The people are facing many hardships. Upon learning of John the Baptist, they are “filled with expectation, and all were asking in their hearts whether John might be the Christ. John answered them all, saying” he was not. John knows the Christ “will baptize you with the Spirit.”
Do we know how serious are the hardships people are still facing, especially the youth of the U.S.? Likely they too are filled with expectation. Many are asking in their hearts whether there might even be a Christ – any spiritual guides. They are mocked for doubting but not affirmed for yearning. Perhaps they yearn for us to be like Christ, and empower them in the Spirit. Today’s youth are negatively compared to those of the Greatest Generation. Its members are heralded for courage against the hardships of the Depression and a World War against Nazis. Might we consider today’s youth are showing greater courage during greater hardships? Imagine you are born in 1990. You are 5, about the age memories form, when you learn a white right-wing military veteran exploded a bomb that kills 168 people in Oklahoma City. You are 11 when you watch Saudis fly airplanes into New York City buildings killing 3,000 people. You probably expect it when the U.S. retaliates and invades oil-rich Iraq starting a war that hasn’t ended yet and whose dead will, in time, include your classmates. On your 14th birthday you learn the U.S. military tortures prisoners at Abu Ghraib and thus you expect it when ICE agents later torture children in cages. On your next birthday in 2005 you watch the GOP mismanage the New Orleans levies resulting in hurricane Katrina ravaging the city and killing 1,833 people. Since hurricanes are deemed just the weather and not worsened by destructive human behaviors, you expect to grieve so many more people killed by hurricanes and tornadoes and firestorms and droughts and pollution across the world; Flint (water), New Delhi (air), Yucca Mountain (chemical), and Standing Rock (oil), and by so many more disasters, all of which you are courageously dealing with. On your 18th birthday in 2008, just in time for college, the economy collapses and 12 trillion dollars in public money are stolen by D.C. and Wall Street billionaires who lost their housing credit default game & couldn’t be expected to pay for their debt. But you and your parents expect it when your house is foreclosed upon and your college tuition and its interest rates skyrocket ensuring you are forever in debt to those same D.C. and Wall Street billionaires. Your next birthdays pass uneventfully as Congress keeps increasing their pay raises while you keep working hard but aren’t expecting to earn much since Congress last raised the minimum wage when you were 9 years old. On your 22nd birthday in 2012 did you expect a young man to murder 20 children and 7 adults in Sandy Hook grade school? You pray your country will act on the terror of guns, but no – so, maybe your birthdays end because you die courageously facing the terrorists at Homan Square or the Charleston church or the Pulse Night Club or Parkland H.S. or Oxford H.S. or so many other places because that is what you expect when you live in a country that calls itself Christian but loves guns more than children. On your 26th birthday white supremacists who call themselves Christian, support for President a man they know is a lying white supremacist fan of Hitler. A man whose Nazi devotees he calls “very fine people” and who you and your generation courageously face not across the world but right here and right now in the U.S. Did you expect in your generation you would have to deal with Nazis who call themselves Christians? On your next birthday GOP rulers with socialized health care, devise it so you lose your health care. Very bad timing, since in your 30th birthday year a plague spreads across the world. It is killing hundreds of thousands of people in the U.S. because the GOP disbanded the Pandemic Preparedness System and mismanaged dealing with the disease. Yet again, you are courageously dealing with life and the Pandemic called Covid-19. As they embark upon a New Year, can our youth be filled with expectation about us? Do they know if we will stand with them as they courageously face hardships exponentially worse than that faced by previous generations?
“What can be said in New Year rhymes, That’s not been said a thousand times? The new years come, the old years go. We know we dream, we dream we know.” (The Year – Ella Wheeler Wilcox)
Prayer: Spirit, fill me with knowledge and courage for the youth of my time.
Question: How am I helping to empower youth in the Spirit?
January 09, 2022 Gospel Matthew 3:13-17 Feast of Baptism