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| Icon, John the Baptist, "Angel of the Desert" (Russia, 17th c.) |
John is often depicted in icons, as in the one shown here, with unkempt hair and shaggy coat, following the biblical description of him as “clothed with camel’s hair, with a leather belt around his waist” (Mk. 1:6 and par.), like the prophet Elijah. A tree with an ax symbolize his call to repentance: “Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire” (Mt. 3:10 and par.). In this icon, John holds a diskos (liturgical vessel) with a figure on it, representing Christ as the “Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world” (Jn. 1:29). The symbolism here comes from Orthodox liturgical practice, specifically from the prothesis (preparation) of the Divine Liturgy, when the priest cuts a cube out of the loaf of bread, and this cube is known as “the Lamb.” (Here is a clear explanation.) Nearly as often, John is shown holding a platter with his own head on it—and there are icons of his “honorable head.” And sometimes he has wings.
Why the wings? Why is John depicted as “the Angel of the Desert”? As far as I can tell, John is an “angel” in at least two senses: as messenger of God and as exemplar of the ascetic life.
The first sense derives from the Greek word ἂγγελος (angelos), which means both “messenger” and “angel.” Mark’s Gospel applies to John the baptizer the words from Malachi and Isaiah: “See, I am sending my messenger (ἂγγελον) ahead of you, who will prepare your way; the voice of one crying out in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight’” (Mk. 1:2–3). John is the angelos sent “with the spirit and power of Elijah” before the Lord at his coming, preaching repentance to “turn many of the people of Israel to the Lord their God” (Lk. 1:16–17). He is the angelos sent to baptize with water in order that Jesus might be revealed by the descent of the Holy Spirit as the Son of God, the Word become flesh (cf. Jn. 1:29–34). As John Chrysostom put it, the Forerunner came down from the wilderness into the cities, “like some angel from heaven.”*
(It may be that the iconographic tradition also understands John as an angel in a more literal sense. Origen at least entertained the speculative idea that John was “an angel who assumed a body for the sake of being a witness to the light,” without denying John’s humanity.†)
John is also “the Angel of the Desert” insofar as he is exemplar of the ascetic life. In the ascetic tradition of the Christian East it is a commonplace to understand asceticism as an imitation of the life of the angels. Often the goal of ascetic practice is to recover the angelic state in which Adam was thought to live in Paradise. In such milieux, it is not surprising to find John the Baptist—living in the wilderness, eating locusts and wild honey—held up as model for the angelic, ascetic life.
John Chrysostom does just that in a homily on the Gospel of Matthew. Commenting on John the Baptist’s clothing of camel’s hair, John the Golden-mouthed writes:
“[I]t became the forerunner of him who was to put away all the ancient ills, the labor, for example, the curse, the sorrow, the sweat; himself also to have certain tokens of such a gift, and to come at once to be above that condemnation. Thus he neither ploughed land, nor opened furrow, he ate not his bread by the sweat of his face, but his table was hastily supplied, and his clothing more easily furnished than his table, and his lodging yet less troublesome than his clothing. For he needed neither roof, nor bed, nor table, nor any other of these things, but a kind of angel’s life in this our flesh did he exhibit. For this cause his very garment was of hair, that by his dress he might instruct men to separate themselves from all things human, and to have nothing in common with the earth, but to hasten back to their earlier nobleness, wherein Adam was before he wanted garments or robe. Thus that garb bore tokens of nothing less than a kingdom, and of repentance.”‡
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| Coptic Icon of John the Baptist (Egypt, date?) |
For Chrysostom, John’s life exhibits an angelic detachment from the worry for food and clothing that marks fallen human society. Living as Adam lived in Eden before sin entered the world, the Forerunner embodies the life of the kingdom inaugurated by Christ Jesus. As such, Chrysostom urges us, his auditors, to emulate John’s “life of restraint,” if not by going into the wilderness (many people did precisely that in Chrysostom’s day), then by showing forth repentance in the cities. Taking up John the Baptist’s demand, “Bear fruit in keeping with repentance” (Mt. 3:8), Chrysostom exhorts us to turn from the works of sin and to pursue the good deeds that make for peace. Like the Baptist, Chrysostom unflinchingly preaches that repentance must be manifest in a changed way of life; he cries out, “It is not, it is not possible at once both to do penance and to live in luxury.”§
May we heed the voice of “the Angel of the Desert.” May the One who sent him, in the words of the collect, “make us so to follow his teaching and holy life, that we may truly repent according to his preaching; and, following his example, constantly speak the truth, boldly rebuke vice, and patiently suffer for the truth's sake.”
* John Chrysostom, Homilies on the Gospel of Saint Matthew, 10.4.
† Origen, Commentary on the Gospel of John, 2.25. Origen has some lovely and perceptive passages in which he contrasts John as the “voice” to Jesus as the Word. “John’s voice points to the Word and demonstrates it,” he writes. Origen’s distinction appears to have influenced Ephraim the Syrian whose Hymns for the Feast of the Epiphany contain the lines:
“John cried, ‘Who comes after me, he is before me:
I am the voice but not the Word;
I am the torch but not the Light;
the star that rises before the Sun of Righteousness’.”
‡ Chrysostom, op. cit., 10.4, emphasis added.
§ Ibid., 10.6.
