This is the day (June 24th) when we remember the birth of John the Baptist, the last of the great line of prophets. He was sent to prepare the way for the Messiah, Jesus. In the collect for the day, we pray, “Give your people the wisdom to see your purpose and the openness to hear your will.” What is this will? In the prayer after Communion, we thank God that “his compassion has broken upon us like the dawn” and we ask him to “guide now our feet into the way of peace”. If we are to find peace, we have to know what we are looking for. Compassion is the road to peace. It breaks upon us like a new day bringing with it a new energy to reach out and relate to others with the power of love. We often feel that with the cessation of noise and the clamor of fighting comes peace. That is a negative view, wonderful though it might often be. Peace should not mean “Now I can lay back and relax." True peace means we are filled with compassion; we move forward and reach out with the power of love which comes in the power of the Holy Spirit. This is translated into many acts, great and small which uphold another person or cause and helps us to enter into their lives. It means that while discerning their weaknesses, we love and support them.
John the Baptist, the forerunner preached the repentance of sin. Jesus died for us on the cross so that we might receive forgiveness of those sins. Having accepted his forgiveness, let us move forward with compassion with the power and strength of his love and reach out to obtain the peace that passes understanding.
O Divine master,
Grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console;
Not so much to be understood as to understand;
Not so much to be loved as to love.
For it is giving that we receive,
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned
It is in dying we are born again to eternal life.
(from the Prayer of St. Francis of Assisi)
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