The Second Sunday of Advent takes us out into the desert with John the Baptist and that lonely Voice urging us to prepare for the coming of the Word. There is something immensely attractive about John which this painting by El Greco conveys better than any words. We see the saint in a rocky landscape with a diffuse light about him. Everything except John's face seems to resolve into triangles, even the sheep near his feet. A distant city at the foot of the mountain is shrouded in gloom, but there is a beautiful light playing on the cross John holds in his hand, and on his face, the only truly rounded shape in the whole painting, there is a radiance and sweetness which is utterly compelling. El Greco has captured both the gentleness and the loneliness of Christ's Forerunner, the contradiction of the prophet in every age.

Today also happens to be the anniversary of the wreck of the Deutschland, which inspired Hopkins' greatest poem. I suspect John's prayer was very like that of the dying Franciscan, '"O Christ, Christ come quickly" since he was, as Daniélou perceptively remarked, "a one-joy man". For those of us whose hearts are not quite so focused, there are these lines, especially the last, to offer encouragement:

I kiss my hand
              To the stars, lovely-asunder
          Starlight, wafting him out of it; and
             Glow, glory in thunder;
               Kiss my hand to the dappled-with-damson west:
            Since, tho' he is under the world's splendour & wonder,
                His mystery must be instressed, stressed;
            For I greet him the days I meet him, & bless when I understand.