Saint John the Baptist is such an important saint that he has two feast days – the feast of his nativity, on 24th June, and the feast of his martyrdom on 29th August. Usually the feast of a saint marks the entry of his soul into its eternal reward. The Blessed Virgin and St John are the only saints whose birthdays on earth are marked with solemn festivity. So what is so special about St John the Baptist? The answer, really, is just about everything. First of all, John’s mother Elizabeth was a cousin of the Blessed Virgin. Considerably older than Our Lady, she was certainly past the age of childbearing and was considered barren. As with Our Lord, John’s conception is pre-announced and his name is given by an angel, in this case while his father Zachary was performing his priestly duties in the Temple. The angel informed Zachary that Elizabeth will bear a son whose name must be John and he will go before the Lord in the spirit of Elias, turning many hearts to God and preparing for the coming of the Lord (Lk 1:5-17).
“In the spirit of Elias”. God had promised through the prophet Malachias: “Behold I will send you Elias the prophet, before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord” (Mal 4:5). Saint John is really the very last of the great Old Testament prophets. And the Church has always taught, without defining it as a dogma, that while Our Blessed Lady was sinless from the moment of Her Immaculate Conception, John himself was made immaculate when Mary was pregnant and visiting Elizabeth, and John leapt in Elizabeth's womb on this first encounter with the Word made flesh. If there were a league division of saints, then, St John would appear somewhere at the top of the first division. His holiness and stature are all the greater owing to his profound humility. The whole of Judea will flock to the Jordan to hear him preach and to participate in his ritual baptism. But he is insistent that his whole raison d’être is to prepare the way of one who is infinitely greater than himself. And so he declares: “He must increase but I must decrease” (Jn 3:30). John will decrease to the point of shedding his blood for the Gospel.
We should never confuse humility or meekness with human respect. We commit the sin of “human respect” when we say things we should not say (or perhaps more often than not, we do not say things we should say) in order to please our neighbour. For example, we are with our Catholic friends. The conversation turns to forthcoming elections and, they all say that they intend to vote for a politician whose voting record indicates that he favours abortion, a crime against the sanctity of innocent life which cries to Heaven. We say nothing, because we do not wish to play the party-pooper, to stand out as different or, horror of horrors, to be accused of being “judgmental”. And so, at the end of the conversation, everyone is left with the impression that we are in agreement with them, or at least have no objection.
It probably has to be admitted that the clergy have always been susceptible to the sin of human respect. When the Pharisees and Sadducees – the ecclesiastical aristocracy of Jerusalem – turn up to observe John baptising the Judeans in the Jordan, he calls them a “brood of vipers” and sends them packing (Lk 3:7). Valuing their position and privileges, they have left it to him to call out Herod for his adultery, an undertaking that will lead to his beheading. John is not prone to human respect. In fact, he does not care what anyone thinks of him. He knows that his job is not to get rave reviews in the Jordan Telegraph. His divinely ordained mission is to call sinners to repentance, to “make straight the way of the Lord” (Is 40:3). Had the Sadducees as a caste survived the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A.D. it is quite likely that we should find them today acquiescing by their silence in the secular religion of “Pride”, and turning a blind eye to supposedly pious politicians who give their support to legislation that facilitates the violation of innocent human life. It is impossible to imagine the Baptist doing so.
As we approach the feast that marks the martyrdom of St John, perhaps we should pray that there will be a decrease in the sin of human respect within us, and that the spirit of John the Baptist will increase in the Church, so that in this age of confusion Her prophetic voice may be clear and unambiguous in the service of salvation and sanctification.
Father Julian Large