Thursday in the Second Week of Advent, December 10, 2020

Matthew 11:11-15

Jesus said to the crowds: “Amen, I say to you, among those born of women there has been none greater than John the Baptist; yet the least in the Kingdom of heaven is greater than he. From the days of John the Baptist until now, the Kingdom of heaven suffers violence, and the violent are taking it by force. All the prophets and the law prophesied up to the time of John. And if you are willing to accept it, he is Elijah, the one who is to come. Whoever has ears ought to hear.”

John the Baptist, for years a fiery scourge lashing out against sin, injustice, and the corrupt in high places, now sits in Herod’s dungeon.  He knows his time on earth is rapidly closing.  He spends his days in prayer and in conversing with his persevering followers who visit.  Now and then, Herod himself comes, for “Herod feared John, knowing him to be a righteous and holy man: and kept him in his mind, and when he heard him, wondered much: but he heard him gladly” (Mark 6, 20).  This in spite of the fact that he had imprisoned John for rebuking him for his invalid marriage to his dead brother’s widow.

Into this dungeon filtered news of the words and deeds of Jesus of Nazareth, and John eagerly listened to it.  It delighted him to hear of the preaching of the Kingdom of God, for he knew that the salvation of Israel was near.  And in the midst of his physical sufferings, he was consoled in knowing that he had helped to prepare the way for the Savior.  He could truly say, as St. Paul would say many years later, “For I am even now ready to be sacrificed: and the time of my dissolution is at hand. I have fought the good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith. ” (2 Timothy 6-7).  Still, one work remained to do: to send off the last of his disciples to the Lord Jesus.  They would not go easily.  Many clung to him even in his imprisonment.  Some had assisted him for years.  But sending them to Jesus would be the greatest gift he could give them, for it was for Jesus that he had come.

He sent his most trustworthy, stalwart disciples to the Lord with a question which was for their own benefit: “Are you the one who is to come or do we await another?”  The Lord replied with an answer equally for their benefit: “The blind see, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead rise again, the poor have the gospel preached to them.”  As if to say to John’s disciples, See with your own eyes.

It is after these disciples leave that Jesus speaks in praise of John: “Among those born of women there has been none greater than John the Baptist.”  This statement must have raised the eyebrows of his hearers, for Jesus named John ahead of Abraham, Moses, and the Prophets.  It was a sort of blasphemy.  The Lord then coupled this with, “Yet the least in the Kingdom of heaven is greater than he.”  St. Jerome explains that any saint already in heaven is in every way “greater” than even the “greatest” living on the earth: happier, more agile, wiser, immortal, and so on.  Jesus speaks in this way using the very great John whom the people continue to esteem, to teach about the Kingdom to which they were also called. 

“From the days of John the Baptist until now, the Kingdom of heaven suffers violence.”  That is, in the short time beginning with the preaching of John the Baptist until the present moment.  During these few years the Kingdom of heaven has been revealed and John and Jesus have preached repentance to the people so that they might enter it.  The Prophets had preached repentance to the people so that Jerusalem might be saved, but this repentance paved the way for salvation in heaven.  Repentance meant fasting, donning hair shirts, sitting in ashes, loudly beseeching God for mercy — it meant doing violence to oneself.  “The Kingdom of heaven suffers violence and the violent are taking it by force.”  That is, the formerly complacent have risen up and broken their own wills in order to do God’s and in this way “storm” heaven.  Jesus uses a rhetorical device here: the people do not violently take heaven; heaven violently takes the people.  This began only with the preaching and the example of John the Baptist.

“All the prophets and the law prophesied up to the time of John.”  The time of the Old Covenant, a sign, has come to an end, and it is transformed — fulfilled — into a New Covenant not sealed by the blood of animals “but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb unspotted and undefiled”(1 Peter 1, 19).  

“And if you are willing to accept it, he is Elijah, the one who is to come.”  John the Baptist revealed Jesus as the Lamb of God, and Jesus reveals John as Elijah, and shows that the last prophecy of the last prophet of the Old Covenant has been fulfilled: “Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet, before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord.”  Elijah had lived in the wilderness and rebuked kings and the people for their idolatry.  Famously, he had challenged the priests of Baal to call down fire from heaven upon their sacrifices.  The priests called upon their god with all their might, but with no result.  When Elijah called upon the true God to send fire upon the sacrifice offered to him, a ferocious fire leapt down upon the earth.  At the end of his life, Elijah was carried off into the sky by a fiery chariot.  According to Malachi’s prophecy, Elijah would return “before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord.”  That is, the coming of the Lord Jesus, who has ushered in the final “day”, or age.  John, though, is no reincarnated Elijah, or Elijah in disguise, but a man in the true spirit of Elijah, a true man of God, fearless, relentless, without doubts, ready to challenge kings, and harder on himself than on the worst sinner who came to him.  We ought to consider the great men and women of history and ponder the fact that of them all, John the Baptist was the greatest.

“Whoever has ears ought to hear.”  That is, Listen!  Pay attention!

Just as Elijah prefigured John the Baptist, we who are members of the Body of Christ, prefigure Jesus, preparing the world for his Second Coming with the preaching of repentance we make with our words and deeds.