Day: December 23, 2012

“Who art thou?”

In a way, Advent is the season of questions. And the questions of Advent reach a kind of crescendo on the Fourth Sunday in Advent in a barrage of questions which, paradoxically, are all about John the Baptist. But, of course, everything about John the Baptist is really about the One who comes.

Our Gospel story has a wonderful intensity to it that is indicative of the strong desire to know in the face of the confusions of the world. Such is the significance, we might say, of “the witness of John,” especially in our rather skeptical and cynical age which despairs of thought and where questions are merely rhetorical ways of dismissing any serious encounter with what might just challenge us and change us. Skepticism about ideas, we might say, is the leading idea of our times. Such is a form of darkness, a kind of dogmatic despair.

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