Patristic Wisdom: Looking to the Second Sunday in Advent

The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. As it is written in the Prophets:

“Behold, I send My messenger before Your face,
Who will prepare Your way before You.”
“The voice of one crying in the wilderness:
‘Prepare the way of the Lord;
Make His paths straight.’ ”

John came baptizing in the wilderness and preaching a baptism of repentance for the remission of sins. Then all the land of Judea, and those from Jerusalem, went out to him and were all baptized by him in the Jordan River, confessing their sins. Now John was clothed with camel’s hair and with a leather belt around his waist, and he ate locusts and wild honey. And he preached, saying, “There comes One after me who is mightier than I, whose sandal strap I am not worthy to stoop down and loose. I indeed baptized you with water, but He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.” (Mark 1:1–8)

Now He called him an “messenger,” on account of the magnitude of the mighty deeds which he was to achieve (which mighty deeds Joshua the son of Nun did, and you yourselves read), and on account of his office of prophet announcing (to wit) the divine will; just as withal the Spirit, speaking in the person of the Father, calls the forerunner of Christ, John, a future “angel,” through the prophet: “Behold, I send my messenger before Your”—that is, Christ’s—“face, who shall prepare Your way before You.” Nor is it a novel practice to the Holy Spirit to call those “messengers” whom God has appointed as ministers of His power. For the same John is called not merely an “messengers” of Christ, but withal a “lamp” shining before Christ: for David predicts, “I have prepared the lamp for my Christ;” and him Christ Himself, coming “to fulfill the prophets,” called so to the Jews. “He was,” He says, “the burning and shining lamp;” as being he who not merely “prepared His ways in the desert,” but withal, by pointing out “the Lamb of God,” illumined the minds of men by his heralding, so that they understood Him to be that Lamb whom Moses was wont to announce as destined to suffer.

Tertullian, An Answer to the Jews 9

He gathered together a people unto Himself, and cherished them with many gifts of His goodness, and though He so often found them most unthankful, He ever exhorted them to repentance, and sent forth the voices of all the prophets in prophecy: promising them presently His grace, the light of which He would in the last days pour forth by His Spirit upon the whole world;* He commanded that the baptism of repentance should go beforehand, that, by the seal of repentance, He might fit beforehand those, whom He called by grace unto the promise appointed unto the seed of Abraham.

Tertullian, On Repentance 2