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Commentary on the Gospel for Thursday, January 2, 2025
I Am Not Worthy
It might seem curious that after repeatedly hearing that we are children of God, with the immense dignity that entails, we now join John in saying, as we do before every Communion: “I am not worthy.” But both statements are true: as children of God, we possess immense dignity. Yet, because our merit is not our own but entirely granted, we are not worthy—or rather, we do not deserve any of it.
John understands this well. The greatest of the prophets, the Forerunner of the Messiah, identifies himself only as “a voice crying out in the wilderness.” The voice of the wilderness we’ve heard so often in the first readings of Advent Eucharists. This is a valuable and worthy voice: it announces the coming, proclaims the changes needed for God’s plan to unfold (“Prepare the way; straighten what is crooked”), denounces evil, comforts, and challenges. The one who is unworthy even to untie the sandal receives the immense task of being the voice.
In the same way, all of us who have been adopted by God are not deserving even to be near Him—not even at the level of His sandals. And yet, we are called, we are compelled, to be that voice.
“Crying out in the wilderness,” because of punctuation, has sometimes been interpreted as preaching in vain, something that feels futile. But perhaps it is better understood as: “A voice cries out: ‘In the wilderness, prepare the way.’” With this, the task shifts from seeming useless and hopeless to being challenging but full of hope: in the wilderness of meaning and values in which we live; in the wilderness of God’s absence in our secularized society, prepare the way.
Preparing the way, then, means living in a way that might feel a bit “against the grain”; bearing witness to a different way of life; upholding truth and values in opposition to the absurd and unjust currents of our world. We are not worthy, but this is our great dignity. As children of God, we live (or ought to live) differently. Even in the wilderness.