“He must increase; I must decrease”

(Found here)

“…[Psalm 118] ‘O Lord, grant us salvation; O Lord, grant success.’ The psalm is telling us in that line that salvation is the only success there is, and it is given. And so we pray for it. We pray that we will be successful in allowing God to save us all the way. Now I think this very readily relates to that great figure of Advent, Saint John the Baptist, that saint about whom we know a great deal; in fact, there are very few persons about whom we know so much before the person is even born. We know quite a bit about his parents, we know what made him dance around before birth, we know about his unborn reaction to the presence of Jesus. Then we know quite a bit about how he lived his very penitential, prayerful life and how he minced no words with those who flocked to hear him. He was never the person of the soft word—always the kind word, yes, but often this kind word was very, very firm as when he told them, ‘Repent, right now. The time is at hand.’ When they asked him questions about what they should do, he gave them very forthright answers. And then, we know he went on to imprisonment and to what eventually led to his death, a most ignominious death: the wages of a woman’s lust, of a king’s lust before a cheap dancing girl. What a death for the man of whom Jesus had said, ‘There is no man born of woman greater than John the Baptist.’ And so there is very much for John the Baptist to teach us; and perhaps the greatest thing he teaches us is his saying ‘He must increase; I must decrease’ (Jn 3:30).

…[T]his is the theology of John the Baptist and it’s one sentence. It didn’t take a book; it took only one sentence: ‘He must increase; I must decrease.’ Relating this to Psalm 118, I must be similarly successful. I must allow myself to be saved. … And we know … in our more lucid moments, that if we are not busy at letting him increase and making ourselves decrease, we find that we take up more and more room within ourselves so that there is less and less room for God.

Saint John tells us that Jesus ‘must increase’ and, in order that this should be, ‘I must decrease.’ Our aim is not that I should decrease until there’s nothing left of me: here I am, an empty shell! That’s not the purpose of it. We all learned in physics that nature abhors a vacuum. …nature does not want anything empty, nature does abhor a vacuum, nature comes in. A thousand million more times spiritually … does God come into a created emptiness of ourselves. God truly rushes in… He does rush in with his grace, with a spiritual sound of rushing wind as was heard at that first Pentecost. He does not want us to be empty, to leave us empty. He wants us to decrease so that he can get in. What he wants most of all is that he can be totally there, so that we are all his, and all the space is his. 

…[Christ] became obedient. How long? Unto death. How much unto death, in what way unto death? Completely, totally. So, every act of obedience is letting the obedient Christ increase in us. And then, when the obedient Christ is in charge in his domain, then we begin to experience the marvel of the paradox that, when he is completely there, then the more I am really myself. When I decrease, that God may increase, he brings me to myself in a way that I was not there before. For, as Saint Paul tells us, ‘You are in Christ.’

…[I]n the little things of every day, let us love to seek out the ways in which he can increase and I decrease. Every time that I smile … when I feel like frowning or showing that I’m displeased or have been intruded upon or don’t feel understood, Christ is increasing in me. Every time that I humble myself, the meek and humble Christ is increasing in me and my proud self is decreasing. We should not be so foolish as to waste these opportunities. How many occasions of grace we can waste, while our blessed Lord wants so much to increase in us! He wants to rush in, more than air ever wanted to rush into that created vacuum. He wants to do this. And so, let us let him in. Let us allow him to increase; we do this by calling ourselves to decrease. Who wants to be full of self?

When we see a person who is obviously full of herself, it is not an engaging picture. It is very disaffecting to see a person full of self. But to see a person full of Christ (and it is unmistakable when this is genuine), oh, how engaging that is! How inspiring that is. How ennobling that is. So, let us return to the point of beginning: ‘O Lord, grant us salvation; O Lord, grant success.’ May we come to realize, as Saint John realized and invited others to realize, that this is the only success there is: to let Jesus triumph in us, to let him possess this little field that I am. This is success. Our world now is nearly mad with its own idea of success. Success is to get ahead in the business world, to possess a lot of things, to have a lot of everything. Success is to be a famous name. And that is the very reason why salvation is often forgotten: because this blindness prevents us from understanding what the psalmist knows, that salvation—allowing ourselves to be completely saved, completely one with God, completely possessed by God—is the only success.” 

~Mary Francis