We are grateful to Frater Jean-Thomas de Beauregard, OP, and the international Catholic news site, Aleteia, to whom all credit is given, for this Advent meditation upon the example of our Holy Patron. Translation by the Grand Priory of England. (Original HERE.)
SAINT JOHN THE BAPTIST'S CALL NOT TO JUST PRETEND TO CONVERT
If we open our heart during this Advent season, confessing our sins and placing our desire for conversion in God's hands, then our heart will not be a Potemkin village but a place very pleasing to Jesus.
It is said that in 1787, when Empress Catherine II of Russia undertook a visit of the Crimea, then on the borders of her Empire, her minister Grigory Potemkin camouflaged the poverty of the villages by arranging magnificent façades in papier-mâché to give a good impression. These are the famous “Potemkin villages”.
When John the Baptist exhorts us in this Advent to "prepare the way of the Lord" (Mk 1, 1-8) do we often not make of our heart a Potemkin village? An effort here, a prayer there, and all done – we have created a superb façade camouflaging the ruins of our heart. We have prepared the way for the coming of the Lord, except that Jesus Christ is more difficult to deceive than Catherine the Great! He searches the loins and the hearts, and knows all our miseries.
Fortunately, he is also more merciful than the Empress and does not send us to die in Siberia when he perceives the deception. This is the joke of the German poet Heine in agony on his deathbed: "But of course God will forgive me, that's his job!" No doubt about it, it is indeed God's job to forgive, but that requires from us a reciprocal love which begins with the desire for conversion. It is not much, a tiny thing, and even rather absurd, compared to the immensity of the happiness into which divine forgiveness introduces us, but this simple desire for conversion is an absolute necessity.
They weren't pretending.
To exhort us to conversion, John the Baptist retreats into the desert. This place of solitude and spiritual combat quickly becomes the crossroads of nations, so much does his vigorous preaching spur the crowds. Like the Curé d'Ars or Padre Pio, John the Baptist attracts thousands of people to an isolated place by the sole force of his word and his example. It shows us that the demanding and the radical attract, and not just a taste for spectacle and wonder, because the words of John the Baptist, of the Cure d'Ars or of Padre Pio, can be harsh. The Old Testament prophets had not done their job so badly, for the Jewish people to rush en masse into the desert to admit their sin, proclaim their desire for conversion and prepare to receive the forgiveness God longs to give.
These men who came to meet John the Baptist did not pretend. They really wanted to prepare their hearts and not simply to brush it up with a religious varnish against a background of impiety. Oh, of course, there was no doubt some worldly curiosity for this shaggy prophet, this outsider in animal skins eating grasshopper salad on his bed of maggots, who looked far more convincingly a religious leader than Jesus who came after him. This little corner of the desert had become the place to be! But if they went so far as to receive this baptism of conversion from the hands of John the Baptist, after having publicly confessed their sins, they must indeed have had a truly spiritual motivation.
The sinner's cry.
It is because through the voice of John the Baptist, they heard the cry of their ancestors in the faith. In Genesis, Abel's blood cried out to the Lord for reparation for Cain's crime. Then Rachel, who cried to the Lord because her children were dead. The cry of the Jewish people through the ages is that of the righteous who experience the destructive power of sin to bring its ultimate consequence, death. The Jews rush to the desert confessing their sin, because they have experienced too much of it throughout their history. Unlike us post-moderns, the experience of sin around them gave them the insight needed to recognize sin within themselves. When John the Baptist cries out in the desert, the Jews come running because he announces the One who will, on the Cross, bring a definitive answer to all their calls.
The prayer of the heart.
The first response of Jesus on the Cross is first of all a cry echoing that of His people: “My God, why have you abandoned me?” Jesus joins in solidarity with the suffering of humanity, which He took upon Himself by becoming man. If He stopped there, Jesus would be just another prophet, a spokesman for God and his people, but without any real power. Only, a second cry resounds, and Jesus, breathing his last, restores the spirit. The second response of Jesus on the Cross is a cry of confidence and a cry of love by which He gives His life for the salvation of men.
It is to prepare us to welcome this second cry of Jesus on the Cross that John the Baptist exhorts us to convert during this time of Advent. Jesus, who is the Incarnate Word, the Word of God, could not bring Himself to just "speak" His love for us and His obedience to the Father, He cried it out on the Cross by handing over the spirit. In reality, at this moment, Jesus gave the Spirit with a capital letter, the Holy Spirit, to give us the means of a true conversion, which begins with this continual prayer dear to the Orthodox: “Lord Jesus, Son of the Living God, have mercy on me, a sinner ”. It is the prayer of the heart, which can be whispered at any time, especially during Advent.
In the Hand of God
It is, therefore, the Holy Spirit Who arouses, assists and crowns our efforts at conversion during this Advent. Be careful here to distinguish between heroic asceticism, or religious activism on the one hand, and holiness on the other. It is not our works or our ascetic effort of detachment and union with God that save us, but the effectiveness of the Cross of Christ: it is God who lifts us up, and not we who lift ourselves up to Him. To put it simply, it is not a matter of stiff-upper-lip – heroic asceticism – nor of waving our arms around – religious activism, but of opening our heart – a filial welcoming of grace. Or to put it more elegantly in the words of Cardinal Daniélou: “Heroism shows what man can do. Holiness shows what God can do. And that is why no human disposition can bring holiness. It can only ask for faith."
It is not, of course, a matter of denying the value of asceticism or of good works, to take refuge in a culpable spiritual laziness, under the pious and fallacious pretext of honouring the omnipotence and the unique quality of Divine initiative. Fighting Pelagianism* by settling into your slippers to wait for grace is not the best path to holiness... But being truly Christian consists in placing all our effort for this Advent in the hand of God Who knows our desires. If we open our hearts during this Advent season, confessing our sins and placing our desire for conversion in God's hands, then our heart will not be a Potemkin village but a place very familiar to Jesus: the village of Bethlehem where He was born, the village of Nazareth where He grew up, or even the heavenly Jerusalem where He awaits us. And He will make his home there.
* A heresy which holds that original sin did not taint human nature and that humans have the free-will to achieve perfection through their efforts without divine grace.
(The painting shows the Baptist preaching in the Desert, Pier Francesco Mola, 1650-55, now in the Thyssen collection.)
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