
Icon of Saint John the Baptist, Abbey church
Writing the Job Description for Your Life
The eighth grade was without a doubt the apex of my athletic career. For seven years I was an also-ran on the track team, though I always finished respectably. But in those days there were no trophies or limosines for fifth-place finishers (known at the time collectively as the losers.) Then, in the summer after seventh grade, the keys to fame and fortune came at last. That summer I had a spurt of growth that left me tall and skinny and fleet-of-foot. But even better, the guy who had won everything for seven years moved to another city. That fall I shocked his heir-apparent and ran away with the ribbons for everything except the shot put. It was just too heavy.
In retrospect I realize that celebrity came too soon. Today I would be busy selecting a site for my own hall of fame and library. And I would fret over how many publicists would be enough. Back then no one knew we were due all that adulation.

Co-cathedral of Saint John the Baptist, Malta
For some time David Brooks has been the writer I idolize, and I could listen to him talk about anything, all day long. Lately he’s commented on the lack of humility in our society, with the observation that people will now do stuff that would have mortified them fifty years ago. He includes, as an example, ceo salaries at $75 million per year. But that scarcely exhausts the inventory.
Recently he cited a survey of young people, most of whom said they would prefer to be Justin Bieber’s agent rather than the president of Harvard. For my part I prefer to give them the benefit of the doubt and assume that they just don’t know what a president of a Harvard is. But Brooks was less forgiving. For him their choice was a sign of the times. Our popular culture sets a higher store on fame than on service to others. Sadly, for us it really is all about us.
On the second Sunday of Advent John the Baptist enters the scene, and he preaches the need for repentance and baptism. Given his clothing and diet, he’d never have a prayer of getting into GQ or Cosmopolitan. But on one key ingredient he is even more hopelessly out of sync with the 21st century. After all, who would want a job description that reads: “he must increase, while I must decrease”?
The gospels cast John as the quintessential number two man. It’s not about him, because he literally points to someone else. He is the epitome of humility — the quality whose absence in our culture Brooks so laments. But John’s supporting role in the story doesn’t degrade him. In fact, his character is all the more noble since his life points to something of transcendent value. It wasn’t all about him, because it was all about the One who had given him life in the first place.

Co-cathedral of Saint John, Malta
In his Rule Saint Benedict describes the degrees of humility, and that kind of language makes many cringe in mock horror. But Benedict has no desire to reduce the monk to worthlessness. Quite the contrary, if the monk is to see Christ in others, he also needs to see Christ in himself. He, like every seeker of Christ, is called to be a sacred person.
Benedict’s degrees of humility are a form of reality therapy, from which we learn a great deal. The monk has not brought himself into being. He did not bestow on himself a range of talents. His supreme importance is not self-derived. The humility to which both Benedict and David Brooks point is a grounding in the soil from which we all spring and to which we shall return. Humility is a reminder of the Source in whom we live and move and have our being.
To what do we want our lives to point? That’s the question we all answer with our actions. For my part I’m glad there is no shrine to my eighth-grade athletic prowess. It was a formative moment in my life, but it’s not who I am today. Fixating on one such episode strikes me as incredibly unhealthy. Everyone should celebrate such rites of passage, but then we need to move on to the next task. If we stop too long to extoll our own greatness, we risk stalling out. We become blind to what God still has in mind for us.
What then will be the job description we write for oursleves? Am I here solely to win some races in the eighth grade? To celebrate the cult of Justin Bieber? To make some impact on somebody’s life? To show the goodness of the God who gives us life?
Put that way, the options are more stark. At its fullest, life is not about me. Like John the Baptist, life is more about me and God and all the others in whom God dwells.

Practice for the Christmas concert: The Great Hall
John the Baptist
Since the early Church Saint John the Baptist has been a favorite patron, and as “a voice crying in the wilderness” he can be especially appropriate for our own day. More particular to me, he is patron of Saint John’s Abbey, as well as of our University and Prep School. For the first few years John the Baptist literally was a voice crying in the wilderness of Collegeville, since the early monks had primarily birds, squirrels and deer as their neighbors. He is also the patron of the Order of Saint John of Jerusalem, of Rhodes and of Malta, in which I serve as a chaplain. For the sake of small envelopes, it is often abbreviated as The Order of Malta. I have included two photos of the Order’s former headquarters church in Malta, dedicated to Saint John the Baptist. While the exterior of the church blends easily into the landscape of Malta, the interior is resplendent with the magnificent tombs of past members of the Order.
Because of his popularity, John the Baptist naturally shows up as a favored subject for artists, and at Saint John’s we have several renditions of him. At the top of this post is an icon which is enthroned in the Abbey church, below the lecturn. In it John points to Christ, in the upper left corner of the panel. The icon was painted by Aidan Hart, who did significant work in The Saint John’s Bible.
John the Baptist also figures in a very weathered statue that now sits behind the monastery. At first glance this terra cotta representation looks rather sad and depressed, with downcast eyes. It could be due to the flower bed at his feet, which is closed for the winter. In fact, however, he looks downward because he once greeted all guests arriving at the main entrance of the Abbey, and he did it from four floors up. Sometime around 1894 he was perched up on a ledge on the tower of the monastery, and from there he reigned supreme until 1954. In that year the Breuer wing of the monastery was built, and all of a sudden he looked out over a huge expanse of roof. Preaching to the roof did not suit him, or us, and he was relocated to the garden, where he now presides over the flowers — and the occasonal photographer. In the picture below you can identify the ledge on which the statue stood, just outside of an arched window.

The Calendar
On December 1st I was the presiding celebrant at the Abbey Mass, and I have enclosed in Presentations my reflection: Is God our Father, or is He Santa Claus? This was my first experience with the new Roman Missal, which had entered the scene on the previous Sunday. At the Abbey we had spent considerable time and work in preparation for it, and we’d begun to use the new sung propers two months ago. While the changes in wording are not radical, it took some basic preparation that had not been necessary for me for many years. Needless to say, I was nervous and careful, as if it were my first Mass all over again. But it turned out well.
On December 2nd the choirs of Saint John’s University and the College of Saint Benedict gave their annual Christmas concert in the Great Hall at Saint John’s. The next evening they gave the same concert at the massive Basilica of Saint Mary in downtown Minneapolis. It was the 25th anniversary of that concert, and as always the massed choirs sang to a very full church.
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