“And seeing many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to his baptism, he said to them: ‘Ye brood of vipers, who hath shewed you to flee from the wrath to come? Bring forth therefore fruit worthy of penance. And think not to say within yourselves, ‘We have Abraham for our father.’ For I tell you that God is able of these stones to raise up children to Abraham.’”
St. John the Baptist sees the spiritual infirmity of the Pharisees and Sadducees, who came to him not out of sincerity, but to wring a kind of spiritual indulgence out of him. These are the ones that had corrupted their mother the synagogue, which was supposed to be a place of healing and warmth, but they had turned into a brutal set of rule-following: “Blind guides, who strain out a gnat and swallow a camel” (Matthew 23:24). In this they represent vipers, who eat away at the insides of their mothers to be born, and so too was the synagogue eaten alive by those who sought prevalence rather than mercy and the true nature of God. They knew the sayings of water throughout the Old Testament and were intrigued, “Thou shalt wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow” (Psalm 50:9), not realizing that it is in more than just washing that a good life comes about, but in a life of love. Thus John the Baptist urges them to “bring forth fruit.” Though not fully unveiled, this is a call to bring the Pharisees into the arms of love, rather than in a life of strict good behavior to appear holy. So too does the pursuit of goodness that does not come from a love of Jesus put a heavy burden upon the shoulders. Jesus does not impose a great set of rules upon you that must be obeyed for the sake of it, but is trying to mold you into an image of Himself, that the world may see what true love looks like: “You are the light of the world” (Matthew 5:14). There is no single action that definitively shows that love is present, as St. Paul addresses in 1 Corinthians 13, but love is one of those things that can be very clearly detected. It is not so much defined as encountered. While Jesus gives the framework for loving actions, He assumes that the foundation is a loving heart, and then gives the commandments so that you know what to do with your heart inflamed by love. St. John then dissuades association with Abraham by the Pharisees, because they do not resemble Abraham in his walk with God, keeping his bloodline but not his intimacy with God. For Abraham entertained the Trinity with hospitality and warmth, whereas the Pharisees sought to destroy the Word when He came to them. Similarly, imitation does not necessitate love, because two people can do the same actions, one out of routine or for some kind of gain, the other out of a pure, selfless love. Following the commandments to the letter, but with a heart cold and uncaring, is not the Christian walk, and thus John the Baptist points to the stones, claiming that God can raise up sons of Abraham from them, indicating that the furnace of God’s love can melt the hardest of hearts, and from it raise up one that has genuine compassion. Even in weakness and spiritual poverty, Jesus sees what you’re trying to do, and the heart you put into it, and is grateful for what you offer to Him, no matter how small: “He took up the five loaves and the two fishes, and looking up to heaven, he blessed” (Matthew 14:19). No matter how little and broken you are, no matter how little you are able to accomplish, the Lord accepts your humble offering with gladness, for He desires a heart purely devoted to Him rather than weariness of service. It is His love that will raise you up to something akin to Abraham, it is His merits that will transform you into yourself made whole: “He brought me into the cellar of wine, he set in order charity in me” (Song 2:4). The cellar of wine represents the numerous devotions and paths to Him that He has given to His Church, that you may never be wanting in ways of falling in love, and it is by these paths that He will bring you to a place where your every action is love. This is what it means to “Be you therefore perfect, as also your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matthew 5:48).