Opportunely, in this season of fasting, most blessed John comes to us as a teacher of repentance—a teacher by word and by deed, a true master, who demonstrates by example what he asserts by word. Mastery stands upon knowledge, but the authority of mastery consists in life; teaching things that must be done makes the hearer obedient. To teach by deeds is the sole rule of doctrine; doctrine in sayings is knowledge, in deeds is virtue. That knowledge, therefore, is true which has been mixed with virtue; that, that is divine, not human, as the evangelist attests when he says: 'which Jesus began to do and to teach' (Acts I). When a teacher does the things that must be done, he both instructs by hearing and forms by example. 'In those days,' he says, 'came John the Baptist, preaching in the desert of Judea, and saying:'
'Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand' (Matt. III). Repent—why not rather rejoice? Rejoice the more, because divine things succeed to human, heavenly to earthly, everlasting to temporal, good to evil, secure to anxious, blessed to wretched, abiding to perishable. Repent. Let him truly repent, let him repent who preferred human things to divine, who chose to serve the world, and not to hold dominion over the world together with the world's Lord. Let him repent who chose rather to perish with the devil than to reign with Christ. Let him repent who, fleeing the freedom of the virtues, willed to be a captive of the vices. Let him repent, and let him repent enough, who, that he might not keep his life, handed over his hands to death. For the kingdom of heaven is at hand.
The kingdom of heaven is the reward of the righteous, the judgment of sinners, the punishment of the impious. Blessed therefore is John, who willed the judgment to be forestalled by repentance; he willed that sinners should not have judgment, but reward; he willed that the impious should enter a kingdom, not a punishment. And John proclaimed the kingdom of heaven as near even then, when the world was still a child seeking increases to its stature. Now we know the kingdom of heaven to be very near, when the world, wearied by extreme old age, is emptied of its strength, lays down its limbs, loses its senses, is pressed by pains, spurns care, dies to life, lives by diseases, cries out its failing, bears witness to its end.
We, therefore, are harder than the Jews, who follow the fleeing world, who forget the times to come, who gape after present things, who, though already set in judgment itself, do not fear, who do not run to meet the Lord who is already coming, who wish death to remain, who refuse the resurrection of the dead, who wish to serve and refuse to reign, so that we might defer so great a kingdom for our Lord. Where is that saying: 'When you pray, say: Thy kingdom come' (Luke XI)? A greater repentance, then, is needful for us, and according to the measure of the wound must be applied the measure of the medicine.
Let us repent, brethren, let us repent quickly, for the space of time is now denied us, now the very hour is closing upon us, the presence of judgment now shuts out from us the place of satisfaction. Let repentance run, lest the sentence outrun it: for the Lord, in that He has not yet come, that He still waits, that He makes delays, desires that we return to Him, not perish—we whom He has ever addressed with such tenderness: 'I do not will the death of the sinner, but that the impious turn from his way and live' (Ezek. XXXIII). Let us then, brethren, return as penitents, and let us not be terrified at the shortness of time, for the Author of time knows how to be straitened by time: the gospel thief proves this, who upon the cross and in the hour of death seized pardon, invaded life, broke open paradise, penetrated to the kingdom (Luke
XXIII). And we too, brethren, who have not sought merit from our own will, let us at least acquire virtue out of necessity, lest we be judged by our own judges; we owe ourselves repentance, that we may be able to take away the sentence from ourselves. The first felicity is to rejoice in the perpetual security of innocence, to keep inviolate the sanctity of mind and body, to feel none of the unclean defilements of the world, to have no consciousness of guilt, no wound of sin, ever to possess the grace of the virtues, ever to live in the hope of heavenly rewards. But if perhaps our mind be pierced by the dart of sin, if the flesh swell with crime, if human frailty be corrupted by the corruption of vices;
then let that medicine of repentance which succors not the healthy but the sick come to aid, let the knife of compunction be applied, let the cautery of sorrow be laid on, let the poultices of sighs be applied, let the fever of the swelling conscience be evaporated; then let the ulcers of guilt be washed away with tears, then let sackcloth wipe off the uncleanness of the body. Let him bear, let him bear the bitter care of repentance, who was unwilling to keep his health as he ought. To him whose life is dear, no care is harsh: let not the physician be unwelcome who through pain recalls to health. He who keeps the deposit of innocence pays no interest of repentance. The Lord opens this by saying: 'The healthy have no need of a physician, but they that are ill.' And He made plain who were ill, saying again: 'I have not come to call the righteous,'
'but sinners' (Matt. IX). John recalls through repentance, Christ calls through grace: hence it is that John, in dress, in food, in place, walks wholly formed by repentance. 'John the Baptist came,' he says, 'preaching in the desert of Judea and saying: Repent.' Through the deserts of Judea John cries out repentance—Judea, which by its own barrenness was losing the worship of the Law, the labor of the prophets, the fecundity of the fathers, the fruit of God: whence to repentance are rightly summoned the deserts of disciplines, not of men, not of places: the cry calls where no hearer is present. Now John himself had a garment of camel's hair. He could have had one of goat's hair, but there was no need of sackcloth:
but he took the hairs of that most crooked animal, which has nothing straight, nothing of grace, nothing of comeliness, which nature gave over to hard toil, assigned to a great burden, handed over to utmost servitude. With such a garment ought the master of repentance to be clothed; so that those who had turned themselves aside from the discipline of the straight, and had rendered themselves wholly deformed with the forms of sins, might rather be subjected to the burdens of repentance, might be joined to the hard anguishes of satisfaction, might carry the laborious sighs of compunction; that, straightened and made thin after the manner of a needle, they might enter the ample things of remission through the narrow opening of repentance, and that the Lord's saying might be fulfilled: that a camel can pass through the eye of a needle (Matt. XIX).
His food, moreover, was locusts and wild honey. The locust, assigned to the chastising of sinners, is rightly figured as food for repentance, so that, leaping out from the place of sin, it might, into the place of repentance, fly up to heaven on the wings of pardon. The prophet had perceived this, who said: 'I am taken away like the shadow when it declines, and I am shaken off like the locusts; my knees are weakened through fasting, and my flesh is changed for mercy's sake' (Ps. CVIII). You hear how, out of sin, he was shaken off into repentance like a locust, and bent his knees to bear the burden of repentance: and honey is added as food, so that the sweet mercy might temper the bitterness of repentance.