I read somewhere that astronauts could hear old radio shows in space. Apparently, radio waves do not fall apart, they just drift in the ether, and no doubt some of them found their way into the astronauts’ apparatus. How both bizarre and gratifying to listen to the same radio broadcast of a soap opera in the 50s, which went on the air before many of us were born.
I wonder if this is the case with sound waves, too. Perhaps the universe preserves every word ever spoken, and that, with the right equipment, we can seize and listen to it. Who knows that the world might develop the technology to catch the speeches of history’s legendary orators as they delivered them.
Obviously, since we would hear the same speech, not just years or decades but what’s more centuries after the event, we would only have a disembodied voice.
“All I have is a voice,” wrote W. H. Auden. John the Baptist might well have said the same thing. Matthew points to him as the one spoken of by Isaiah – a voice calling in the desert.
In a sermon on the birth of John the Baptist, Augustine says, “John is the voice, but the Lord is the Word… John is the voice that lasts for a time… Christ is the Word who lives forever.”
If the word leaves the voice, only an empty sound remains. There is nothing to understand because there is no meaning to grasp.
While preparing for work this morning, I could hear the screech of the carpenters’ tools from a nearby construction site. It was just noise, just a sound without meaning, and it did not concern me. “The voice without the word strikes the ear, but does not build up the heart,” says Augustine.
To build up the heart is to communicate. Augustine describes the way we do this – “When I think of what to say, the word or message is already in my heart. When I want to speak to you, I look for a way to share with your heart what is already in mine.”
So where does John the Baptist come in? “When the word has been conveyed to you,” he says, “does not the sound seem to say: The word ought to grow, and I should diminish? The sound of the voice has made itself heard in the service of the word, and has gone away, as though it were saying: My joy is complete. Let us hold on to the word; we must not lose the word conceived inwardly in our hearts.”
When Christ the Word came, and implanted Himself in the human heart, John – the voice that broke the silence, the voice of one crying in the wilderness – considered himself functus officio, as one who has fulfilled one’s task.
To prepare the way, according to Augustine, means to pray well, and to think humbly of oneself – both of which John did. “He pointed out clearly who he was; he humbled himself. He saw where his salvation lay. He understood that he was a lamp, and his fear was that it might be blown out by the wind of pride.”
And this prompted Jesus to say of him, “I tell you the truth: Among those born of women there has not risen anyone greater than John the Baptist…”
So humble was John (and therefore so great) that, if at all we can find the equipment that can retrieve all the voices ever, I have no doubts that, once our ears have waded through the nigh-infinite crackle and hiss of static and the zillions of speeches and conversations, we will hear the words of Jesus, but not the voice of John.