A Remedy for a Culture Plagued by Comfort: Honey and Locusts
Catherine Alva
Theology Essay Contest
Catholics for Hire
23 December 2024
Children are typically masterful in at least one skill: savagery. Not savagery in the purely barbaric sense of the word, but in the sense that the wilderness becomes their beloved domicile. Being in the wild to a child means abandoning protocol and frolicking through the murky waters of the Pacific Ocean. It means scaling every scalable object at the neighborhood playground. It means discovering solace and promise in the possibility of an open empty field. Yet, as time goes on, and society and its youngsters “mature,” we, our children and their offspring have begun to attach ourselves to an ancient addiction that slowly burns out the happiness found in the wild: comfort. Infectious comfort plagues Western Culture. We crave convenience at the cost of ethicality, and pleasurable uninterrupted routine at the cost of spiritual growth. Like all pathogens it requires a cure and unlike the maxim “modern problems require modern solutions,” an early disciple, John the Baptist offers a two ingredient homeopathic remedy: honey and locusts. St. John the Baptist demonstrates that God uses the ‘wild’, the antithesis of comfort and tameness to, paradoxically, provide man with a new sense of order and a strengthened faith. In order to provide a proper diagnosis, it is necessary to view the prerequisite for the remedy, the problem facing society and finally proper cure as presented in the life of St. John the Baptist.
Fifty-three books before John’s remedy, the book of Genesis introduces the setting in which God places His most prized creation. The Divine Landscaper creates a paradise, perhaps not in the way modern man would consider it. God does not proceed by constructing four-walls, a kitchen island and a roof, instead he crafts a beautiful wilderness of which man can steward. Man is happy there, we might even dare say he is comfortable. Everything is proper, everything is ordered and, “God saw that it was good.” (1) It is when man attempts to seize for himself the judgment of good and evil, that universe begins to deconstruct, but the magnanimity of God’s creation does not cease. The Old Testament offers a plethora of examples of God sending his chosen people into the “uncomfortable” desert, from the Israelites to his forerunner. He commanded his apostles to preach the gospel to the ends of the earth and they traveled through uncivilized terrain encountering untamed beasts and inhospitable strangers. The common thread of these instances is sacrifice, without which these magnificent feats are unachievable. Man struggles and he emerges victorious. It is through discomfort that God teaches man obedience, patience, and total abandonment to divine providence. It is imperative that man’s natural condition is sacrificial. Jesus Christ, the pinnacle of true God-hood and true man-hood sacrificed himself so that we may be forever comfortably happy in heaven. St. John the Baptist understood this as a prerequisite for sanctification. Unfortunately, our broken world does not.
In a distinct way, each of us is called to enter the wilderness. Scientifically, studies have demonstrated the psychological and physical benefits of hiking in the woods, taking a cold plunge into the sea, or walking barefoot on the dirt or beach sand to experience the benefits of “grounding.” Spiritually, we are plucked away from worldly distractions and left in-the-raw with our Creator through His creation. Stepping into the wild almost always requires us to sacrifice comfort, the same temptation Satan used to attempt to persuade Christ. The most difficult comfort to sacrifice? It happens to be the antithesis of the wild: order, pattern, schedule, regime, and routine all catered to our personal taste. The cup of coffee at exactly 6:15 a.m., the daily check-in on social media, the second cup of coffee only three hours later, the foods we prefer to eat, the people we prefer to greet, and so on. While none of these are bad in moderation, our modern attachment to comfort fills our minds, our time, and our cupboards. Man is a leisurely animal made to cultivate comfort not to be controlled by it. Rather, modern attachment to comfort can be likened to the painful disease Hemochromatosis, caused by too much of a beneficial mineral, iron. Likewise, when man becomes reliant on comfort in response to hardship, and obstructs comforts such as routine, pleasure, pattern or material goods by placing them as priorities, man’s central function, his spirituality, suffers.
Many question why, despite America’s immense wealth, industrial progress, and expansive medical system, prominent addictions such as smoking, vaping, drug abuse, alcohol abuse, cellular addiction prevail? Why is it so difficult for us as a country to find satisfaction? Because many have been so familiarized and comfortable with excess that it bears us down its grips. It is easy and acceptable to become self-absorbed because our modern society is tailored towards the accumulation of “goods” rather than looking for the greater good of the soul. In turn, we lose the earth’s original sweetness. Our culture’s infatuation with comfort has endeavored to be so meticulously controlled that even natural conception and natural death are at risk. All of this, in turn, has made us spiritually disordered.
Man has traded his soul for a temporal sweetness that leaves the stomach sick and the spirit watering. Being human, St. John the Baptist understood this hunger, he, like us, was born with original sin. The difference between him and I is not that he was not tempted by the taste, but learned to turn his thirst towards everlasting spiritual satisfaction. He might have chosen spiffier garments like those of the Pharisees, but instead choose a rugged tunic of camel hair and passions for things akin to it. He dined not even on leven bread, nor did he indulge in the culinary ventures of most Americans, but rather the only food we are told that he ate, was honey and locusts. A six limbed inscent and the delectable produce of bees. The former symbolic of the judgment enacted by God in the Old Testament upon the Egyptians and the latter emblematic of the promise of blessing offered by Christ’s birth and resurrection. John found it necessary to bring his followers into the desert before delivering to them the message of repentance, declaring, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand!” (Matthew 3:2). His entire mission in life was to be a voice crying out in the desert, “Prepare the way of the Lord, make straight his paths.” (Matthew 3:3) as Isaiah foretold. Somehow God saw it necessary for John to be present in the desert to be his precursor. Because John understood God’s original intent for man and saw the only way to make a straight path for the Lord was through sacrifice, through discomfort. The Jewish historian Josephus testified that, “He was indeed a man endued with all virtue,” who preached to the Jewish people, “that they would become acceptable to God if they renounced their sins, and to the cleanness of their bodies added purity of soul.” (2) How appropriate that years later Christian Monasticism and Asceticism found their beginnings in the deserts akin to the one John wandered. It is through stripping ourselves of distractions, through sacrificing we are paradoxically left more fulfilled.
Like dining on locusts, sacrifice is a practice difficult to contemplate yet it concludes with a sweetness greater than honey. It involves a mixture of re-ordering our actions. It begins with our own total repentance, recognizing our own faults and turning our eyes to Him who had none. Modern sacrifice may simply mean making an effort to meet in-person as opposed to being content with online congregation. Perhaps it includes forgoing personal preference of food for the good of another soul. Extending ourselves when we do not wish to. Being a voice in a desert void of truth, though it may cost us. St. John the Baptist is a prime example of this. He died willing for the truth, murdered by the overindulgent Herod who was too afraid of discomfort to make reparation for his own sin.
After examining the prerequisite of the remedy, the modern conflict and, finally, the cure presented in the life of St. John the Baptist, we are provided a paradox: through going into the wild, one eventually discovers solace and orientation in sacrifice. Though no soul jumps for joy at the prospect of eating locusts and honey for supper, it is through doing so we find ourselves everlastingly fulfilled.
- Ave Maria Press. Ave Catholic Notetaking Bible Rsv2ce. 2021. Genesis 1:12, and Matthew 3:2-3.
- “Saint John the Baptist, the Precursor | EWTN.” EWTN Global Catholic Television Network, www.ewtn.com/catholicism/library/saint-john-the-baptist-the-precursor-5573.