Post by Fr David Neuhaus SJ | 15 December 2025
The Advent readings give an important place to the figure of John the Baptist. He teaches us how to wait for the Christ who is coming. Last week, he announced: “One who is more powerful (…) is coming after me… He will clear his threshing floor and will gather his wheat into the granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire” (Matthew 3:11-12). John foresees an eschatological conqueror, who will be victorious over his enemies.
This week, John is in prison. He is understandably despondent and perhaps even doubting: “Are you the one who is to come, or should we look for another?” (Matthew 11:3). John teaches us that we are allowed to question and even doubt as we wait. Jesus has come and the world looks pretty much as it always did. Full of violence and war, destruction and pain. We need to look carefully at our expectations. Did we too expect a victorious conqueror? Did we foresee him brandishing a sword or a magic wand?
Jesus responds to John without anger and without disappointment. He tells the ones sent by John: “Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind regain their sight, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have the good news proclaimed to them.” Jesus is pointing to the single acts he has done, the miracles he has performed. They are signs of who he is. Can we identify these signs in our own lives? In the life of our community? He has not healed all the blind and all the deaf. He has not raised all the dead or evangelized all the poor. Can we identify the small, humble miracles all around us? Do our eyes see? Do our ears hear?
Indeed, the world remains very much unredeemed. The powerful use the violence of conquest to show their power. Like John, we are allowed to be despondent. We are even allowed to question and sometimes doubt. If we did not, we would be like people taking opium, anesthetized to the world’s suffering. However, as believers in Jesus Christ, we are also called to identify the miracles of kindness, commitment, courage and hope all around us. Simply waking up in the morning and feeling the energy that drives us to go out and live the joy of the resurrection is a miracle that shines light into the darkness. Reaching out to others to assist them, befriend them, embrace them and console them are miracles that resist conquest.
Jesus does not choose the way of conquest, the way first proclaimed by John. He does not come as one more powerful than John for he too, like John, will find himself in prison and be executed. We might want a Superman Jesus, but Jesus comes weak and fragile, a baby in a manger, a man on a cross. He comes to bring us together, transformed and energized, seeking to heal a broken world. He comes as leaven to be kneaded into the dough of our humanity. And then, when all is ready, and we are truly his body in the world, he will come again “to judge the living and the dead”.
Jesus asks us to give up our expectation of conquest and embrace his way of leaven. “And blessed is the one who takes no offense at me” (Matthew 11:6).