John the Baptist stood between an old world and a new world. He didn’t belong to the old and he had not yet found the new. His mother called him John, and his father, unable to speak since he had doubted the angel’s announcement of this child’s coming birth, affirmed this in writing: “His name is John.” People were astonished by this, as no one in their family was called by this name. John stood in the desert, and the people came to him at the Jordan. There John found the Messiah he had been waiting for; but Jesus was not, perhaps, the sort of Messiah John had expected.
From the beginning of Advent to the end of the Easter season, we are asked by the Church to make a liturgical journey. It is a journey that follows the path of Christ’s life, because that is the pattern of all Christian life. Advent is the time of expectation and hope. Although we follow the path of those who waited for the Messiah, He has already come. So our hope is different from the hope of Israel. Our hope is not a hope for redemption but a hope for the redemption that began in Christ to come to its completion.