# The Voice of One Crying Out in the Desert - Bishop Robert Barron Daily Sermons

An episode of [Daily Sermons With Bishop Robert Barron](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/6783446284), 4 Jul 2026, 12 min.

Audio: https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/api.spreaker.com/download/episode/72733594/the_voice_of_one_crying_out_in_the_desert_bishop_barron_s_sunday_sermon.mp3



## Transcript

[0:00] Speaker 1: Peace be with you friends. For this third Sunday of Advent,
[0:04] Speaker 1: the Church asked us to focus on John the Baptist, who,
[0:07] Speaker 1: of course is one of the great Advent figures. I
[0:10] Speaker 1: might have shared this with you before, but my mind
[0:12] Speaker 1: always goes back to one of my favorite places on earth,
[0:15] Speaker 1: which is the Cathedral of chart outside of Paris, which
[0:18] Speaker 1: I visited many times when I was a student over
[0:20] Speaker 1: in France, and there's a sculpture of John the Baptist
[0:23] Speaker 1: on the north porch that's so eloquent in just the
[0:27] Speaker 1: longing in his face. It's that quality I talked about
[0:31] Speaker 1: a couple of weeks ago of Oh, Come, O, Come
[0:34] Speaker 1: Emmanuel waiting for someone to come take a look at it.
[0:38] Speaker 1: But I always think of that when I read about
[0:40] Speaker 1: John the Baptist, and the Gospel for Today, taken from
[0:43] Speaker 1: John's Gospel, offers one of the most famous lines in
[0:46] Speaker 1: regard to John. And I'll get there. Here's the thing.
[0:49] Speaker 1: What we need to see, first of all, is that
[0:51] Speaker 1: John the Baptist really caused a rucus in his time
[0:55] Speaker 1: and place. He was the son of a temple priest,
[1:00] Speaker 1: means that he should have been in the temple. Likely
[1:02] Speaker 1: John was raised in the temple precincts. He was being
[1:05] Speaker 1: prepared for that task. But instead of being in the temple,
[1:09] Speaker 1: he's out in the desert, not eating the fine food
[1:13] Speaker 1: that the priests in the temple would have had, but
[1:15] Speaker 1: eating locusts and honey, not in the fine clothes of
[1:19] Speaker 1: a priest, but in animal skins. In that desert place,
[1:24] Speaker 1: he preaches with powerful eloquence, and the crowds begin to
[1:30] Speaker 1: come again, not going to the temple where they would
[1:34] Speaker 1: normally go to be taught and so on, they're coming
[1:36] Speaker 1: out in the desert to hear him. He's offering, furthermore,
[1:40] Speaker 1: a baptism for the repentance of sins. Well, one went
[1:44] Speaker 1: to the temple for that too, one would have gone
[1:47] Speaker 1: through the mikvah bath to prepare for a sacrifice. Well,
[1:51] Speaker 1: now John's doing a kind of mikvah bath out in
[1:55] Speaker 1: the desert, and he's so compelling a figure that he's
[1:58] Speaker 1: drawing the nation to him. So here's all I want
[2:02] Speaker 1: you to see. Here's this great religious preacher, a great
[2:08] Speaker 1: speaker of religious truth. Here's someone who is offering a
[2:12] Speaker 1: word of repentance and the forgiveness of sins. Here's someone
[2:18] Speaker 1: who is living this radically ascetical life. Can we see
[2:25] Speaker 1: in John the Baptist someone who sums up all of
[2:32] Speaker 1: the natural religiosity of the human race. Think of all
[2:37] Speaker 1: the great religious figures around the world, across the various cultures.
[2:43] Speaker 1: Does John express in his manner of being, in his
[2:47] Speaker 1: religious practice, the summation of all of that? Think for
[2:52] Speaker 1: a second, He's got something of the Hindu wise man
[2:57] Speaker 1: in him. Think of a Hindu stick or wise man
[3:00] Speaker 1: who lives in tremendous austerity of life. He's got something
[3:06] Speaker 1: of the Confucian of ethical teacher in him, because he's
[3:10] Speaker 1: laying out an ethical program. He's got something of the
[3:16] Speaker 1: of the mystical in him. Does John sum up the
[3:22] Speaker 1: best of the religious instincts of the human race? And indeed,
[3:28] Speaker 1: doesn't Jesus himself say, in reference to John the Baptist,
[3:35] Speaker 1: there's no one born of a woman greater than John
[3:39] Speaker 1: the Baptist. Let that sink in. In other words, there's
[3:45] Speaker 1: no human being this Jesus himself saying there's no human
[3:48] Speaker 1: being ever greater than John the Baptist. He's seen, of
[3:54] Speaker 1: course by the Church fathers as the last of the prophets.
[3:57] Speaker 1: So he sums up as well, all of Israel. He's
[4:01] Speaker 1: like Isaiah, like Jeremiah. And indeed, don't we hear in
[4:05] Speaker 1: the Gospel that the people coming out to him thought
[4:09] Speaker 1: he was Elijah reincarnated. Some even thought he was the
[4:14] Speaker 1: long awaited Messiah. Again my point, he seems to sum
[4:22] Speaker 1: up all of the aspirations of the religious person over
[4:28] Speaker 1: the centuries and across the cultures. It's as though he
[4:33] Speaker 1: stands on a kind of frontier or a kind of border.
[4:38] Speaker 1: All of the human longing for God and all its
[4:41] Speaker 1: various expressions is summed up in this man. There's no greater,
[4:48] Speaker 1: no greater man born of woman than John the Baptist. Okay,
[4:52] Speaker 1: with that in mind, we turned to this famous line
[4:58] Speaker 1: associated with John the b Baptist. Think for a minute,
[5:02] Speaker 1: given all of this, how tempting it would have been
[5:05] Speaker 1: for him to say, Yeah, Yeah, I am the Messiah. Yeah,
[5:10] Speaker 1: I'm it. You know I'm There's there's no man born
[5:13] Speaker 1: a woman greater than me, So i'm it, Come come
[5:16] Speaker 1: to me. He doesn't say that, though, What was he saying?
[5:24] Speaker 1: I'm the voice of one crying out in the desert
[5:30] Speaker 1: makes straight the way of the Lord at the limit
[5:38] Speaker 1: of human religiosity, summing up all that we can bring
[5:43] Speaker 1: to the table. This figure looks to another again in lightwise,
[5:50] Speaker 1: said a couple of weeks ago, everybody, Christianity is this
[5:53] Speaker 1: religion of grace, not of human accomplishment. He's not gonna
[5:57] Speaker 1: save this. If we're a dysfunctional family. We can't act
[6:01] Speaker 1: our way out of it. But we move into the
[6:05] Speaker 1: space of John the Baptist, and we are with all
[6:09] Speaker 1: of our religious and philosophical and ethical attainment, with all
[6:12] Speaker 1: of it in place, we are simply preparing for the
[6:17] Speaker 1: coming of another. And then he says this, this is
[6:22] Speaker 1: the famous lion. Now there's one among you whom you
[6:29] Speaker 1: do not know, the one who's coming after me, whose
[6:36] Speaker 1: sandal strap I am not worthy to untie. Read it
[6:45] Speaker 1: only against the backdrop that I've laid out. If he
[6:51] Speaker 1: is the greatest person ever, he's the summation of all
[6:56] Speaker 1: of our religious and philosophical longings, all of our religious attainments.
[7:03] Speaker 1: Yet he isn't worthy to untie the sandal strap of
[7:08] Speaker 1: the one who's coming. Now. The importance here is that
[7:11] Speaker 1: was the job of a low level slave, not just
[7:15] Speaker 1: a slave, a low level slave because dirty feet, gross
[7:20] Speaker 1: and so the low level slave is the one that
[7:22] Speaker 1: would untie the sandal strap of his master. John the Baptist,
[7:27] Speaker 1: greatest person born a woman, No one greater, no one greater,
[7:31] Speaker 1: summing up all of human achievement, all of religiosity, says
[7:35] Speaker 1: I'm not worthy of being a low level slave of
[7:40] Speaker 1: the one who's coming. Can you see, everybody, see the
[7:43] Speaker 1: Gospels are always in one way or another speaking about
[7:48] Speaker 1: the importance of Jesus in the ancient world, and today
[7:54] Speaker 1: there are voices that say Jesus is a great prophet
[8:00] Speaker 1: and a great teacher, and a great exemplar of the
[8:03] Speaker 1: moral life. And if that's all he is, everyone he
[8:09] Speaker 1: recedes to the level of John the Baptist. John the
[8:14] Speaker 1: Baptist had all of that teacher preacher, you know, offering
[8:20] Speaker 1: forgiveness of sense, I mean, all that, all of human religiosity.
[8:25] Speaker 1: If we say Jesus is just a prophet, well then
[8:27] Speaker 1: he comes right back to that level. But listen again
[8:31] Speaker 1: to the witness of John himself. I am not worthy
[8:35] Speaker 1: to be his low level slave. Why because he's not
[8:44] Speaker 1: just a prophet that speaks the divine word, is the
[8:48] Speaker 1: divine word. He's not just one more at priests leading
[8:53] Speaker 1: us in temple worship. He's the one who is worshiping
[8:59] Speaker 1: in the temple. He's not one more religious figure expressing
[9:05] Speaker 1: a human aspiration. No, no, what do we say every Sunday?
[9:10] Speaker 1: He's God from God, light from Light, true God from
[9:16] Speaker 1: true God, begotten, not made consubstantial with the Father. See now,
[9:22] Speaker 1: do you see? Now? Do you see why even the
[9:25] Speaker 1: greatest religious figure in the history of the human race
[9:28] Speaker 1: could say I'm not worthy to untie his sandal strap.
[9:37] Speaker 1: It's one of the most eloquent testimonies to the importance
[9:41] Speaker 1: and significance of Jesus. Seems to me, you know, think
[9:45] Speaker 1: of this to everybody. In the early centuries of the
[9:48] Speaker 1: Church's life, there were a lot of people that wanted
[9:51] Speaker 1: to turn Jesus into a high level saint. Council after council,
[9:57] Speaker 1: culminating in the statement I just read, left, your council
[10:01] Speaker 1: kept affirming the divinity of Jesus, the divinity of Jesus,
[10:05] Speaker 1: the divinity of Jesus, and one of its most eloquent
[10:08] Speaker 1: witnesses is John the Baptist And this line, can I
[10:15] Speaker 1: suggest this by way of conclusion. So we're in the
[10:17] Speaker 1: advent season, Okay, We're getting ready for Christmas parties. No,
[10:23] Speaker 1: that's all it is. Forget it, Oh, advent, It's just
[10:27] Speaker 1: time to get through until we get that wonderful day
[10:29] Speaker 1: of Christmas. No, no, then you're missing the spiritual opportunity.
[10:33] Speaker 1: What's advent? A time when we stand, as it were,
[10:39] Speaker 1: shoulder to shoulder with John the Baptist. Okay, okay, bringing
[10:44] Speaker 1: all I got to the table, bringing all my human
[10:47] Speaker 1: powers and accomplishments to the table. I look to another,
[10:54] Speaker 1: I look beyond what I could possibly do to another.
[10:59] Speaker 1: I say with John the Baptist, Oh come, oh Come,
[11:04] Speaker 1: Immanuel and ransom captive Israel. Did John think he was
[11:08] Speaker 1: the savior of the world. No, no, no, I'm not
[11:10] Speaker 1: the Messiah. I'm just a voice crying in the wilderness.
[11:13] Speaker 1: Prepare the way of the Lord. And so we standing
[11:18] Speaker 1: shoulder to shoulder with him, look out to the one.
[11:24] Speaker 1: Listen whose sandals strap we're not worthy to unfasten. It's
[11:32] Speaker 1: in that full acknowledgment of the primacy and uniqueness and
[11:38] Speaker 1: indispensability of Jesus that we ready ourselves for Christmas. And
[11:45] Speaker 1: God bless you

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