St John the Baptist's preparation in the desert
With hope waning in Israel, God's providence was at work. But how was St John the Baptist prepared for his mission, throughout his long years in the desert?
With hope waning in Israel, God's providence was at work. But how was St John the Baptist prepared for his mission, throughout his long years in the desert?
Gospel for the Fourth Sunday of Advent
In this passage, Fr Coleridge tells us:
How the world’s tumult contrasted with the hidden holiness of Nazareth.
How St. John the Baptist was prefigured by prophecy and prepared through divine providence and asceticism in the desert.
Why the Baptist’s role as the Forerunner was singular in importance, bridging all prior dispensations to prepare Israel for the Incarnate Word.
He shows us how St. John’s mission epitomises divine preparation: hidden, swift, and perfect, leading directly to the manifestation of Christ.
This Gospel is read on the Fourth Sunday of Advent. It is curious that the Advent Gospel readings appear in reverse chronological order:
The last witness of St John the Baptist (and Our Lord’s witness to him)
St John the Baptist’s declaration of his mission under inquiry
The first witness of St John the Baptist.
This reverse chronological order of these readings also recalls the curious mnemonic ‘ERO CRAS,’ spelt out by a reversal of the ‘O Antiphons’ from the 17th December. It is as if the Roman liturgy is engaging in a kind of “countdown” to Christmas.
These readings also show how central the Forerunner of Christ is in this period; a greater appreciation of this centrality may go some way to reawakening devotion to St John the Baptist, of whom Our Lord said:
“There hath not risen up among them that are born of women a greater than John the Baptist.”
St John the Baptist's preparation
From
The Ministry of St. John the Baptist
Fr Henry James Coleridge, 1886, Ch. I
St. Matt. iii. 1-12; St. Mark i. 2-8; St. Luke iii. 1-8
Story of the Gospels, § 16
Sung on the Fourt Sunday of Advent
Changes during our Lord's Hidden Life
Thirty years form a long space in the ordinary life of a man, and to many of us what is separated from us by so great an interval seems hardly to belong to our present existence.
We usually reckon such a period as the life of a generation because, within such a space of time, almost the whole outward aspect of the human world changes, as far as those elements of it are concerned which are variable. New men are in power or in vigour, or in possession of influence, wealth, estates, and other things which pass from hand to hand because they survive the frail strength of the children of Adam.
The thirty years that intervened between the Birth and the Baptism of our Lord Jesus Christ had not been less fruitful of change and succession than any others. While He had been advancing so gradually ‘in wisdom and age and in grace before God and man,’1 and hiding Himself so completely in His life of obedience and silence at Nazareth, the world had been rushing on in all its flurry and tumult, and the memories of those wonderful manifestations by which the Providence of the Father had honoured His Birth had almost died away.
At Rome and Jerusalem
The great Emperor Augustus, whose edict had forced St. Joseph and our Blessed Lady to go up to Bethlehem, and who had thus unconsciously served the true Master of the world by occasioning the fulfilment of the prophecies concerning the spot of His Birth, had passed away from his place of power, asking of his friends as a last homage the acknowledgment that he had played his part well.2 Some two years before his death,3 he had associated his stepson Tiberius with himself in his Imperial power, and we find St. Luke dating the preaching of the Baptist from the reign of Tiberius thus raised to the throne as colleague of Augustus.
Herod, the wicked and cruel King, had gone to meet his Judge at no great interval of time after the massacre of the Holy Innocents. Archelaus had succeeded him, but after nine years of reigning, he became intolerable. He was accused at Rome, summoned before the Emperor, and banished to Vienne. Herod’s kingdom was then divided, as St. Luke’s description intimates; and, at the time of which we are speaking, Judæa and Samaria were a part of the Roman province of Syria, governed separately by the sixth of the series of Roman procurators, Pontius Pilate.
Certain portions of the former kingdom of Herod were retained by his children under the name of tetrarchies. ‘Herod’ Antipas ‘was tetrarch of Galilee (and Peræa), his brother Philip was tetrarch of Ituræa and the region of Trachonitis, Lysanias was tetrarch of Abilene,’ a territory lying about the Lebanon.4 The last-named province alone of those enumerated by St. Luke does not meet us in the Gospel history, as having something to do with the career of our Lord or His blessed Precursor.
‘Annas and Caiaphas were the High Priests’5—the mere statement tells us of the degrading change which had come over the High Priesthood, which was now given from time to time, in defiance of the Law, to the favourites, the partisans, or even the purchasers, of the Roman Governor.
Death of the witnesses to our Lord at His Birth
Thus, at the time of which we are speaking, there were new rulers and even new systems at Jerusalem and all over the Holy Land. Death had removed most of the early witnesses to our Lord. Simeon was gone, and Anna; so also, we must suppose, were St. Zachary and St. Elisabeth.
If the parents of our Blessed Lady had been alive at the time of our Lord’s Birth, they also were now dead. Our Lady herself was a widow, though we are in ignorance of the date of the death of St. Joseph.
And the changes which had come over the Holy Family and the nation at large had been paralleled in every family in the country. The shepherds who had seen the vision of angels, the people at Jerusalem or at Bethlehem who had guided or waited on the Eastern kings at the Epiphany, the neighbours of Zachary who had been filled with wonder at the marvels which had been seen at the birth of the Baptist, many even of the doctors at Jerusalem whom our Lord had astonished by His learning, His answers and questions, when He had remained in the Temple for three days at the age of twelve years, were now dead.
The birth of the marvellous Child at Bethlehem, the King’s ruthless murder of the other children for His sake, the witness borne to Him in the Temple at the Purification of our Blessed Lady, had become matter of tradition, carefully nursed and preserved, no doubt, in the hearts of many who were ‘looking for the redemption of Israel,’ but the length of time which had passed since hopes were first raised concerning Him must have been enough, in many cases, to turn those hopes into disappointment.
Increasing darkness of the moral atmosphere—except in Nazareth
Meanwhile, all around, the moral and religious atmosphere seemed to grow darker and darker, the sceptre had more clearly than ever before been taken away from Judah, the signs of dissolution and desolation in the chosen nation became more conspicuous, and the heathen world all around it seemed sinking deeper and deeper into the gulf of the foulest moral degradation, less and less illumined, as time went on, by rays of hope, less and less startled by voices which bare witness to yearnings after better things.
The preparations of God are patient and leisurely, and when the moment comes, He acts strongly, quietly, and swiftly. Never since the creation of the universe had there been on the face of the earth creatures of God so dear to Him, never had there been such mighty spiritual forces and such consummate beauties and glories of the highest sanctity to delight the gaze of heaven, as during this interval when all seemed outwardly so dead and hopeless.
During all those years, Nazareth had been in the eyes of God and His angels a focus of the intensest and purest light, in which Jesus, Mary, and Joseph lived and moved in the constant practice of the loftiest virtue: and their whole life was the preparation and the foundation of the coming kingdom of God.
Influence of our Lord’s intercession on others at this time
The Incarnate Son was there in all the fulness and glory of the perfect grace with which His Sacred Humanity was endowed, and pouring Himself out in constant prayer for the advancement of the work committed to Him.
And it cannot be doubted that His presence must have made itself felt on many good and simple souls around, near or far off, among Jews and Gentiles, in holy illuminations and inspirations, drawing them nearer to God and further from the world and from sin, and preparing them by silent touches and supplies of spiritual strength for a part in His kingdom.
His everlasting intercession in heaven kindles at the present moment the whole Church with life and vigour, and so at that time His life and toils and prayers and obedience and humiliations were the support and spiritual health of numbers of souls, who were afterwards to be addressed by the external calls so soon to be made upon men by our Lord and St. John the Baptist.
The work of God resting on the interior life—Our Lord’ prayer for St John
Thus it always is. That part of the work of God in the world which meets the eye and leaves its mark in human history, rests upon the interior preparation which has preceded or which underlies it, and the active influence of the Church and the ministers of God’s Word is the fruit of her interior life, of the prayers and penances and silent religious sacrifices of the hidden saints and of those whose vocation it is especially to perpetuate the imitation of the life at Nazareth.
There were then, no doubt, many Jewish homes where aged saints like Anna served God in retirement or prayer, or where the future Apostles and martyrs were being trained. There were many holy virgins brought up in the Temple, or pious communities in the desert where the ascetic life was practised after the imitation of the prophets. On all these, fresh blessings daily descended in answer to the prayers of the Sacred Heart which beat for them with so much love at Nazareth.
But we cannot doubt that one glorious soul above others was all this time the object of the special care of our Blessed Lord—the soul of him who had leaped in his mother’s womb for joy when the sound of Mary’s salutation fell upon her ears, who, as it is believed in the Church, was then sanctified from original sin and filled with the gifts of the Holy Ghost, in order that no time might be lost in his preparation for the high perfection and great work for which he was destined.
Youth of St. John in the desert
The Evangelist St. Luke, to whom we owe the history of the birth of St. John and our Blessed Lord, tells us that the former was from his early years ‘in the desert, until the day of his showing unto Israel.’
It is well known that the word desert in the Gospels does not mean an arid waste of rock and sand, in which human life can hardly be sustained, and in which in consequence there are no settled human habitations, but that wild and uncultivated country, in which there were but few farms or villages, through which the Jordan flows between the Lake of Gennesareth and the Dead Sea, and which lies also between the western shore of the last-named sea and the cultivated portion of Judaea properly so called.
A veil is drawn over the whole youth and training of this great Saint. We know from the announcement of the angel that he was to be a Nazarite from his youth. He comes before us in the Gospel narrative very much as Elias, his prototype in the history of the Old Testament, a full-grown man, ripe in sanctity, which had been gradually mounting higher and higher by continual communion with God.
His mission to preach
‘The word of the Lord was made unto John the son of Zachary in the desert. And he came into all the region of Jordan preaching the baptism of penance for the remission of sins—as it is written in the book of the words of Isaias the Prophet:
“A voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make straight His paths: every valley shall be filled up, and every mountain and hill brought low, and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places made into smooth paths, and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.”’6
To this prophecy, which St. Luke gives at greater length than St. Matthew, St. Mark prefixes the words of Malachias, which are also applied to St. John by our Lord Himself,7 ‘Behold I send my messenger (angel) before Thy face, who shall prepare Thy way before Thee.’8
These passages serve to show us the importance of St. John’s mission as a preparation for our Lord, or rather as the last stage of that long preparation which had been going on from the beginning, which embraced all the various dispensations of God, His methods of dealing with men, and revelations of Himself to them.
And to give ourselves as full an idea as may be of the several Scriptural declarations concerning that mission, we may remind ourselves once more of the words of the Archangel Gabriel to Zachary at the time of the announcement of his miraculous conception:
‘He shall be great before the Lord, and wine and strong drink he shall not drink, and he shall be filled with the Holy Ghost even from his mother’s womb, and many of the children of Israel shall he convert to the Lord their God, and he shall himself go before Him in the spirit and power of Elias, ‘that he may turn the hearts of the fathers unto the children,’ and the incredulous unto the wisdom of the just, to prepare for the Lord a perfect people.’
St, John's mission and preparation for our Lord
These predictions certainly prepare us to find that the mission of St. John Baptist filled a large and important place in the divine plan for the redemption of the world by our Lord Jesus Christ, and that his office ranks exceedingly high, higher than that of any of the prophets, inasmuch as he was more near to our Lord and had to perform a more personal work in His regard, both in pointing Him out, in fitting people to receive Him, and also in baptizing Him in order that all justice might so be fulfilled.
It turned out, in fact, that our Lord’s own ministry was inaugurated, if we may so speak, by His reception of the baptism of St. John, that the mass of the people, as well as His chosen disciples, were prepared for Him by his Forerunner, that St. John designated Him to the emissaries of the Jewish authorities who were sent to question him, that he pointed Him out to his own followers as the Lamb of God, that our Lord formally appealed to him and to his baptism as an appointed testimony to Himself, and that the classes of men who accepted the one accepted the other, while those who rejected St. John’s teaching also rejected that of our Lord.
Yet the teaching of St. John was only for a short time, his work was soon done, his course soon over, and, if it is to be considered independently of its effect in preparing for our Lord, it certainly ended in a failure according to all human measures of estimation.
And yet, when we examine it more closely, we see how perfect and beautiful his work was, and how much it teaches us of the ways of God in manifesting His Incarnate Son.
In the next passage, Fr Coleridge will tell us...
How the hearts of men were unprepared for the coming of Christ, with only a few simple souls, prepared by grace, acknowledging Him.
Why St. John the Baptist’s extraordinary sanctity and mission were divinely chosen to prepare men’s hearts for Christ.
What truths—penitence and the kingdom of God—were central to St. John’s preaching and their universal resonance in stirring souls to repentance.
… and how the mission of St. John was a merciful divine preparation, awakening consciences to receive the Saviour.
From Fr Henry James Coleridge, The Ministry of St. John the Baptist
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St. Luke ii. 52
Sueton. Octav. 99
It was either in A.U.C.. 764 or 765. Augustus died in August 767.
For a summary of the difficulties raised by the mention of this tetrarch, and their answer, the reader may be referred to Andrews' Life of our Lord, pp. 123-125.
Caiaphas was the actual High Priest, but St. Luke may mean that Annas was the only lawful one, or that he held some high office, such as that of President of the Sanhedrin.
Isaias xi. 3-5.
St. Matt. xi. 16; St. Luke xii. 27.
Mal. iii. 1.