Twenty-five years ago, I took my last road trip before packing up and heading to a new life in the South.  My friend, Fr. Herb Sperger, and I were in Montreal, Canada on this date, June 24, 1993.   The Feast of the Nativity of St. John the Baptist is a National Holiday in Quebec and there was a parade with huge crowds, but it felt odd that very few French Canadians were in Church that morning.  At one time Quebec was one of the most deeply Catholic regions in the world.
 
But as Archbishop Charles Chaput, whose father had French Canadian roots, explains the religious landscape in Quebec has changed dramatically in the last half century.  “Starting in the mid-20th century and speeding up quickly after Vatican II, Quebeckers left the Church in droves. Today barely 5 percent of Quebeckers attend Mass regularly. The Church is often seen as an object of scorn. How did it happen? There’s no single reason. Church leaders brought some of the trouble on themselves through overconfidence, inertia and an inability to see the changing terrain of their people. Consumerism colonized the lay faithful. And the culture became dominated by new and highly secularized leaders in politics, education and mass media.”
 
Even though the practice of the faith still seems fairly strong here in the Bible belt, there is certainly evidence that it is not as strong as in days past.  Perhaps, one of the greatest enemies to our faith is indifference.  For every one of us worshipping at Mass on Sunday, there are at least two of us who are not.  My Sunday School for Disciples is a great group, but there is only seven of us.  We can choose a privatized world of passivity and creature comforts, or we can choose to follow in the footsteps of St. John the Baptist and prepare the way of the Lord.    
 
Saint John the Baptist is one of the few saints who has two feast days. Today we celebrate his birth, which Saint Luke narrates in his Gospel. There Saint Luke draws a parallel between the births of Jesus and John, pointing out the important role in the history of salvation that Saint John the Baptist would play.  
 
In this Sunday's Gospel, we learn that Elizabeth gives her son the name John, which means “God has been gracious.” This name sets John apart in a special way: it was normally the father's responsibility to name a child, and the name was usually a family name. The unusual nature of John's naming suggests to everyone that this is a special child.
 
Names have special meanings. In our families, some people are named after parents or other relatives and ancestors. Sometimes peoples' names are symbolic, suggesting something unique about the person or recalling an event or experience related to that person's birth.  I regret that I never really got a straight answer from my folks on the reason for my name.  I have an older cousin named Jerry and my parents said we were named after Uncle Gerald, but I never heard anything about him and have no idea where “Uncle Gerald” fits into the family tree.  My suspicion is that after a miscarriage in the era of thalidomide birth defects, my Mom, praying through the intercession of St. Gerard Majella, the patron of expectant mothers, cut a deal with the Lord that if I turned out fairly normal, she would name me after the saint.  I think I turned out fairly normal, but I am not crazy about the name Gerald.  I liked it when my Mom called me by both my names, Gerald Patrick, even though most often as a child it meant that I was in trouble.  My Dad affectionately called me Jeremiah and of course I loved hearing it.

 
 
A good summer time spiritual exercise would be to spend some time as a family focusing on one another's names as well as on the names of other relatives. If you know the back story, you can point out the significance of each name and how the naming took place.  Fr. Jerry Ragan