Today is the Nativity of St. John the Baptist |
The Church celebrates only three birthdays: our Lord’s, our Lady’s, and St. John the Baptist’s. The other saints’ days are heavenly birthdays, when the saint died or was martyred and went to Heaven. John fulfills the prophecy of Malachi, “Behold, I send my messenger before thy face, which shall prepare thy way before thee.” (Malachi 3:1) John was a steward of the mysteries of God.
Every feast has a steward. Every large airplane, every passenger ship, has stewards and stewardesses. An umpire at a baseball game is a steward of the game. John was a steward of the mysteries of God. He was a watershed figure in the Bible. He is the crown of the Old Testament prophets, the last of the Old Testament watchmen, and the first of the New Testament witnesses, witnesses to Jesus. John the Baptist was like the best man at a wedding. Jesus is the Bridegroom, the Church is the Bride, and John the Baptist is the best man. He prepares the way for the Bridegroom, by preaching repentance, and a baptism of repentance.
The Benedictus we say in every Morning Prayer is the Song of Zechariah, John the Baptist’s father. Zechariah is married to Elisabeth, Mary’s cousin. They are far too old to have children, so John’s conception is extraordinary. As soon as he names his son John, Zechariah is filled with the Holy Spirit and blesses the God of Israel. He prophesies that John will go before the face of the Lord to prepare His ways. The name John means “gift of God.” John’s gift will be the dangerous work of being the Forerunner, the one who prepares the way, the ultimate recon mission. He grows up in the desert so he can hear God’s voice and be tough as nails. He eats what is there, locusts and wild honey, and he wears animal skins. He will be a trailblazer, a pioneer and the divine herald of the coming Messiah. The mighty salvation of the world has a forerunner.
John was a man of the desert. He called the shots as God instructed him, and called the best men of the day a “brood of vipers.” John is like a surgeon clearing a clogged heart valve or a pioneer hacking a road through the wilderness or a dentist drilling out a cavity. He is like a man with an air hammer breaking through old pavement, to prepare a new road surface. The hearts of men must be broken and prepared in repentance for the coming of the Anointed One. Not surprisingly, John ends up in prison, where Herod Antipas will eventually have him beheaded. Jesus will say of John that he is even more than a prophet. John fulfills the prophesy of Malachi, “Behold, I send my messenger before thy face…”
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The Church’s vocation, like that of John the Baptist’s, is to point to Jesus. As John prepares to baptize Jesus he says of his cousin what we say at every Mass, “Behold, the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world.” (John 1: 29) The ministers of Christ are stewards of the mysteries of God, to prepare His way before Him. We may ask today whether there is a John the Baptist of our own times. It is entirely possible that few, if any, filled this role like Alexandr Solzhenitsyn, perhaps the greatest prophetic voice of the 20th century. Solzhenitsyn, after WWII, was interred in a gulag for ten years for a slight criticism of an army officer. In the gulag, he came to repentance and conversion. He realized that the dividing line between good and evil, right and wrong, light and darkness, ran right through his own heart. He realized that the race of man, and he himself, could not redeem breakdown and disintegration. “Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world.” Solzhenitsyn put his trust in the incarnate Son of God, the Lamb who is the Shepherd. He went on, as a literary genius and now a Christian, to expose the central flaw of our times, for both East and West, made clear to us in the peasant proverb, “Men have forgotten God.” In his masterpiece, August 1914: the Red Wheel, he brings us all up short with the devastating revelation that the end of the Christian West took place in August of the year 1914, in a war inspired by the demons, in which traditional, conservative, believing Christians, all related to each other in their various royal families, would have at each other for four years of mass slaughter, and rip apart the consensus of the Christian West and tear apart beyond all recognition the cultural and social fabric put in place by centuries of Christian sacrifice. Solzhenitsyn sees the two world wars as one thirty year civil war of Europe tearing itself apart. World War I gave us communist Russia, and World War II gave us Communist China, huge segments of the human race spinning off into a new gnosticism which then devolved further into the gnostic feminism which has torn apart what was left. But Solzhenitsyn ministers to us in great works like his Harvard Commencement Address, in June, 1978, offering us a way forward in a new synthesis transcending materialism, in which Christian theology engages with physics, biology, chemistry, mathematics, and the social sciences, in a new dynamic, to create a new synthesis. This great Address is our agenda as believing Christians for the entire 21st century. And today there is a revolution taking place in physics, biology and chemistry, and in the social sciences too, for those brave enough to cast aside the pathetic burned out shackles of secular humanism, gnosticism and nihilism.
There are other great prophetic figures of the previous century, too many to name here. But we could cite, in the same breath as Solzhenitsyn, a contemporary of great stature. Archbishop Arthur Michael Ramsey writes that “It was in reaction from liberal theology that Karl Barth and his school uttered afresh the message of God’s otherness and sovereignty and His mighty act in the Resurrection, as the war of 1914-1918 was drawing to its close. The Resurrection was the central message of Barth; and he recalled Christians who minds were full of man’s religion, man’s experiences and man’s progress, to the Act of the living God which confronts a race helpless to save itself. Jesus Christ is Lord. This is the Gospel and the meaning of history…(Barth) stirred Christians in every land and tradition to face once more the transcendental and catastrophic themes of the New Testament.” (The Resurrection of Christ, p. 119)
Let us today thank God for St. John the Baptist and to those multitudes who, like Solzhenitsyn and Barth, follow in his footsteps as stewards of the mysteries of God, to prepare the way of the Lord, so that the “day-spring from on high” may visit us, and appear in our minds, our hearts and our service to one another.
“Almighty God, by whose providence thy servant John Baptist was wonderfully born, and sent to prepare the way of thy Son our Saviour by preaching repentance; Make us so to follow his doctrine and holy life, that we may truly repent according to his preaching; and after his example constantly speak the truth, boldly rebuke vice, and patiently suffer for the truth’s sake, through the same thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.” (BCP p. 242)
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RETHREN, in the Primitive Church there was a godly discipline, that, at the beginning of Lent, such persons as stood convicted of notorious sin were put to open penance, and punished in this world, that their souls might be saved in the day of the Lord; and that others, admonished by their example, might be the more afraid to offend.
URSED is the man that maketh any carved or molten image, to worship it.
OW seeing that all they are accursed (as the prophet David beareth witness) who do err and go astray from the commandments of God; let us (remembering the dreadful judgement hanging over our heads, and always ready to fall upon us) return unto our Lord God, with all contrition and meekness of heart; bewailing and lamenting our sinful life, acknowledging and confessing our offences, and seeking to bring forth worthy fruits of penance. For now is the axe put unto the root of the trees, so that every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire. It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God: he shall pour down rain upon the sinners, snares, fire and brimstone, storm and tempest; this shall be their portion to drink. For lo, the Lord is come out of his place to visit the wickedness of such as dwell upon the earth. But who may abide the day of his coming? Who shall be able to endure when he appeareth? His fan is in his hand, and he will purge his floor, and gather his wheat into the bam; but he will burn the chaff with unquenchable fire. The day of the Lord cometh as a thief in the night: and when men shall say, Peace, and all things are safe, then shall sudden destruction come upon them, as sorrow cometh upon a woman travailing with child, and they shall not escape. Then shall appear the wrath of God in the day of vengeance, which obstinate sinners, through the stubbornness of their heart, have heaped unto them, selves; which despised the goodness, patience, and long, sufferance of God, when he calleth them continually to repentance. Then shall they call upon me, (saith the Lord,) but I will not hear; they shall seek me early, but they shall not find me; and that, because they hated knowledge, and received not the fear of the Lord, but abhorred my counsel, and despised my correction. Then shall it be too late to knock when the door shall be shut; and too late to cry for mercy when it is the time of justice. O terrible voice of most just judgement, which shall be pronounced upon them, when it shall be said unto them, Go, ye cursed, into the fire everlasting, which is prepared for the devil and his angels. Therefore, brethren, take we heed betime, while the day of salvation lasteth; for the night cometh, when none can work. But let us, while we have the light, believe in the light, and walk as children of the light; that we be not cast into utter darkness, where is weeping and gnashing of teeth. Let us not abuse the goodness of God, who calleth us mercifully to amendment, and of his endless pity promiseth us forgiveness of that which is past, if with a perfect and true heart we return unto him. For though our sins be as red as scarlet, they shall be made white as snow; and though they be like purple, yet they shall be made white as wool. Turn ye (saith the Lord) from all your wickedness, and your sin shall not be your destruction: Cast away from you all your ungodliness that ye have done: Make you new hearts, and a new spirit: Wherefore will ye die, O ye house of Israel, seeing that I have no pleasure in the death of him that dieth, saith the Lord God? Tom ye then, and ye shall live. Although we have sinned, yet have we an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous; and he is the propitiation for our sins. For he was wounded for our offences, and smitten for our wickedness. Let us therefore return unto him, who is the merciful receiver of all true penitent sinners; assuring ourselves that he is ready to receive us, and most willing to pardon us, if we come unto him with faithful repentance; if we submit ourselves unto him, and from henceforth walk in his ways; if we will take his easy yoke, and light burden upon us, to follow him in lowliness, patience, and charity, and be ordered by the governance of his Holy Spirit; seeking always his glory, and serving him duly in our vocation with thanksgiving: This if we do, Christ will deliver us from the curse of the law, and from the extreme malediction which shall light upon them that shall be set on the left hand; and he will set us on his right hand, and give us the gracious benediction of his Father, commanding us to take possession of his glorious kingdom: Unto which he vouchsafe to bring us all, for his infinite mercy. Amen.
AVE mercy upon me, O God, after thy great goodness: according to the multitude of thy mercies do away mine offences.
UR Father, which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy Name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our trespasses, As we forgive them that trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation; But deliver us from evil. Amen.
URN thou us, O good Lord, and so shall we be turned. Be favourable, O Lord, Be favourable to thy people, Who turn to thee in weeping, fasting, and praying. For thou art a merciful God, Full of compassion. Longsuffering, and of great pity. Thou sparest when we deserve punishment, And in thy wrath thinkest upon mercy. Spare thy people, good Lord, spare them, And let not thine heritage be brought to confusion. Hear us, O Lord, for thy mercy is great, And after the multitude of thy mercies look upon us; Through the merits and mediation of thy blessed Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
After the angel Gabriel had announced to Mary that she was to become the mother of Our Lord, Mary went from Galilee to Judea to visit her kinswoman Elizabeth, soon to be the mother of John the Baptist. This visit is recorded in Luke 1:39-56. Elizabeth greeted Mary with the words, "Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb." Mary burst forth with the song of praise which we call the Magnificat, beginning, "My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord." We are told that even John the Baptist, still unborn, leaped for joy in his mother's womb. Thus we are shown, side by side, the two women, one seemingly too old to have a child, but destined to bear the last prophet of the Old Covenant, of the age that was passing away; and the other woman, seemingly not ready to have a child, but destined to bear the One Who was Himself the beginning of the New Covenant, the age that would not pass away.