A HOMILY FOR THE FEAST OF THE NATIVITY OF SAINT JOHN THE BAPTIST
(June 24/July 7)
About the Life and Character of the Forerunner, and About How to Celebrate His and Other Feasts
Brothers and sisters!
Today we are celebrating the most significant birthday of any man, the birthday of the one the Godman called the greatest of any man born of woman. How much could be said about the one whose nativity we are celebrating! But for brevity’s sake, I will limit myself to a few observations about his life and character, and about how we should celebrate his and the other feasts.
Only months after the birth of this man, Saint John the Forerunner and Baptist of the Lord, Saint Elizabeth took him into the wilderness to escape the sword of thrice-wretched Herod. There, following his mother’s repose, the child grew up in the utter solitude of the desert and was fed by the hand of an angel. What exactly he ate while still a little boy we do not know, but the Holy Gospel tells us that later he subsisted on locusts (meaning possibly seeds of the locust tree) and wild honey. At the age of thirty John emerged from the depths of the desert and proclaimed repentance and the immanent appearance of the Messiah. Nevertheless, although the Forerunner had come out of the “inner” desert physically and was baptizing on the edge of civilization, the Lord pronounced him a voice of one crying in the wilderness.[1]
What, brothers and sisters, do the words “desert” or “wilderness” mean, spiritually speaking? In Greek and Slavonic, these two words are but one, erimos in Greek, pustinya in Slavonic. A desert is, figuratively, any empty place – any place devoid of life. Thus the people of Israel in the Lord’s time constituted a desert, for they were lacking spiritual life and understanding. John cried out amidst them, first and foremost by his austere conduct and appearance, and secondly by his preaching. John summoned the Jews to repentance and acceptance of the Saviour Who was about to appear in their midst.
During his thirty years alone, dwelling in the solitude of the desert, Saint John became well acquainted with another sort of desert: the desert of the human heart, the desert of his own heart. Through prayer, he learned to battle his heart, with its thoughts, feelings, and temptations. Alone in the wilderness with his heart and the Lord, John vanquished every passion, and God removed from him a heart of stone and replaced it with a heart of flesh, as He promises in the Book of Ezekiel, saying, I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh.[2] The Lord took away hardheartedness from Saint John and gave him a true human heart, a heart according to the image and likeness of His own heart, a heart beating with love and humility. Therefore, when he came forth from the desert, John shone brilliantly with these virtues. John’s utter devotion to God, compassion for others, self-abnegation, and self-abasement, tempered by ascetic austerity, shook the people’s souls to the depths, helping many of them to correct their lives and, later, to accept the Gospel. For this reason we see that not a few of John’s disciples in time became disciples of Christ.
Truly, Saint John became a very great man, such as the world had never seen nor would again see, a man more radiant with sanctity than any of the prophets before him!
But the greater a man, the greater his temptations, especially the temptation of pride. As a man, and as the greatest of men, Saint John could not of course remain untroubled by this temptation, but he utterly vanquished it by humility. Never in his preaching does he proclaim himself; rather, he always directs the hearers’ attention to Another: to the Lamb of God Which taketh away the sin of the world.[3] There cometh One mightier than I after me, the latchet of Whose shoes I am not worthy to stoop down and unloose,[4] John declares. And in another place he adds, He must increase, but I must decrease.[5] By such words and the inner disposition corresponding to them, Saint John teaches all to humble themselves before God and man, as he humbled himself before the Godman.
It is precisely in this light that we should understand what Saint John means when he says this: He that hath the bride is the bridegroom: but the friend of the bridegroom, which standeth and heareth him, rejoiceth greatly because of the bridegroom’s voice: this my joy therefore is fulfilled.[6] In ancient times, both among the Jews and the heathen, the “friend of the bridegroom” took care of all the wedding arrangements and after the wedding led the bride and groom into the nuptial chamber. Then he would remain outside the chamber while the marriage was consummated. His joy was fulfilled because the joy of the couple was perfected in their union. Moreover, John never made pretense to being himself the groom, as many among his disciples and the people of Israel imagined. Instead, he declared Jesus to be the Messiah, the mystical Bridegroom of the New Israel and of every faithful soul. John’s great joy was to be the man closest in spirit to the celestial Bridegroom, the one chosen to be what we would call “the best man,” being indeed the very best of all men.
Such a man, dear brothers and sisters, richly deserves our honor and praise. Let us love Saint John the Baptist as the man closest in spirit to our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. To help enable this, our Holy Orthodox Church commemorates the Forerunner every Tuesday and on several feasts, two of which – this one and the feast of his Beheading – rank as the foremost of the feasts of the saints. Let us honor these and the Forerunner himself firstly by attending the divine services on them, as we have, and then also by keeping the days holy when we leave the Lord’s temple. Feasts are days not only on which we should rest from labor as much as possible, but days which should be dedicated to prayer at home, to spiritual reading, and to the doing of other good deeds. We should avoid everything that violates the sanctity of these days, lest the words of the Lord apply to us: I hate, I despise your feast days.[7] Such soiled feasts are likewise repugnant to Saint John the Baptist, the mighty preacher of righteousness and repentance, for the memory of the righteous must be celebrated righteously.
May the Lord aid us, dear Christians, always to remember to honor the holy feasts and the Lord’s day with assiduous attendance at church; generous offerings to the house of God and the poor; special kindness to others; study of soul-saving books; and meek, quiet conduct at home, accompanied by prayer. May He also remind us on these days, even more than on the others, to emulate the great Forerunner by constantly humbling ourselves before Him – as well as before others – in our thoughts, words, and deeds. Amen.
[1] John 1:23
[2] Ez. 36:26
[3] John 1:29
[4] Mark 1:7
[5] John 3:23
[6] John 3:29
[7] Amos 5:21
