NO PRECEDENT

Thursday in the 4th Week of Advent
Lk 1:57-66

My mother told me that before I was born my father already had a name for me: Carlo Magno. My father’s name was Carlos. For some reason, he did not want me to be a “junior”, but he wanted me to carry his name somehow. Thus, the “Carlo” and the “Magno” put together as in the original “Carolus Magnus” or “Charlemagne” or “Charles the Great”.

My mother, however, wanted to name me “Joselito” or “Raulito” or “Angelito”. She reasoned that when there is a “lito” attached to my name, my name would sound a young man’s name no matter how old I become.

But I was christened “Roberto”. The story goes that the first time my father saw me he immediately noticed that I looked very much like his brother who had passed away just a few months before I was born. My uncle’s name was “Robert”; he was the most handsome and well built among my father’s siblings.

Today, people in the Gospel are trying to find any connection in the family as regards the choice of name for the son of Zechariah and Elizabeth. But they cannot. The child’s name came from heaven, given by the angel to Zechariah. It was God’s choice, for the mission the child was born to came from God as well. And so shall the child be called, John.

John’s name means, “God is gracious”. John is God’s graciousness to Zechariah and Elizabeth. He is God’s special gift to them who were for a very long time considered barren; and, therefore, according to Jewish thinking, accursed. John is God’s graciousness to the people of Israel, too. He is the Lord’s precursor, calling the people to conversion of life and extending God’s forgiveness to those who repent from their sins.

John’s name has no precedent in his family because he is the one who makes a precedent in the life of Israel. He signals a new beginning. He breaks the prolonged silence of God even as his birth loosens his father’s tongue. In John, God now speaks again; and His word is graciousness to all who seek His face. He speaks about not only the Messiah, but rather points directly to Him as the Lamb of God. John’s name signifies a new beginning, not because God was not gracious in the past, but because God’s graciousness starts to unfold itself in a new and better fashion in the person of Jesus Christ whose herald John is.

It is never too late for a sincere Christmas to begin, to break from the past marked by the absence of graciousness and grace. Let this Christmas be a time of new beautiful beginning for us. Let us strive even more to be God’s graciousness to others. We are graced. We are graces!