to Christ: the witness of laying down his life in martyrdom.  

He’s a model for us, for how we are meant to interact with the world around us.  Vatican II taught clearly that each of one us, every single Christian, every one of you, because of your baptism, is invited and expected to be a prophet of Christ as well.  And John the Baptist is a model for what that looks like.  John the Baptist’s life was summed up in in his two most famous sayings.  The first is, “Behold the Lamb of God.”  Everything he does points to Christ, beginning right here at the Visitation.  St. John makes his first convert before he even gets out of the womb, and it’s his own mother.  All he did, all he could do was jump up and down a little.  And in that moment, that was enough. Whatever we can do to be prophets of Christ: we have to do it.  That could mean so many things: bringing a friend to Mass, discussing our Faith with a family member, not being afraid to make the sign of the cross and say grace when you’re out to eat in a restaurant, even being willing to jump up and down a little bit when the situation calls for it.  Every day, God is giving us some opportunity to say to someone who needs to hear it, “Behold the Lamb of God.”  There’s not a day that goes by that every one of us doesn’t have that opportunity in some form or fashion.  St. John the Baptist’s other most famous saying is “He must increase; and I must decrease.”  We don’t tend to like that one.  But we also know that famous saying, attributed to various people throughout history: There’s no end to the good you can accomplish, if you don’t care who gets the credit.  How true.  John the Baptist cared about results, not credit.  Even though he was accomplishing incredible good and doing cosmically important things, and he knew it, he wanted all the glory to redound to the Lord himself.  He must increase.  I must decrease.  Our motivation for pointing out the Lamb of God should be very much the same as St. John’s.  Not our glory, not our fame, not our success, but the glory of God and the salvation of the entire world.  Any good that we try to do, let it be for those reasons. 

Let us ask God to strengthen us with his Holy Spirit and with the fire of his love, so that we too can be living witnesses to the Christ, heralds of his coming, confident and unafraid, with the zeal and courage of John the Baptist, inspiring others to recognize and follow the Savior.  As we strive to do what we can, may we decrease and may he increase, today and always.