While John the Baptizer is a beloved figure in the Christian tradition, we generally know very little about him.
Our Gospel passage for the Second Sunday of Advent presents John introducing us to the coming Messiah. Here he battles with both the Pharisees and Sadducees who challenge him on his teaching. As a part of the literary construct of Matthew’s Gospel, it would appear that the two sectarian groups within the Jewish community that stood as adversaries to the proclamation of Jesus are introduced first as hostile also to his precursor in John the Baptizer. Given his direct challenge to them as a “brood of vipers,” we see that John was a prophet more along the lines of the ancient prophets and a bit less like Jesus. While Matthew will show Jesus confronting the Pharisees in very clear ways, his language and imagery are usually more subtle and highbrow than John.
We cannot lose sight of the power of John’s challenge to the Sadducees and Pharisees for the Church in the modern world. John says clearly: “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath? Produce good fruit as evidence of your repentance. And do not presume to say to yourselves,
‘We have Abraham as our father.’ For I tell you, God can raise up children to Abraham from these stones.”
There are multiple layers of meaning behind these warnings. We are warned against seeking false repentance and merely moving through the steps of forgiveness while lacking authentic contrition for our sins. We cannot treat the Sacraments or sacramentals as though they are some form of incantations or mere amulets borne of some ancient or modern superstition. Grounded in the ancient Jewish tradition and instituted through the Paschal Mystery, the Sacraments make real what they signify. Their efficacy, while not dependent upon the belief of the faithful, takes effect within and for the individual as they are celebrated with faith in their power to be effective. For example, if a person lacks contrition for sins confessed, then the sins are not remitted.
Likewise, we are challenged to not fall into the sin of presumption. Performing religious acts of charity or mercy are themselves important expressions of faith reflecting the deep desire to connect our faith to the realities which they express. Performing them just so that one can in effect trick God into bringing one to salvation while not really intending the action itself, is fruitless.
While some will like to claim that due to Baptism, or the profession of Jesus as a personal savior, or perhaps due to the performance of a particular religious ritual that they then have the guarantee of salvation, such a notion runs afoul both of the teaching of John in this Gospel and the teaching of Jesus. We are more than the sum of our actions; none of us has a guarantee apart from the promise. While salvation is not earned, it also cannot be taken for granted. Our lives, actions, dispositions and intentions bear consequences. We cannot commit a fraud against God, and we deceive ourselves if we think that we can fool the God who knows the hearts and minds of all he has made.
John the Baptizer takes our Advent journey to a new level. He puts before us the challenge to authenticity of life. While this is a common and necessary theme of the Gospel message, it takes on a new urgency as we are preparing not only for Christmas, but for our final judgment. God is made manifest to us throughout our lives, in various situations and circumstances. We are being prepared so that we can withstand that judgment so that we might be as the wheat, gathered into the barn, and not as chaff left to burn in unquenchable fire.
Dec. 11 – John is the model of discipleship even from prison
Two of the disciples of John the Baptizer visit him in prison. They must have placed much stock in John as the prophet who would usher in the new age and bring about the restoration of Israel as a nation. Their hopes were set to flight as John was arrested by Herod Antipas for preaching against the vanities and sinfulness of the royal family. Some of John’s disciples left and followed Jesus but these two, among others, remained steadfast and loyal. John, who has emphasized that he is not the one to restore Israel, sends these disciples to Jesus to ask whether it is he, or if yet they are to await another. The answer that Jesus gives is a clear messianic response – “the blind regain their sight, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have the good news proclaimed to them.”
From his prison cell John continues to testify to Jesus, instructing those who are able to hear that they need to seek out Jesus, as Jesus is the one to restore all things.
Father Jacques Mourad, a Syrian priest held hostage for months by the ISIS terrorist group was taken hostage in May 2015 from the Mar Moussa monastery.
“During these 84 days that I was a prisoner in this bathroom in Raqqa, it could be said that it was one of the most difficult experiences that a person can go through; that of losing one’s liberty,” Father Mourad said. “For me it was also a very intense experience, from the spiritual point of view.”
He recalled a moment in which he thought he was to be killed, when a man came and asked if he was Christian. But — to Father Mourad’s surprise — the man then greeted him. “That amazed me because normally the people (militants) don’t shake Christians’ hands or touch them, because they consider them impure. They don’t even greet Muslims that don’t think like them,” Father Mourad said.
In spite of repeated efforts to get him to renounce his Christian faith, Father Mourad never wavered. He commented later that: “It was very difficult above all when they said, ‘Become Muslim or we’ll cut your head off’.”
Beaten, tortured, brutalized and imprisoned, Father Walter Ciszek spent 15 years in a hard labor camps in Siberia. In prison, he heard confessions and offered spiritual comfort to his fellow prisoners. Upon his release, he spent the rest of his time in various Gulags of the Soviet state. Father Ciszek never turned away from his primary mission, that of proclaiming the Gospel. His life as a tough street kid from a Pennsylvania coal town, and the life of self-discipline and hardship which he inflicted upon himself in his seminary training, were a good spiritual and physical preparations for the cruelty of his treatment and life in the Soviet Union.
On Feb. 17, 1941, the Nazi regime shut down the monastery where Maximilian Kolbe lived. He was arrested by the German Gestapo and taken to the Pawiak prison. Three months later, he was transferred to Auschwitz where he was subjected to severe torture and discipline. Toward the end of his second month in Auschwitz, men were chosen to face death by starvation. Kolbe was not chosen but volunteered to take the place of a man with a family. He was the last of the group to remain alive, after two weeks of dehydration and starvation. The guards gave him a lethal injection of carbolic acid. Kolbe died on Aug. 14.
From their respective prisons these priests, among thousands of other faithful Christians, continue to point to Jesus Christ as the one in whom all things are restored.
Father Garry Koch is pastor of St. Benedict Parish, Holmdel.