After the fruitfulness of the Jewish soil had been emptied out by the ploughshare of the Law and by continual tillage, blessed John, flying to the desert for the sake of the nations, kindling the thorns of crimes with the fire of the Spirit, cutting down the unfruitful trees with the axe of vengeance, levelling the rough hills of pride, raising up the valleys of humility by making them even, and fitting the whole plain of the earth (its grass being lost), submitting to the nourishers the watercourses of the Jordan: and thus he prepares the fields spread wide for the Gospel seed, and makes them fruitful. 'It came to pass,' he says, 'the word of the Lord came upon John the son of Zechariah in the desert' (Luke 3). 'The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us' (John 1). Upon John? Why not 'to John,' but 'upon John'? Because that which is from above is above all.
'The word of the Lord came upon John.' Because John is the voice, God is the Word. 'The word of the Lord came upon John.' God upon John, the Lord upon the servant, the Word upon the voice. But you say to me: What of this, that the voice precedes the word? It precedes, but does not excel: it goes before for the service of what follows, not for the token of its own power. The voice is not itself the judge, but is the herald of the One who judges: the word judges, the voice thunders forth beforehand: power regards Him who commands, not him who cries out. But let this be confessed, testified, asserted by the very voice, by the herald himself, who cries: 'He who comes after me,' he says, 'is mightier than I' (Matt. 3). Why?
Because in me is terror, in Him is the sentence. 'He came into all the region of the Jordan.' He came to the Jordan, because the water-jar could no longer wash away the Jewish filth, but the river could. As it is written: 'There were,' it says, 'stone water-jars according to the purification of the Jews' (John 2). He came to the Jordan, that he might carry the penitents by water, not by wine. He came into all the region of the Jordan, preaching the baptism of penance unto the remission of sins. With John there was pardon, but not without penance; there was remission, but purchased with mournings; there was cure of the wound with pain; there was a baptism that took away guilt, but did not blot out conscience. And what more?
By the baptism of John a man was purified unto penance, but not advanced unto grace. But the baptism of Christ so regenerates, so changes, so renders man new from old, that he knows not things past, remembers not the ancient things, who from being earthly now possesses heavenly and divine things. Hence it is that to the son returning after his wantonness the father of immortality restores the first robe, imposes the ring of liberty, kills the fatted calf, turns the waters of penance into the wine of grace, that the cups of the banquet of grace might now, pure and unmixed, satisfy him (Luke 15): to the end that the sober inebriation of the Lord's chalice might abolish the sorrows of conscience, the groans of penance, the laments of sins: the prophet saying: 'And Your inebriating cup, how excellent it is' (Ps. 22).
For as much as earthly inebriation is deformed, so much is the heavenly inebriation excellent and comely. He said therefore to the crowds which went out to be baptized by him: 'Brood of vipers, who has shown you to flee from the wrath to come? Bring forth therefore fruits worthy of penance, and do not begin to say, We have Abraham for a father. For I say to you, that God is able of these stones to raise up sons to Abraham. For now the axe is laid to the roots of the trees. Every tree that does not bring forth good fruit shall be cut down, and cast into the fire.' 'Brood of vipers.' By an example he rebukes, by a comparison he brands, by a figure he brings to light, that he might now change not only the morals, but the very nature of the venomous offspring. 'Brood of vipers.'
Because those whom God had created as men, had made sons of Abraham, malice brought forth and turned into vipers; and those whom the heavenly Creator had infused with the sweetness of piety, these bitter impiety made to pour out deadly vomit, to spew serpentine venom; and by an unspeakable omen of cruelty to be conceived from the death of the father, and to be born from the death of the mother. 'Brood of vipers.' Offspring ungrateful to nature, whose birth is the destruction of its begetter, whose life is the death of its parent. 'Brood of vipers.' The viper is said, at the time of its conceiving, to bite off the head of its spouse received within its own mouth, so that by bloody kisses she conceives not offspring, but crime, and as though she bears children who are the executioners of her own wickedness, by the order of vengeance, not of nature.
For the offspring of the father, conceived from slaughter, demand the nourishment of blood before that of milk, and seek vengeance; for the vipers are said to cut open the mother's womb, and, while their inward parts are still immature, to break in pieces with ripe fury the accursed dwelling of their conception, so that this is for them to live: not to see their mother, the mother who bore them such as they are. Constrained, we have described the type and figure of the comparison which holy John made more at length, so that it may be of truth, not of malediction, that the Jews are so named by him. 'Brood of vipers.' He shows that the Synagogue, brethren, and her sons were such, to whom Christ had come with the affection of a spouse, John saying: 'He who has the bride is the bridegroom' (John 3):
amid the embraces and bloody kisses of Judas, the head of Christ was sought after, and demanded with the mouth, when it is said: 'Crucify, crucify' (John 19). Whence the pledges conceived in blood are presently so armed unto the death of the mother, that, the womb of the Synagogue being burst asunder, at the voice of John they might run together and be regenerated unto the offspring of God. 'Brood of vipers, who has shown you to flee from the wrath to come?' What is this wrath to come? That which has no end, which does not release man by death, but binds him: nor permits him any longer to have hope of pardon, whom once it has consigned to punishment in hell. Thus admonished, they recognize both their kind, and their crime, and therefore they answered, saying: 'What shall we do that we may be saved?' Who answering said to them.
What I am about to say, brethren, I am afraid to say, lest, as many hearers as I see today become despisers, he should make just so many of them obstinate. What shall I do? I fear to speak, yet I cannot keep silent: piety forbids me the one thing, usefulness drives me to the other. Piety, lest the hearer, while he despises, should fall into ruin; usefulness, lest the man who ought to act should fail to hear, and thereby the teacher give offence. I speak, brethren, that both the naked man may clothe himself and I may strip myself. 'Let him,' says the Lord, 'who has two coats give to him that has none; and let him who has food do likewise.' Do you think he asks enough who asks one coat out of two? He does not ask enough, for he does not ask a gem, but a coat; not gold, but bread. And if a man does not give one out of two coats, he is guilty;
of what sort is he who refuses one out of many, who for this end imprisons his garments and locks up his bread, that the poor man may perish of hunger and be consumed by cold? Such a one buries his garments, he does not store them away; he trusts them not to diligent keeping, but to tombs: he who denies to the poor gives to the moths, and is himself the devourer of his own body's clothing. For the Lord says: 'Their worm shall not die' (Isaiah 66), because the hunger of the poor has shaken Christ; the pain of God's man has leapt to His inmost heart, the groaning of the captive has pierced to the depths of Christ, the contempt shown the needy has recoiled as an injury upon their Creator, since He Himself declares, saying: 'I was hungry, and you gave Me not to eat; I was naked, and you clothed Me not' (Matthew 25). The publicans also came, saying:
'What shall we do?' Let the publicans hear: 'Ask no more than what is appointed to you.' He has disclosed the very thing that makes a publican guilty: 'that you demand no more.' He who demands more is an exactor of fraud, not of tribute: let such men consider how guilty they are before God, they who make public the man already spent and beaten down; more and more they weigh him down by their fraud and wear him out, and upon one scarcely able to meet his lawful debts they heap yet more, and increase what is not owed. The soldiers also came, saying: Let the soldiers too hear what this Master answered when soldiers likewise questioned Him: 'And we, what shall we do?' And He said to them: 'Do violence to no man, neither accuse any falsely; and be content with your wages.' He is a true soldier who does not oppress but defends; who does not bring false accusation, but repels it;
who runs to the king's service, not who runs to plunder. Blessed John so taught the things of God that he did not disturb the things of men: he established the commonwealth, he did not overturn it; he proved that the things he taught were ordained by God, and that it is possible both to do and to keep justice. But what the difference is between the baptism of John and the baptism of Christ, since it must be explained more fully, we now pass over in silence. It would indeed have been better, dearest brethren, if our common father and master had allowed our unskillfulness to lie hidden, and had not made public that poverty which in us has hitherto been covered by the veil of a proper modesty. It would have been better that he who so abundantly overflows in the spiritual riches of doctrine should exact no toll of even a slender word from the little boat of a poor man.
For what can the needy man confer upon the rich, or the stranger upon citizens, or the rustic and untaught upon the studious? Nevertheless, since we are compelled to obey the commands laid on us, that same reasoning of humility which seems to excuse us also compels us to speak, compels us to obey. What then is it, O religious people of the Lord, that we, though poor, though most unlearned, yet fittingly offer to you? Peace, without doubt, which our Lord Jesus Christ commands us, when we enter, to offer to every house (Luke 10): whence at the beginning of our greeting we also besought it for you from the Lord, that peace which must ever be possessed and ever prayed for; not that faithless and unstable peace of this world, which is either sought for advantage or kept out of fear;
but the peace of Christ, which, according to the judgment of the Apostle Paul, surpasses all understanding, and keeps the hearts of believers (Philippians 4); peace which is nourished at the fruitful breasts of charity; peace fostered by faith, the pillar of justice; peace, the fitting pledge of future hope; peace which joins together those present and invites those absent; peace which reconciles earthly things with heavenly and human things with divine. For thus says the Apostle: that our Lord Jesus Christ made peace through His blood, not only for the things that are on earth, but also for those that are in heaven (Colossians 1).
This, therefore, dearest brethren, a wayfaring stranger has set before you, according to the strength of a poor man's provision for the journey, awaiting rather to be feasted together with you at the table of the powerful Master upon abundant and plentiful fare. And may the God of peace, who joined earthly things to heavenly, grant us to be of the same mind toward one another, and to rejoice in full unanimity, through Christ our Lord, through whom to God the Father almighty be glory unto the ages of ages. Amen.