3rd Sunday of Advent, Year B

In this Sunday's Gospel (Jn 1:6-8; 19-28), the spotlight focuses intensely on John the Baptist. He declares that he is not the messiah, but one who testifies to his coming. John Scotus Erigena, in the homily below, describes more fully who the Baptist was, and who he is in relation to the Christ.

John the Baptist, Mathis Gothart Grunewald (1512-16)

So then, the Lord’s forerunner was a man, not a god; whereas the Lord whom he preceded was both man and God. The forerunner was a man destined to be divinized by God’s grace, whereas the one he preceded was God by nature, who, through his desire to save and redeem us, lowered himself in order to assume our human nature.

A man was sent. By whom? By the divine Word, whose forerunner he was. To go before the Lord was his mission. Lifting up his voice, this man called out: The voice of one crying in the wilderness! It was the herald preparing the way for the Lord’s coming. John was his name; John to whom was given the grace to go ahead of the King of kings, to point out to the world the Word made flesh, to baptize him with that baptism in which the Spirit would manifest his divine Sonship, to give witness through his teaching and martyrdom to the eternal light.