The Nativity of the Honourable and Glorious Prophet and Baptist John
The Nativity of John the Baptist. As the holy Gospel (Luke 1:5–80) tells us, John the Baptist’s parents, the high priest Zacharias and Elisabeth, “were both righteous before God”, but they reached old age without being given a child. Once, when Zacharias was performing the divine service in the temple at Jerusalem, “there appeared unto him an angel of the Lord” and announced: “Thy prayer is heard; and thy wife Elisabeth shall bear thee a son, and thou shalt call his name John.” Zacharias, dismayed, doubted the words of the heavenly messenger, for which, as a punishment, he was deprived of the power of speech.
Saint Elisabeth, well past the age of youth, conceived; to avoid the mockery of the people, she “hid herself five months”, until her distant kinswoman, the All-holy Virgin Mary, came to visit her.
When “Elisabeth’s full time came that she should be delivered… her neighbours and her cousins heard… and they rejoiced with her.” On the eighth day, according to the law of Moses, the infant was circumcised, and they were going to name him Zacharias, but Elisabeth declared: “Not so; but he shall be called John.” Everyone was astonished, for no one in his family had borne this name, and they asked Zacharias to show them by signs what he wished his son to be called. And he “asked for a writing table, and wrote, saying, His name is John. And they marvelled all.” By God’s providence Zacharias was given back the power of speech. By the grace of the Holy Spirit he also began to prophesy, and said: “Blessed be the Lord God of Israel; for he hath visited and redeemed his people, and hath raised up an horn of salvation for us in the house of his servant David”; and to the infant he said: “And thou, child, shalt be called the prophet of the Highest: for thou shalt go before the face of the Lord to prepare his ways.”
After our Lord Jesus Christ was born and the shepherds and the Magi had worshipped Him, the lawless King Herod ordered them to slay “all the children that were in Bethlehem, and in all the coasts thereof, from two years old and under” (Matt. 2:16). When Elisabeth learned of this, she fled with her son into the desert. Zacharias remained in Jerusalem and faithfully carried out the duties of high priest. Herod sent soldiers to him with orders to reveal where the infant and his mother were. The father answered that he knew nothing about them, for which he was slain in the temple itself. Elisabeth went on living in the desert with her son and died there. And the child John, guarded by an angel, remained in the desert.
