Pinging the weekly Sacred Page list!
Posted on 12/03/2022 12:56:06 PM PST by fidelis
Pinging the weekly Sacred Page list!
Why is it that each one of us in the Kingdom is greater than John, who was the greatest prophet? The answer is that we have been baptized with the Holy Spirit, who dwells in us with unquenchable fire, prays with us, guides and comforts us, and also provides fruits and gifts.
The Holy Spirit is like a Christmas tree, with instead of dead ornaments bearing live fruit (love, joy, peace, etc.) that grows to our benefit, and providing its gifts, each of which wrapped and tagged with a name on it, so that one person's gift(s) is not another's. It is the Spirit that makes the least in the Kingdom greater than John.
The Holy Spirit is like a Christmas tree, with instead of dead ornaments bearing live fruit (love, joy, peace, etc.) that grows to our benefit, and providing its gifts, each of which wrapped and tagged with a name on it, so that one person's gift(s) is not another's. It is the Spirit that makes the least in the Kingdom greater than John.
Those are good insights. We were actually discussing this in our weekly parish Scripture study in the Sunday readings this morning. In Sunday's Gospel reading, John the Baptist tells his listeners to "Produce good fruit as evidence of your repentance." (Mt 3:8). We could do worse than taking the traditional Fruits of the Holy Spirit as an examination of conscience for this Advent to do a self-check on our spiritual health. As found in Galatians 5:19-25:
Now the works of the flesh are plain: immorality, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, anger, selfishness, dissension, party spirit, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and the like. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such there is no law. And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit.
As I have argued in my book, Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls, I think John was taught and formed at the monastery at Qumran and was expelled, and then began his ministry.Like Samson and Samuel, JBap was a Nazarite according to the prescriptions found in Num 6:1-21.
I think that's a safe assumption since we are told as much in the passage where the Archangel Gabriel announced the birth of John to his father, Zechariah:
But the angel said to him, “Do not be afraid, Zechari′ah, for your prayer is heard, and your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you shall call his name John.
And you will have joy and gladness,
and many will rejoice at his birth;
for he will be great before the Lord,
and he shall drink no wine nor strong drink,
and he will be filled with the Holy Spirit,
even from his mother’s womb.(Luke 1:13-15)
Even with that, he also could have been associated with the Essenes. As far as I know, there was nothing preventing a man from being both.
Nazirites and Essenes wouldn’t be mutually exclusive, but the Essenes’ rejection of the contemporary priesthood would have made the Qumran community an improbable fit for the son of a temple priest.
It's true that the Essenes rejected the Jerusalem priesthood as hopelessly corrupt, but I have not seen anything indicating they closed off their membership to those of the line of Levi or Aaron or any other particular bloodline. At the time John would have been accepted to the Essenes (so the theory goes), he would have been a young child (the elderly Zachariah and Elizabeth being deceased) and not an active priest. According to Josephus, they were in the habit of accepting orphans to their community and forming them into the ways of the sect.
LOL. I would have been waiting for the same thing. Others have pointed out a possible John the Baptist/Qumran connection (the NABRE even has a footnote on Mt 3:6 referring to it), but Bergsma, I think, has really connected a lot of dots on this for today's Catholic Scripture student.
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