John the Baptist’s call for repentance prepares the way for Christ

As we examine the saints whom the old Confiteor invoked in acknowledging our sinfulness, we come to St. John the Baptist. He’s the first in the list who is both completely human and a sinner.

Catholics might be used to thinking of St. John the Baptist as the “Advent” saint, but as Jean Danielou once observed, he’s preeminently the saint of repentance and conversion. He therefore also fits squarely in Lent. Indeed, in Mark’s Gospel the essential opening messages of both John (1:4) and Jesus (1:15) are the same: Repent! Jesus’s words, “Repent and believe the Good News!” (v. 15b) are even one of the alternate formulae for imposition of ashes on Ash Wednesday.

Like Lent, John’s message is preparatory. He’s the lead to the main act, Jesus and His Passion, Death, and Resurrection during the Paschal Triduum. Just as John sought to “’prepare the way for the Lord’” (fulfilling Isaiah’s prophecy), so Lent seeks to prepare our way for the Lord at Easter through metanoia—the change of mind and heart that is conversion.

John is the last and greatest Old Testament prophet. His immediate mission is to prepare the way for the imminent advent of the Messiah, Jesus Christ.

In what does that preparation consist? It is not a celebration. It is not a taking up of arms for the expected eschatological, military, or political liberation of Israel from Roman rule. It is moral reform: the Kingdom of God is ushered in by repentance, by a turning from evil and a turning to God. It is the embodiment of the Old Testament prophets’ call for turning from mere ritual worship to sincere rectitude of heart and inner reform (which Jesus’s Grace would make possible). Repentance, therefore–whether on Jordan’s bank 2,000 years ago or during this Lent–is the core message for meeting and following Jesus.

What you see with John is what you get. He didn’t wander around in camel’s skins because he was making a fashion statement. Nor did he eat locusts and wild honey because he was on some organic, environmentally friendly kick. Both scratchy skins and bugs were penitential signs (sweetened to take some of the edge off?).

John’s repentance program is very practical, in two respects.

First, it demands fruits. That is why, when the Pharisees showed up at Jordan more out of curiosity or concerns about the orthodoxy of John’s message rather than of repentance, John greets them with the blunt title “brood of vipers.” He knows their motivation. He knows there’s not a scintilla of receptivity in them to changing their ways.

Since John the Baptist and Isaiah are often paired, it’s worth remembering that as much as the latter called for repentance and reform, he also assured us that the Messiah would not break the bruised reed nor snuff out the smoldering wick (Isa 42:3). Where there’s even the least possibility, God will sneak in with His grace to reignite and inflame things (like hearts): all He needs is a crack. So, I am also sure that had John recognized the least sign of repentance in his Pharisaic visitors, he would have encouraged it. But he was not about to comfort them in their self-assured complacencies.

To those who brought real repentance to John’s ford at Bethabara, he offered real and practical advice. The average guy could share from his surplus (Lk 3:11). Tax collectors should not cheat, a somewhat inherent flaw of that system in John’s day (v. 12). Soldiers should not bully or be corrupt just because they had power (v. 14).

John also defended marriage and sexual ethics with his very life. He called Herod Antipas, Herod the Great’s son and his successor as tetrarch of Galilee and Perea, to repentance for marrying Herodias, the divorcée wife of his brother Philip. Such a marriage was prohibited in the Bible (Lev 20:21). When Herod persisted in his unlawful “marriage,” John called him out publicly, resulting in John’s eventual arrest and beheading.

So, in our Confiteor invocation of John the Baptist, we do what the crowds that once assembled along Israel’s sacred river did: confess our sins (see Mk 1:5). John’s Baptism was a precursor of Jesus’s; our Baptism truly takes away sins, while the Sacrament of Penance is a “rescue plank” after Baptism for those who, through their fault by mortal sin, have lost their baptismal innocence.

As the Church teaches, the sacrament of Penance is as necessary as Baptism once was for those who fall into mortal sin. But the sacrament is not limited solely to mortal sin: it is the privileged place of encounter with the Risen Christ by which we progressively turn from all sin to live ever more fully in God. That is why it has a proper place in the preparations of Lent.