Awe, astonishment and joy

Today’s gospel (Luke 1: 57-66, 80) is suffused with three states of soul that are all necessary to sons and daughters of God.

When Zechariah told them that the baby’s name was to be John, his speech returned to him, and all their neighbours were filled with awe and the whole affair was talked about throughout the hill country of Judea. Awe is a great respect that is filled with wonder. Religion that is so filled with awe there is no room for intimacy is at risk of being cold or servile. Religion that is so filled with intimacy there is no room for awe is at risk of becoming selfish and manipulative. Awe reminds us that religion is itself a virtue, a part of justice, and it is especially owed to God and His great works. Yet awe is also connected to respect for the mystery of any other person – be they divine or human. Just as we sometimes write our desires onto our image of God, we often write them onto other people, and wonder why they cannot see things as we do. We lack awe and the humility is fosters.

Before the people felt this awe at God’s works, they were left first in a state of astonishment by Zechariah’s confirmation that the baby’s name was to be John. John was not a family name and its use was, therefore, unprecedented. We too need to awaken our capacity for such astonishment. For God and His ways are so different. Astonishment is a capacity for surprise, but fundamentally it requires a ready willingness for that surprise, an openness to the way of things that lie beyond my ken and beyond my conventions. Conventions are part of every society and are in fact very helpful, but not when they close down our freedom to the surprises of God. The habit of sin too closes our eyes to what might astonish us; perhaps this is why we think of astonishment and innocence as being closely linked. John’s name was a surprise. Jesus’ incarnation was a surprise. Astonishment is, as I say, our readiness to be open to God’s wrong-footing us. G. K. Chesterton ends his essay Orthodoxy with these beautiful lines:

There was some one thing that was too great for God to show us when He walked upon our earth; and I have sometimes fancied that it was His mirth.

If only we were prepared to be astonished at God, perhaps we would perceive this mirth more readily.

And the last mood that suffuses this gospel is that of St Elizabeth and it is her joy; simple and enduring, unperturbed by the lack of astonishment and the slowness to awe that left her leaders and her neighbours so clay footed. Joy – a fruit of the Holy Spirit and one of the actions of love. Joy - that God had worked a miracle in her life and called her son out into the wilderness until the day he appeared openly to Israel. The gospel records nothing of St John’s childhood other than that he grew up and his spirit matured. But can we imagine for a minute that his mother and the mother of his soon-to-be-born cousin never saw each other, especially given that the one had dashed to see the other as soon as she heard news of her pregnancy?

Mary too was filled with joy, and with astonishment and awe. For her joy came from a love so constant its like had never been seen; her astonishment came from an openness to God and His mirthful ways; and her awe issued from the depths of her Old Testament education which taught the Jews to cover their faces in reverence for God, like the Seraphim before the throne of the Almighty.   

May Jesus grant us all astonishment, awe and joy on this solemnity of St John the Baptist.

Mary, teach us to be joyful every minute of our life; teach us to be astonished every minute of our life; teach us to live in awe every minute of our life. Amen.