The trouble with bloodlines

Curiously, today’s Gospel might appear to echo the dynastic impulse of many politicians.

- FR. ROLANDO Y. DELA ROSA, O.P.

Jesus said, “Amen, I say to you, among those born of women there has been none greater than John the Baptist; yet the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he” (Matthew 11:11).This raises a question: Was Jesus downsizing John the Baptist by inaugurating a kind of spiritual dynasty?

A closer look shows the opposite. Jesus was not belittling John the Baptist. Instead, He was highlighting the fact that John the Baptist stood at the end of a long period of expectation and the beginning of the age of fulfillment. As the final prophet of the old covenant, he announced the coming of the Messiah but did not live to see the fullness of Christ’s saving work. In this sense, even the most ordinary disciples of the Kingdom inaugurated by Jesus are “greater” than John the Baptist because they experienced what he only foretold: a deeper intimacy offered by the Spirit and membership in a renewed community shaped by grace rather than law.