By St. Sebastian Dabovich
Saint John the Baptist was the son
of the Jewish Priest Zacharia. His mother was
Elizabeth, a blood-relation to the Most Blessed Virgin
Mary. This righteous couple were childless, for
Elizabeth was barren. They prayed much and long; as
true Israelites they desired the consolation of being
blessed with children,
aspiring,—but
in this instance with an humble and holy
resignation—to
the birth of the great Messiah, who was coming to save
mankind, and, as they thought, to free and unite
Israel. Although Zacharia and Elizabeth sorrowed in
their old age to a day which was beyond the natural
limit of child-bearing, still they continued hopefully
praying. The prayers of faith of this priest and his
patient spouse ascended on high, from whence came down
an angel with the message telling them that the Creator
of nature and the God of wonders had been pleased to
fulfill their desire. Accordingly, Elizabeth bore unto
her husband Zacharia a male child, who was called
John.
This John was called by God to be the forerunner of his
Divine Son, to usher Him into the world, and to prepare
mankind by repentance to receive the Redeemer, whom the
prophets had foretold at a distance through every age from
the beginning of the world, never ceasing to instill in
the people of God faith and hope in Him by whom alone they
were to be saved. At first St. John led a most austere
life in the wilderness, exercising himself in prayer and
meditating on the high mission he was called to perform.
In the thirtieth year of his age, John came from out his
seclusion. This was also the age at which the priests and
Levites were permitted by the Jewish law to begin the
exercise of their functions. Clothed in camel's hair,
held to his person by a girdle of raw leather, the man of
the desert, who knew not the luxuries of a dwelling-house,
nor the taste of cooked food, himself subsisting on
locusts and wild honey, comes to the thinly settled banks
of the river Jordan, and preaches repentance, baptizing
all comers. Make ye the way straight, says he;
for cometh He whose sandal-strap I am not worthy to
unloose; He shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost and with
fire. John was received by the people as the true
herald of the Most High God. All classes of people came
and listened to him. Among them were many Pharisees, whose
pride and hypocrisy, which rendered them indocile and
blinded them in their vices, he sharply reproved. The very
soldiers and publicans, or tax-collectors, who were
generally persons hardened in habits of immorality,
violence, and injustice, flocked to him. He exhorted all
to works of charity and to a reformation of their lives,
and those who addressed themselves to him in these
dispositions, he baptized in the river.
The baptism of John differed entirely from the great
Christian sacrament of baptism, as the first was an emblem
of the effects of living in the fear of the justice of God
by abstaining from evil deeds, whilst the latter wholly
delivers us from the original sin and the consequences,
and makes us the children of God, by the grace of our Lord
Jesus Christ.
When St. John had already preached and baptized about six
months, the Lord Jesus went from Nazareth, and presented
Himself, among others, to be baptized by him. The Baptist
knew Him by a divine revelation, and, full of awe and
respect for his sacred person, at first excused himself,
but at length acquiesced out of obedience. The Saviour of
sinners was pleased to be baptized among sinners, not to
be cleansed Himself, but to sanctify the waters, and to
manifest Himself to the world, which was represented in
the great mass of people which came to John. And John
bear witness of Him. Pointing Him out before the
Jews, John said, Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh
away the sin of the world! John the Baptist reproved
the vices of all men, no matter who they were, with an
impartial freedom and in a fearless spirit. He disclosed
the hypocrisy of the Pharisees, and uncovered the
profaneness of the Sadducees; he denounced the fraud of
certain government officials,
—i. e. the
publicans,—the rapine and
licentiousness of the soldiers, and the incest of King
Herod himself. Now, Herod had unlawfully taken unto
himself Herodias, the wife of his own brother Philip, who
was still living. When the saint said to the king, It
is not lawful for thee to have her, Herodias set
herself against him, and desired to kill John. Herod
reverenced John as a holy man; therefore he dared not harm
him. Nevertheless he had the saint within his reach, in
prison, for he could not bear to have the sore spot of his
weak conscience tampered with. St. John faithfully
completed his mission, and he understood when his time was
up; even before this, he said, Jesus must increase,
but I must decrease. While in confinement the
righteous preacher was still anxious to bear testimony to
the glory of the Saviour; we read furthermore in the
Gospel that, on hearing in prison of Christ's
wonderful works and preaching, John sent two of his
disciples to Him for their information, not doubting but
that Christ would satisfy them that He was the Messiah;
and that by His answers they would lay aside their
prejudices, and join themselves to Him.
Herod continued to respect John; he would
sometimes send for him, and listen to him with
pleasure, though he was troubled when he was admonished
by him for his faults. In the meantime Herodias sought
an opportunity to compass the Baptist's
destruction. An occasion at length fell out favorable
to her designs. It was on the birthday anniversary of
the king, when he made in his castle a splendid
entertainment for the nobility of Galilee. During a
sumptuous repast, Salome, a daughter of Herodias by her
lawful husband, danced before the guests, and so
pleased the king by her dancing, that he promised her,
with the sacred bond of an oath, to grant her whatever
she asked, though it amounted to half of his dominions.
The damsel consulted with her mother, and she
dispatched her daughter with haste, to demand that the
head of John the Baptist be brought in to her at once
on a charger. This strange request startled the drunken
tyrant himself. He, however, assented, though with
reluctance, but for the sake of his oaths, and of
them that sat at meat, he ordered a soldier of his
guard to strike off the head of St. John. In this way
the bloody head of the holy prophet was brought into
the hall, where they ate and drank and made merry with
music, and it was given to the young dancer, who took
it and carried it to her mother. No doubt Herod had no
thought of the oath, while giving it, that it was a
sinful one, but he committed a much greater sin by
keeping his oath. And thus it was that John the
Baptist, the man of the desert, ended his life, one of
the chief causes of his death being a sinful supper.
But, by God's mercy, he was not put to death before
he had fulfilled his great duty as the forerunner of
our Lord Jesus Christ. The many virtues of St. John,
those of a martyr, a virgin, a teacher, and a prophet,
were exalted in praise by Christ Himself, when he said
to the multitudes of the people: Verily, I say unto
you, there hath not risen among them that are born of
women a greater than John the Baptist. When his
disciples hearing that John was executed in prison,
they came and took his body and laid it in a tomb.
The misfortunes which befell Herod after the death of John
the Baptist, the Jews said were punishments from God for
the murder of his servant, as their historian, Joseph
Flavins, records. Aretas, the King of Arabia, and the
father of Herod's first wife, struck a deadly blow at
the army of the Galilean ruler. Soon after this the Roman
emperor banished Herod into exile. The holy relics of St.
John did not remain for all time in their tomb at
Sebastia. When the holy apostle Luke visited this city, he
took the right arm of the saint and brought it to Antioch,
where the Christians treasured it for a long time. When,
in 956, the Mohammedans took possession of Antioch, a
deacon by the name of Job carried the relic to Chalcedon,
from which place it was brought, on the eve of the
Epiphany, to Constantinople. The Turkish sultan, Bajazet,
desiring to please the Crusaders, presented the Knights of
Malta with the arm of the great Baptist. In 1799, this
order of knights sent the relic of St. John to the Emperor
Paul I of Russia, and the great prophet's arm may be
seen to this day in the royal palace in the "Chapel
of the Saviour's Uncreated Image." The Holy
Church celebrates the birth of St. John the Baptist on the
24th of June. On the 29th of August, she commemorates his
beheading. And on the 7th of January, the Church praises
the great saint for his whole life, his works, and his
mission, as he was selected to be the baptizer of Jesus
Christ, the Son of God.
From the book The Lives of the Saints and Several Lectures and Sermons.
