Fr. Michael Williams

Today we hear of the great esteem that Jesus holds John the Baptist in. Jesus says, ‘of all the children born of women, a greater than John the Baptist has never been seen’. Following Our Lord’s example we see that the Church also holds John in great esteem. The celebrates John’s birthday each year on 24^th^ June and his beheading or martyrdom on 29^th^ August. During Advent John also appears in many of the readings, as he points us toward Jesus, ‘the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world’. For two thousand years the Church has honoured John the Baptist. These days no one honours King Herod, the one responsible for imprisoning and beheading John. But John is still highly esteemed.

All of John’s life was focused on Christ. St Luke’s gospel tells us that on receiving the pregnant Mary into her home, ’(John’s mother) Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit and the child (John the Baptist) leapt in her womb’. As an adult, John spent his time in the wilderness, proclaiming the coming of the Messiah, Jesus Christ. Once Jesus appeared, John pointed Him out as ‘the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world’. Once he had done this John would humbly move aside for the Lord saying, ‘He must grow greater, I must grow less’.

Yet despite the greatness that is spoken of John in the gospel, it also reveals that John was ‘in his prison’. The freedom he enjoyed in the wilderness of God’s creation had been taken from him, because John had dared to criticize Herod’s immoral and adulterous lifestyle. John was locked up in a dungeon where he suffered the pain of isolation. Yet despite the innocent suffering John endured ‘in his prison’, he continued to be a man of hope. In his prison cell ‘he heard what Christ was doing’ and so sent his own disciples to Jesus to ask Him, ‘Are you the One to come’? Jesus responds ‘Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind see again, and the lame walk, leapers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised to life’. John was not the recipient of one of these miracles; he remained in his cold and dark prison cell. But in his prison cell there was a bright light, this was the light of John’s faith and his hope. John put his faith in the Lord despite the hardships he was undergoing. He did not abandon his faith in the Lord because times were tough; on the contrary he deepened his faith in the Lord. Jesus says, ‘Blessed is the man who does not lose faith in me’. This certainly applied to John, because despite his suffering, he did not lose faith in ‘the Lord who keeps faith forever…the Lord who will reign forever’. John’s faith would lead him through death into the Kingdom of Heaven. John is an example to us of someone who suffered, but kept his faith in the Lord.

In the wilderness, and ‘in his prison’, John ‘develops the strength to wait: to wait with patience: patience that is born out of hope’ (O’Flynn). It is the patient endurance that St James speaks of in his letter: ‘You have to be patient; do not lose heart, because the Lord’s coming will be soon…For your example in submitting with patience, take the prophets’.

We too must wait patiently, because the Lord’s coming is not far away for any of us. Let us be inspired by John’s patient endurance. He waited, with hope and patience, for the Lord to deliver him from his prison, which is this fallen world.

Like John let us look to the Lamb of God to save us.