Archbishop of Sydney

His Eminence,
Cardinal George Pell
Cardinal Priest of the Title of S. Maria Domenica Mazzarello

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Home > Our Archbishop > Homilies 2001 > Article	Printable Version

2nd Sunday of Advent

St Mary's Cathedral
Isaiah 11:1-10, Romans 15:4-9, Mt: 3:1-12

By + George Pell
ARCHBISHOP OF SYDNEY
9 December 2001

At Advent, we are called to a change of heart, to repent and believe. The aim of this conversion, of establishing this sense of direction which has to be renewed time and time again, especially after we sin, is to put ourselves right with God and one another and find Christian peace of heart. Peace comes from the tranquility of order: hate is a disorder.

In the pagan Roman Empire you could join up with a variety of religions and pray to a pantheon of god's, just as I like and follow a variety of sports: Aussie rules, cricket, rugby union, even soccer.

Following and developing Jewish practice, Our Lord insisted on a strict monotheism. There was to be no dabbling in alternatives. We were to come and follow Christ.

John the Baptist is one example of how God looks after us. If we preach true faith and try to live it in community and service, it is much easier for God to call, out of nowhere, saints who will call us in the right direction. If we try to improve on Christ's message, water it down or change it, then we shouldn't be surprised that there are fewer flowerings.

Styles change. God is full of surprises, but if we keep doing and believing as Jesus asked us we shall be blessed, perhaps in unexpected ways.

John the Baptist is a strange and exciting figure. The psalm read today in this Mass and used to celebrate his birthday spoke of a sharpened sword, of a sharp arrow. He was quite fierce, and he was certainly an ascetic. A lot of his background was quite inexplicable to us until just over 50 years ago.

It was in 1947 that a shepherd boy near the Dead Sea at Qumran stumbled upon a cave which was full of old texts. Many of those texts belonged to a small group of Jews called the Essenes. We've heard of the Pharisees, and

we've heard of the Sadducees in the New Testament but here was a small, very exclusive, hostile, and very, very strict sect called the Essenes.

For a long time people thought the find at Qumran was the library of the monastery. That is now disputed, but a link with such a group provides a lot of useful background for explaining John the Baptist. We know John the Baptist's parents were old, and the Essene communities used to welcome boys as students, much like the old fashioned minor seminaries. It is very likely that John went to such a community. I was once in the hill country where, so I was told, John lived in the desert until he appeared in the scriptures. It would be a perfect setting for the formation of such a man.

The Essenes were waiting for the Messiah. The preachings of John, many of his quotations from the Old Testament, and the quotations the Essene literature, overlap with one another. The Essenes were celibates and therefore were unmarried as John was. They were very ascetical, and very penitential.

Their diet was similar to that of John the Baptist, locusts and wild honey. Even today I am told that it is common to eat locusts amongst the Arabs and it's a very good source of vitamins. The Essenes also had ritual washings, which were not too common at all amongst the rest of the Jews, and these ritual washings were a symbol of their search for purification and coming closer to God.

John, of course, took that over for the baptism we know of as a sign of our repentance and belief; and our Lord himself took that from John and was baptized by him. So I think with this background, we can understand a little bit better where John the Baptist came from. It is not certain but highly likely.

While God writes straight through crooked lines, God works in human history. John's contribution to sensitizing people to the presence of Christ among them also reflects this.

John the Baptist made it quite clear he wasn't the one they were waiting for; he wasn't worthy to undo the Lord's shoelaces. So let's pray this morning that we will understand better this simple call to conversion, this call to try to believe more deeply and more strongly, this call to try and follow Jesus more closely that was first explained to us by this fascinating figure, John the Baptist.

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.