Jesse was the grandson of Ruth and the father of David the great king. The Messiah was to come from that line.
The prophet Isaiah wrote that the Messiah would be a man of integrity and faithfulness, a just and righteous man. In his time, peace would return to the earth.
Humanity would be at peace with nature, people would be at peace with each other and everyone would know God.

About 600 years later John the Baptist appeared.
He came from a good family, his father Zechariah was a priest.
When John was around 30, he dropped out and disappeared.
He threw away his clothes and wore strange garments of camelhair. He must have prayed a lot for when he reappeared among the people he knew that his vocation was to be a prophet and he knew the message well.
He said, come-on, let us take God seriously, let us behave ourselves, some one very important is coming and we will not be able to fool him; he’ll know who has been good and was bad so let us turn over a new leaf.

If we look at our world today, we see that humanity is not at peace with nature. We have just woken up to the fact that we have been destroying our environment. People are not at peace with each other either for news of war and violence are never absent from our television screens. The interest in God and religion is on the decline. We are as much in need of the Messiah now as they were in the time of the prophet Isaiah.

So today’s Gospel message is for us either to heed it or to take it to other people by word and example.