Do We Know Him? Sunday Reflection

This morning’s Gospel reading is John 1:29–34:

John the Baptist saw Jesus coming toward him and said, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world. He is the one of whom I said, ‘A man is coming after me who ranks ahead of me because he existed before me.’ I did not know him, but the reason why I came baptizing with water was that he might be made known to Israel.” John testified further, saying, “I saw the Spirit come down like a dove from heaven and remain upon him. I did not know him, but the one who sent me to baptize with water told me, ‘On whomever you see the Spirit come down and remain, he is the one who will baptize with the Holy Spirit.’ Now I have seen and testified that he is the Son of God.”

How well do we know the Lord? How well do we know ourselves?

I’ve puzzled over this passage in previous reflections (links below). John says of Jesus as He approaches for His own baptism, “I did not know him,” but that seems unlikely. John and Jesus were cousins through Elizabeth, who were close enough as family for Mary to have visited Elizabeth while both were pregnant. As I was reminded at one time, John actually knew Jesus while in the womb, as he “leapt” when Mary approached. Elizabeth would have certainly told John about Jesus while growing up, including her knowledge that Jesus was the savior promised by the prophets. 

Recall how Elizabeth greeted Mary at that meeting (Luke 1:41-45):

⁴¹ When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the baby leaped in her womb, and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit. ⁴² In a loud voice she exclaimed: “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the child you will bear! ⁴³ But why am I so favored, that the mother of my Lord should come to me? ⁴⁴ As soon as the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy. ⁴⁵ Blessed is she who has believed that the Lord would fulfill his promises to her!”

 Even if time and events prevented John and Jesus from spending time together – the scriptures are silent on that point – Elizabeth would have passed that knowledge to John. She understood that John also came to her via the Lord’s will, and that John’s mission would be linked to Jesus’. It seems highly unlikely that John would have gone into the desert to prepare the way of the Lord without understanding that his cousin would be the Messiah. John knew Jesus from before birth, in the usual sense.

John speaks of knowing in a spiritual sense, but even this seems puzzling. John the Baptist was the final prophet, someone who received the Lord and spoke on His behalf to urge the Israelites to repentance. John established the sacrament of baptism as a casting out of sin, which Jesus made sacred with his participation. John did not have perfect knowledge of Jesus and His mission before His arrival at the Jordan, but John knew enough to speak prophetically about that mission and to prepare for its launch. 

So what are we to make of the claim by John, “I did not know him”? John may not have known the divine nature of Jesus; he does add that, having seen his cousin, Jesus is “the Son of God.” In a sense, this partly parallels the reaction of Thomas after the Resurrection, who proclaims that he must see to believe, and Jesus appears so that Thomas may place his fingers in Jesus’ wounds and have his faith restored. John the Baptist did not suffer a crisis of faith, but it still required Jesus to appear for John to fully grasp His divine and immortal nature. 

But even these explanations fall short of the point, because they feel intellectual rather than truly spiritual. Too often, I get lost in intellect and wander too far from the heart. It is not enough to “know” Jesus intellectually, historically, or even theologically. Knowledge of Jesus in that sense is easy, and made even easier for us in our time, thanks to the Gospels, the scriptures, and the magisterium provided by two millennia of teaching by church fathers and deep thinkers. We are literally handed the knowledge of Jesus in the intellectual, historical, and theological contexts. 

The truly difficult act of faith is to open ourselves enough to know Jesus in the spiritual sense, and to place our trust in Him as the Lord of our lives. This may be what John speaks of in this passage, especially given the familial connection he had to Jesus as His cousin. If Jesus and John had not spent time with each other, John may not have absorbed the spiritual reality and commitment of Jesus as his Lord and Messiah until Jesus appeared at the river. It may sound odd to propose that John had a conversion moment in this meeting, but today’s Gospel describes it exactly as that – a conversion moment in which John finally and fully embraced the meaning of his prophetic life and mission. 

Furthermore, Jesus warned later in his mission about the failure to know and trust Him in the full sense of faith. In Matthew 7:21-23, He teaches that simply having an intellectual and theological connection to Him will not suffice:

²¹ “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. ²² Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and in your name perform many miracles?’ ²³ Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’ 

 I never knew you. Of course, the Lord knows all of His children, but He allows us to choose for ourselves whether we truly know Him. Evangelizing on His behalf does not necessarily mean that we have let Him fully into our hearts, and that means that we never knew Him, or more accurately, accepted Him for who He truly is – our Lord in all facets of that title, and our Savior. If we refuse to know Him in His true identity, then Jesus warns, He will not know us either.

Our mission, therefore, is the same as John’s. We must prepare the way of the Lord, so that we may truly know Him and accept Him in our hearts. Only then can we become children of God, and bear His light effectively to others.  

Previous reflections on these readings:

The front page image is “The Preaching of St. John the Baptist in the Desert” by Massimo Stanzione, c. 1634. On display at the Museo del Prado in Madrid, Spain. Via Wikimedia Commons.  

“Sunday Reflection” is a regular feature that looks at the specific readings used in today’s Mass in Catholic parishes around the world. The reflection represents only my own point of view, intended to help prepare myself for the Lord’s day and perhaps spark a meaningful discussion. Previous Sunday Reflections can be found here.  

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