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Book Review
John the Baptist:
A model of sanctity
Reviewed by Andrew Junker, The Catholic Sun
December 20, 2007
John the Baptist gets a bit more attention during Advent than at other times of the year. In fact, half of the Sundays in Advent have Gospel readings that prominently feature the “voice crying out in the wilderness.”
This must please author Alexander J. Burke, Jr., who argues that modern Christians tend to both misunderstand and under-appreciate the great baptizer.
To help promote this early saint, Burke has written “John the Baptist: Prophet and Disciple,” which aims at presenting the saint to a general audience.
To this end, the book falls into a smattering of genres. There’s some scriptural exegesis, biography, historical criticism, art history and theology.
To his credit, Burke is not afraid to approach his subject from all angles. The portrait that emerges is both interesting and inspiring, and to a large degree, practical.
“Why did each of the four evangelists make John the gateway to the Gospel, the first preacher of the good news? What were the reasons for the early Church’s intense interest in a desert hermit whose public ministry lasted two years or less?
“Why in early Christian tradition was John the Baptist accorded an exalted religious stature, almost equal to that of Mary?” These are the questions Burke asks himself at the start of the book. As he begins to answer each one, surprising implications present themselves to the modern reader.
“John’s emphasis in his preaching was on sin, repentance, judgment and hell — topics that run counter to the more user-friendly religion of the twenty-first century,” Burke writes.
“A modern agenda has replaced John’s; it repudiates the seven deadly sins as quaint and puritanical and, thus, suggests that they have disappeared,” he writes.
John’s themes and style of preaching do seem severe to modern ears, or at least very Old Testament. In fact, Burke writes, that’s how most writers and scholars view John, as the last of the Jewish prophets and the end of an age supplanted by Jesus’ public ministry.
But for Burke, John is a little more surprising than that.
“Yes, his roots were in Second Temple Judaism, but his significance is in first-century Christianity. He is himself the dividing point of the ages, the living boundary marker for the new dispensation, the proclaimer of the fullness of time,” Burke writes.
“What is unique about John is not what is old or rooted in the past, but what is new and rooted in the future,” he adds.
What is new about John the Baptist is the monastic life he pre-figured, Burke writes. His years of solitude in the desert with a frugal diet and near constant prayer made John a greatly revered figure in the early centuries of the Church.
Even today, the Eastern Orthodox Church celebrates six separate feast days related to John the Baptist.
So, what does all this have to do with modern Catholics?
“Simone Weil once said, ‘Our age is in need of a sanctity that has genius.’ St. John the Baptist can provide for us the model of a sanctity that has genius,” Burke writes.
John’s constant call to repentance is not a doom-and-gloom anachronism, but a recognizing of humanity’s brokenness and need to be in a constant state of conversion.
“We should not be startled by this idea that we should all become monks,” Burke writes. “It does not mean that we must take vows of poverty, chastity and obedience, but it does mean that, in the spirit of the Beatitudes, we should become poor in spirit, pure of heart and obedient to the will of God.”
This is the example John the Baptist gives to us, Burke writes, and one that is worth following, especially as Christians prepare to celebrate the birth of John’s younger cousin, Jesus Christ.
Andrew Junker is a staff writer for The Catholic Sun. Comments are welcome. Send e-mail to letters@catholicsun.org.
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