St John the Baptist did NOT doubt—Christ's words prove it
Christ's words invite us to honour St. John the Baptist and his mission, and exonerate him from the charge of having doubted Christ's mission.
In this chapter, Fr Coleridge tells us…
How Christ’s miracles confirmed His identity as the promised Messias to the disciples of St. John.
Why St. John’s mission, though lacking miracles, surpassed the prophets in preparing the way for Christ.
How Christ’s praise of St. John corrected misconceptions about his supposed doubts.
He also shows us how Our Lord’s witness to St. John foreshadows the public glory He promises to all His faithful servants—a testimony of love and justice from the Sacred Heart itself.
This Gospel is read on the Second 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
The first witness of St John the Baptist.
This reverse chronological order 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.
Naturally, this is because St John the Baptist went before Christ, to prepare the people for his coming. There is a fittingness about these readings appearing in Advent.
However, we should recall that on a strictly rationalist or historical basis, St John the Baptist was still a mere infant at the time of the Nativity. He was not preparing for Christ’s birth, but for his mission and his manifestation.
As such, while readings about his mission certainly has applicability to the historical event of Christmas, they also point to what we have been discussing elsewhere, namely the focus which Advent has on the second coming of Christ at the end of time.
We have addressed this, and how the Roman Liturgy presents this matter, below:
Our Lord’s Witness to St John the Baptist
From
The Training of the Apostles Vol. II
Fr Henry James Coleridge, 1889, Ch. XIV, pp 262-267
St. Matt. xi. 7-19; St. Luke vii. 24,25;
Story of the Gospels, § 53
Sung on the Second Sunday of Advent
Return of St. John’s disciples
The disciples of St. John had now seen for themselves the wonderful works which were to mark the presence and Person of the promised Messias, according to the prophecies, performed by our Lord, and they could not but be struck with the contrast which existed in this respect between Him and their own master.
The gift of miracles, so often vouchsafed to the older prophets, and in later times to the Apostles and other missionaries of the Gospel kingdom, may perhaps have been withheld from St. John for this very purpose, of marking the difference between him and the Messias Whom he was sent to herald. They went on their way to their master, their hearts, we cannot doubt, full of astonishment and joy at the confirmation which so much of St. John’s teaching was receiving at the hands of our Lord.
Now St. John would have the very best possible opportunity of driving home the evidence which had thus been rendered to our Lord by His Eternal Father, and so of preparing for Him the hearts of those disciples of his own who had remained faithful companions, as far as was allowed them, of his imprisonment.
If it had been in the counsels of Providence that we should have had any account of these incidents from the disciples themselves of the Baptist, it is probable that we should have been told how their hearts burned within them as they sped on their way back to their master, carrying to him the tidings at which, beyond all others, he would rejoice.
St. John spoke of himself to them or other disciples of his own as the friend of the Bridegroom, rejoicing to hear the voice of the Bridegroom in His loving converse with His Bride. These gracious miracles of mercy were like some precious bridal gifts of our Lord to His Church, showing her Who He was and the riches with which He was to endow her. It was said afterwards of our Lord and St. John: ‘John did no sign, but all things whatsoever John said of this Man were true.’1
We may see in this saying, which seems to be quite incidentally recorded, the effect of the teaching of the Baptist on the subject of our Lord’s miracles. And it is natural to believe that the disciples shared the joy of their master as he expounded to them the Scriptural evidences which had now been brought home to their own senses.
Our Lord witnessing to St. John
Meanwhile, our Lord was bearing His witness to St. John. He is never to be outdone, as it were, in charity or in the most refined courtesy, if we may use such a word of His dealings with His servants and creatures.
If St. John was to speak highly of Him, He would speak, in His turn, highly of St. John, as He will at the Last Day confess before His Father and the holy Angels even the least of His earthly servants who shall confess Him before men.
This is the first great reason, perhaps, which may be assigned for the conduct of our Lord in the passage on which we are now to comment.
In the words last referred to, our Lord speaks of that confession concerning His servants which He will make before His Father and the Angels, as a reason for hope and courage on the part of those servants in their own confession of Him before men. But we may well suppose that it is also the greatest delight to His own Sacred Heart to bear such testimony, a thing, therefore, if we may say so of anything at all, that He looks forward to before it is made and rejoices while He is making it.
It is perhaps a mark of the singular eminence and dignity of the blessed Baptist among the saints of God, that our Lord should do for him, publicly and immediately, what He will do hereafter in the presence of the whole world for all His saints. ‘Then,’ as St. Paul says, ‘shall every man have his praise of God.’2
It is not often that we find, either in the life of our Lord or in Sacred Scriptures, any one praised so highly, or in this way, before his course is run. But it must be remembered, as we shall have occasion to point out more at length presently, that our Lord seems to be speaking more of the office of His Precursor than of his personal sanctity, although the words which He uses certainly imply his faithful discharge of that office.
He says, indeed, that St. John was no reed shaken by the wind, but He speaks chiefly of his work, which made him more than a prophet, in having to go immediately before the face of the Incarnate Son of God to prepare the way before Him, and to be sent in the spirit and power of Elias.
Another reason sometimes given
Another reason is frequently given for our Lord’s praises of St. John—namely, that there might be some possibility of a mistake, among His own disciples, as to the motives which had prompted His Precursor in the embassy of which we have just heard.
It might be thought, perhaps, that St. John had doubted concerning the Mission of our Blessed Lord, and had sent his message, not so much on account of the messengers, as for himself and his own satisfaction. It is possible that there may have been, among our Lord’s auditory, some persons not higher or clearer in their ideas of St. John’s sanctity than the numerous commentators of later days, who are ready to see in this question of the blessed Precursor something like either doubt or impatience.
It is not, therefore, impossible that our Lord may have meant, by His testimony to the Baptist, to do away with any impressions of this kind which may perhaps have been created.
If this was the case, it is at all events clear that the purpose of our Lord was not directly expressed, even if it may be gathered from the language in which He speaks of St. John.
The whole passage reads rather like a glowing eulogy on the Baptist, called forth from our Lord’s Sacred Heart by this last instance of his faithfulness, as shown in the embassy of his disciples, and belonging to the same class of Divine utterances of His to which those rejoicing words of His may be said to belong, which follow soon after in the history, concerning the revelation of the mysteries of the Kingdom to little ones rather than to the wise and prudent.
Eulogy on St. John
‘And when the messengers of John were departed and went their way,’ back to their own master, ‘Jesus began to speak to the multitudes concerning John: What went ye out into the desert to see? A reed shaken with the wind? But what went ye out to see? A man clothed in soft garments? Behold, they that are clothed in soft garments, in costly apparel, and live delicately, are in the houses of kings.
‘But what went ye out to see? A prophet? Yea, I tell you, and more than a prophet. For this is he of whom it is written, Behold, I send My Angel before Thy Face, who shall prepare Thy way before Thee.
‘For, Amen I say to you, there hath not risen up among them that are born of women a greater than John the Baptist, yet he that is the lesser in the Kingdom of Heaven is greater than he.’
The first part of this eulogy of our Lord on His Precursor is evidently meant to deny all impressions of St. John which in any way tended to disparage him.
The two things which our Lord denies concerning him are that he was like a reed shaken in the wind, and that he had led the delicate and self-indulgent life of a courtier—that is, that he was accessible to the influences of softness and luxury.
The desert, especially that part of it which bordered on the Jordan or on the Dead Sea, was full enough of reeds shaken in the wind, and as St. John preached ordinarily in the neighbourhood of the river, for the sake of the administration of Baptism, this feature of the tract of country in which he had been sought by the multitude must have been familiar to them. But it was not for that that they had gone forth into the wilderness, no, nor to see a man who had anything of lightness and instability in his character. This seems to be the meaning of the figure which is used by our Lord.
This is one of those expressions of His which passed into the language, so to say, of His Apostles, and although we do not meet the exact image in their writings, we find its traces in such expressions as that of St. Paul, when he tells the Ephesians that we must not be ‘children tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine’;3 or when he warns the Thessalonians ‘not to be easily moved from their mind, nor be frightened,’4 where he uses the same Greek word which is here found for the shaking of the reed in the wind.
Thus, if anyone had thought it possible for the holy Baptist to have had his faith ‘clouded over,’ as modern Protestants speak, he would have his foolish error corrected at once by the first words of our Lord concerning His Precursor.
The second thought which our Lord seems to exclude is that of all softness and luxuriousness of life. But it does not seem likely that many of the disciples would have connected such softness with the character of the Baptist. It is therefore better to suppose that our Lord was meaning to insist on the exactly contrary character of the great Preacher whom the people had gone out to see.
It is as if He said:
‘You went out to see a man of great firmness and stability, a man of extreme austerity of life and food and clothing; for if you had wished for instability, like that of the reeds, you would not have gone so far for that purpose, and if you had wished for softness and effeminacy, you would have looked for them in vain in the dweller in the desert. They that are in costly apparel and live delicately are in the houses of kings.
‘I suppose, therefore, that you went for something very different from this. What went you out to see? A prophet, you will say. Yes, and more than a prophet.’
His prerogatives
Our Lord then proceeds to explain the prerogatives of St. John, which raised him above the rank of the prophets in general. In the first place, he had been himself the subject of prophecy. ‘For this is he of whom it is written.’
Again, what had been prophesied of him was of a character to raise him above the Prophets, for he had been described as an Angel, a special Messenger of God, not only to predict the coming of the Messias, which was the common office of all the Prophets, but to do more, to prepare His way before Him. This was something more than the office of the Prophets; this prerogative of his made him the special Precursor of our Lord.
Thus among those who had been born of women no one was greater than he, and yet, in the last place, the lesser in the Kingdom of Heaven is greater than St. John.
From Fr Henry James Coleridge, The Training of the Apostles Vol. II
In the next part…
St. John the Baptist’s unique place in salvation history as one of the few individuals explicitly foretold by prophecy.
How his mission combined the roles of prophet and apostle
What distinguished him under the Old Covenant, even as it paled compared to the least in the Kingdom of Grace.
Here’s why you should subscribe to The Father Coleridge Reader:
Coleridge provides solid explanations of the entirety of the Gospel
His work is full of doctrine and piety, and is highly credible
He gives a clear trajectory of the life of Christ and all its stages.
If more Catholics knew about works like Fr Coleridge’s, then other works based on sentimentality or dubious private revelations would be less attractive.
Sourcing and curating the texts, cleaning up scans, and editing them for online reading is a labour of love, and takes a lot of time.
Will you lend us a hand and hit subscribe?
Read next:
Follow our projects on Twitter, YouTube and Telegram:
St. John x, 41.
1 Cor. iv. 5.
Ephes. iv. 14.
2 Thess. ii. 2.