Madonna and Child with St. John the Baptist and a Saint,
Giovanni Bellin, 1504

Readings
Zephaniah 3:14-18
Isaiah 12:2-6
Philippians 4:4-7
Luke 3:10-18

Chants

The people in today’s Gospel are “filled with expectation.” They believe John the Baptist might be the Messiah they’ve been waiting for. Three times we hear their question: “What then should we do?”

The Messiah’s coming requires every man and woman to choose—to “repent” or not. That’s John’s message and it will be Jesus’ too (see Luke 3:3; 5:32; 24:47).

“Repentance” translates a Greek word, metanoia (literally, “change of mind”). In the Scriptures, repentance is presented as a two-fold “turning”—way from sin (see Ezekiel 3:19; 18:30) and toward God (see Sirach 17:20-21; Hosea 6:1).

This “turning” is more than attitude adjustment. It means a radical life-change. It requires “good fruits as evidence of your repentance” (see Luke 3:8). That’s why John tells the crowds, soldiers and tax collectors they must prove their faith through works of charity, honesty and social justice.

In today’s Liturgy, each of us is being called to stand in that crowd and hear the “good news” of John’s call to repentance. We should examine our lives, ask from our hearts as they did: “What should we do?” Our repentance should spring, not from our fear of coming wrath (see Luke 3:7-9), but from a joyful sense of the nearness of our saving God.

This theme resounds through today’s readings: “Rejoice!...The Lord is near. Have no anxiety at all,” we hear in today’s Epistle. In today’s Responsorial, we hear again the call to be joyful, unafraid at the Lord’s coming among us.

In today’s First Reading, we hear echoes of the angel’s Annunciation to Mary. The prophet’s words are very close to the angel’s greeting (compare Luke 1:28-31). Mary is the Daughter Zion—the favored one of God, told not to fear but to rejoice that the Lord is with her, “a mighty Savior.”

She is the cause of our joy. For in her draws near the Messiah, as John had promised: “One mightier than I is coming.”

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Saint Maximus of Turin
from Sermon 88

It was not only in his own time that John was speaking when he proclaimed the Lord to the Pharisees, saying: "Prepare the way of the Lord, make straight his paths" (Mt 3,3), but he cries out in us today, and the thunder of his voice shakes the desert of our sins. Even now, when he is entombed in a martyr's sleep, his voice continues to ring out. Even today he says to us: "Prepare the way of the Lord, make straight his paths"...

John the Baptist, then, commanded the preparation of the way of the Lord. Let us see which road he has prepared for our Savior. He has perfectly marked out and has appointed from start to finish the way for Christ's coming since in everything he was sober, humble, restrained and chaste.

It was in description of all these virtues of his that the evangelist said: "John wore clothing made of camel's hair and had a leather belt around his waist. His food was locusts and wild honey" (Mt 3,4). What greater sign could there be of a prophet's humility than his rejection of soft garments to clothe himself in a rough hide? What greater indication of faith than to be always at the ready for all the duties of service, a simple loincloth around his hips? What more stunning sign of his abstinence than his renunciation of the pleasures of this life to feed himself on locusts and wild honey?

In my view, all these different forms of the prophet's behavior were themselves prophetic. When Christ's messenger wore a rough garment of camel skin, didn't this signify simply that Christ, at his coming, would reclothe our human bodies with their heavy covering, roughened by their sins?... The leather belt signifies that our weak flesh which, before the coming of Christ was turned to vice, would be guided by him to virtue.