3^rd Sunday of Advent – Year A

John the Baptist: Invited to Conversion

Fr. Jijo Kandamkulathy CMF
Claretian Missionaries

The stone of Machaerus prison was not merely cold; it was absorbent. It drank the warmth of the body and the light of the spirit, leaving behind the chill of inertia. For John the Baptist, this physical confinement was merely the outer chamber of a more profound, terrifying interior prison—a prison of crumbling certainty. Here, in the dank silence punctuated only by the distant, metallic echoes of Roman guards, the prophet who had shaken kingdoms with his voice now faced the deafening roar of his own doubts.

His mind, until now, had been a fortress built on the granite of prophecy. His identity was forged in the desert, tempered by asceticism, and defined by a singular, blazing vision: the Coming One. This was not a vague hope, but a detailed theological and psychological expectation, constructed from the fiery lexicon of Malachi (“He is like a refiner’s fire”) and the moral rage of Isaiah (“with righteousness he shall judge the poor”). John’s psyche was oriented like a compass needle to this magnetic north—a Messiah of purification, a divine axe laid to the root of rotten trees, a winnowing fan to separate irredeemable wheat from chaff. This belief was the engine of his courage, the source of his authority. It allowed him to face Herod, to name sin, to call a nation to the river of repentance. His self was synonymous with his role: the Voice, the Precursor, the one who prepares the way for That Day.

And then came Jesus. The moment at the Jordan had been the pinnacle of John’s life—the spirit descending, the voice affirming. He had pointed, unwavering: “Behold, the Lamb of God.” The transaction of destiny seemed complete. Yet, in the weeks and months that followed, a cognitive dissonance, slow and insidious, began to erode the foundations of his mind.

From his disciples, flickering reports filtered into the desert and now into his cell. Jesus was indeed preaching, but his message tasted different. It spoke of blessing for the poor in spirit, of mercy, of turning cheeks. He was feasting with tax collectors and sinners, not calling down fire upon them. He healed the sick, which was beautiful, but where was the decisive, political, liberating action? Where was the restoration of justice John had literally staked his life on? The psychological tension became unbearable. The man he had publicly proclaimed as the fulfillment of all history was behaving in a manner that violated every schema John’s psyche held for the Messiah.

Imprisonment acted as a psychological pressure cooker. The inactivity, the helplessness, the brutal contrast between his own fate and the kingdom he expected Jesus to inaugurate, fermented a crisis of meaning. Had he been wrong? The question was a form of torture. If he was wrong about the Messiah, then his entire life’s mission, his identity, his sacrifices were a tragic farce. The stones of his prison seemed to whisper: “Fool.” This was not merely intellectual doubt; it was an existential unraveling. The prophet who knew was now a man drowning in the “perplexities” of God’s inaction. His faith didn’t vanish; it mutated into a desperate, agonized hope that he might be misunderstanding, that Jesus had a plan. His message to Jesus—“Are you the one who is to come, or shall we look for another?”—is the desperate gasp of a drowning psyche. It is not betrayal, but the last, fragile thread he clings to. He sends his disciples not to accuse, but to plead for a lifeline, for a sign that would re-anchor his shattered world.

Jesus’ response is a masterpiece of psychological and spiritual redirection. He does not offer a doctrinal proof or a rebuke. Instead, he provides data: “Go and tell John what you hear and see.” The blind see, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, the poor have good news preached to them. Jesus presents a schema of healing and liberation, directly quoting Isaiah’s poems of comfort (Is 35, 61), but pointedly omitting the verses about “the day of vengeance of our God.”

This message, delivered to John in his cell, forces him into a profound internal conflict. The drama is all within. He must hold two contradictory images in his mind: the Messiah of the Winnowing Fan, and the Messiah who raises the dead and eats with sinners. To resolve this, his ego—the part of his psyche that had built its entire house on the first image—must endure a kind of death. The final beatitude, “Blessed is the one who is not scandalized by me,” is the gentle, devastating key. The Greek word skandalon means a stumbling block, a trap. Jesus is saying: “Your offense, John, your cognitive stumble, is understandable. But blessedness lies in stepping over the stumbling block of your own expectations.”

This is the invitation to John’s conversion—not from sin to virtue, but from one understanding of God to another. It is a psychological conversion of the deepest order. John must deconstruct the messianic image he has worshipped. The mighty God of his imagination, the warrior-judge, is revealed to be hidden in the vulnerable, compassionate healer. This is not a loss of faith, but a loss of idols. The drama here is one of grief and disorientation. He must grieve the loss of the God he thought he knew.

John’s public identity was “the one who prepares the way for the Coming One.” If the Coming One is different, what does that make John? His role is not negated but transformed. He was not the herald of a political revolution, but of a revolution of the heart. To accept this requires a humility that borders on self-annihilation. He must move from “I was the voice crying in the wilderness for that” to “My crying in the wilderness prepared you to recognize this.” It is the shift from a ego-centered narrative of history to a participation in a divine mystery beyond his full comprehension.

The conversion’s culmination is not a shouted new dogma from the cell, but a quiet integration. We see its fruit in his absence. He does not send a second message. He recedes from the narrative. Having pointed to Jesus, and having had Jesus redefine the terms, John’s work is complete. His psychological drama concludes with a release—not from Herod’s prison, but from the prison of his own limited theology. He is freed from the burden of being the one who must fully understand. He can let the mystery be.

Jesus’ praise of John—“among those born of women no one has arisen greater”—acknowledges the supreme difficulty and greatness of this very journey. John’s greatness lies not in his unshakable certainty, but in his faithful questioning. He is the model of the true believer not because he never doubted, but because when his deepest convictions were scandalized, he did not retreat into rigid fundamentalism or cynical denial. He had the courage to send the question, to face the dissonant answer, and to allow his inner world to be reconfigured by a reality greater than his expectations.

His story is the ultimate drama of a human mind grappling with the Divine surprise. It tells us that faith is not a fortress to be defended, but a journey to be undertaken; that the deepest conversions are often not about turning away from sin, but about turning towards a God who is always stranger, kinder, and more liberating than we had dared to believe. In the cold dark of Machaerus, John the Baptist did not lose his faith. He found it, purified in the fire of his own sacred doubt, and in doing so, he was converted from a prophet of wrath into a silent witness to the boundless, scandalous, and blessed mercy of God.

© Claretian Publications, Macau
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