The greatness of Saint John the Forerunner

Today, the spiritual reading from the handbook speaks of the inherent difficulty of the life of legionaries, and how essential it is to bring the details of legionary work to the meeting for the sake of valuation and evaluation. Indeed, as the handbook points out, without this valuation and evaluation, legionaries may be tempted to spare themselves the difficulties, preferring easier things rather than embracing suffering. In light of this, what we need as legionaries, and indeed as Christians, are examples of suffering with the right spirit. For this, we must continually turn to the lives of the friends of God, the saints, and if we look there regularly, patiently and diligently, we will always find much inspiration.

Yesterday was the feast of the Nativity of Saint John the Forerunner, and it is natural for us to think of the Lord’s testimony concerning this extraordinary man. He said, “No man born of woman was greater than John the Baptist.” We should ponder why it is that the Lord would give this strikingly positive appraisal. When we look at the life and deeds of Saint John, we see a man that endured tremendous sufferings for the sake of the Kingdom of Heaven.

Saint Luke ends his account of the birth of Saint John the Baptist with the simple sentence: “and he was in the desert until the day of his manifestation to Israel.” A simple sentence to be sure, but when we understand the whole story, we see what an abridgement of the facts this is. Saint Luke can, of course, be excused for his terseness. After all, Saint John the Baptist is not his subject. Saint John is only a character in the story of the Lord Jesus.

Yet, what we know from Tradition is much, much more. The first six months of Saint John’s life, before the birth of the Messiah, our Lord Jesus Christ, was probably the only period of peace that he enjoyed. This is so, because we know that, after Jesus’ birth, John’s family was affected by the plot of King Herod to kill all the children in Bethlehem and its environs, who were two years old and younger. John himself was in that group. Saint Elizabeth and the infant John narrowly and miraculously escaped the soldiers of King Herod. The priest Zechariah, Saint John’s father, went, once again, to discharge his service as priest in the Temple. The Sadducees, in league with Herod, knew that Zechariah knew the location of his own son, and they pressed him to reveal it. Zechariah would not, however. Instead, Zechariah preached to them the reality of the coming of the Messiah. Enraged, they attacked him and murdered him in the Temple between the porch and the altar.

In the meantime, St. Elizabeth had taken the infant John into the desert. She was very old and did not live very long. When she died, she had no choice but to leave her still very young son in the hands of Rechabite strangers. John had to continue to live in the desert, because young males in his age group continued to be hunted as long as Herod lived. Furthermore, when Herod the Great died, his son Archelaus continued the policy. It was not until Judea was transferred to direct Roman administration that John was safe to go home. By that time, when he was thirty years old, the Holy Spirit, Who had sanctified him in his mother’s womb, stirred within him, and he began to preach the baptism of repentance.

Even his prophetic ministry, preaching the baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins, in preparation for the coming of the Messiah, was not very long. John denounced and condemned the scandalous life of another son of Herod the Great, Herod Antipas. Antipas arrested John and John spent the rest of his life in prison, eventually being beheaded at the request of the Princess Salome.

Nevertheless, during his short ministry, John accomplished the most important work, the one, single, indispensable thing that he, in the providence of God had to do: he baptized the Lord Jesus Christ, sanctifying the creature of water and making it effective in our own baptism, the means to regeneration and everlasting Divine Life.

In the midst of all his sufferings, John always knew that his circumstances came from the hand of God, not the hands of his enemies. John knew that God was directing his life, lovingly and compassionately, forming him into the greatest prophet who ever lived. John accepted everything that the hand of God did in his life with meekness and love. That is why the Lord Jesus declared John to be “the greatest man ever born of woman.”