原文|Bishop Barron
翻译|Carrie

朋友们，今天的福音记述了洗者若翰的遇害过程。黑落德逮捕并杀害了曾给耶稣洗礼的若翰。洗者若翰的被捕和遇害对耶稣来说是信号。

 

若翰被监禁后，耶稣立刻退避到加里肋亚，然后开始传道工作、治愈病患。这两者之间的联系只是巧合？不是的。耶稣把若翰的被捕看作是祂要开始传道的信号。

 

我们必须记住一点，当时包括耶稣在内的所有犹太人都是通过《圣经》来看世事。《圣经》是解读一切的准则。先知们、《圣咏集》以及《梅瑟五书》均屡屡提到默西亚时代来临之前将有一段苦难期，天主的敌对者将在此期间起来反抗天主的旨意。

 

耶稣通过若翰被捕看到的正是如此。这位伟大的全国知名人物、以色列先知被天主的敌人逮捕并最终杀害。耶稣把此事视为祂应该开始其救世主工作的信号。

 

Friends, today's Gospel tells of the death of John the Baptist. Herod had arrested John, from whom Jesus had sought baptism, and put him to death. The arrest and death of John the Baptist were signals for Jesus.

 

Jesus immediately after the arrest withdraws to Galilee and then commences his own ministry of preaching and healing. Are these two events just coincidentally related? Hardly. Jesus read the arrest of John as a kind of signal that he was to begin.

 

We must remember that Jesus, like any Jew of his time, would have read the world through the lens of the Sacred Scriptures. They were the interpretive framework for everything. It was a commonplace of the prophets and the psalms and parts of the Torah that the era of the Messiah would be preceded by a time of tribulation, when the opponents of God would rise up to counter God's purposes.

 

Jesus saw this in the arrest of John. This great national figure, this prophet to Israel, was arrested and eventually killed by the enemies of God—and he took it as a signal that his own Messianic work should begin.

（圣若翰·维雅纳的一句格言：“以下是一条日常规则：凡是不能奉献给天主的事情，你都不要去做。”）

朋友们，今天我们纪念圣若翰·维雅纳，他是教区神父的模范和主保圣人。我们需要神父，因为没有他们，就没有圣餐；而没有圣餐，则没有教会。圣若望·保禄二世在其最后一道教宗通谕中十分清楚有力地声明了这一点：ecclesia de eucharistia（教会来自圣餐）。

 

首批门徒曾与耶稣本人亲密地坐在一起、近距离地观察祂、了解祂的思想和心意、受祂的召唤去为天国的来临而传播福音，而今天的神父就是首批门徒的后裔。神父在主内正如基督一样是天国子民的首领和牧人。

 

神父被称为“父”是因为他们就是父亲。他们在精神秩序中生儿育女。以圣若翰·维雅纳为例，他在告解室里和布道坛上鞠躬尽瘁；以圣马希连·国柏为例，他以“我是个天主教神父”这句话来以命抵命；以芝加哥神父加里·格拉夫为例，他捐出部分肝脏来救活了一名教区居民。他们这样做是因为他们是属灵父亲，在精神秩序中是生命赐予者。

 

Friends, today we honor St. John Vianney, the model and patron for diocesan priests. We need priests, for without priests there is no Eucharist, and without the Eucharist, there is no Church. St. John Paul II, in his final encyclical stated this as clearly and boldly as possible: ecclesia de eucharistia (the Church comes from the Eucharist).

 

Priests are the descendants of those first disciples who sat in intimacy with Jesus himself, watching him at close quarters, learning his mind and heart, summoned to work for the coming of the kingdom. Priests participate in Christ, precisely in his capacity as head and shepherd of his people.

 

Priests are called "father," for that is what they are. They give life in the spiritual order. Look to the example of St. John Vianney, who spent hours in the confessional and in the pulpit; to St. Maximilian Kolbe, who offered his life with the words, "I am a Catholic priest;" to Fr. Gary Graf, a Chicago priest who gave part of his own liver so that one of his parishioners might live. They do all of these things because they are spiritual fathers, life-givers in the spiritual order.