Typically, we celebrate the feast days of the saints on the date of their death, their entrance into their heavenly reward. However, there are three people whose birth we celebrate. And, as it happens, we can see these three persons above the altar: Our Lord Jesus Christ, Blessed Mary, the Mother of God, and John the Baptist.
Clearly, John is an important man in the Church’s understanding of salvation history, though I think that we often overlook him. Yet Jesus Himself testified that, of those born of woman, no one was greater than John the Baptist.
So what is it about this man that is so important, and what does his feast day mean to us?
To understand this, we need to understand what is important about the prophets, for John was a prophet, indeed the greatest and last of the prophets. In popular understanding, a prophet predicts the future. This isn’t entirely wrong, but it’s a partial understanding.
The prophets do point to the future, but more specifically, to a future intervention by God—which is to say, toward God’s judgment. In the icons above the altar, we see Christ returning as king and judge, and see that John is pointing to Him. And this awareness of a coming judgment has immediate implications for the present.
When we call to mind that God will judge us—our culture, the rich and the poor, the great and small—our consciences are engaged. We have to ask ourselves: what does God make of my life? Am I prepared to receive God, or are there choices I’m making, duties I’m avoiding, that will make me want to avoid God? Is my culture one that celebrates God or rejects Him, and to what extent am I compromised by that culture?
We see, early in the gospels, John the Baptist pricking consciences. People come to him and ask, “What do I need to do to be prepared to welcome God?” In John’s gospel, we see that Saint Andrew, the brother of Saint Peter, was first a disciple of John the Baptist. When the Son of God appeared, John pointed to Him and said, “Behold the Lamb of God,” and Andrew left John to follow Jesus. Throughout the book of Acts, we see the apostles going out from Jerusalem and frequently encountering groups of people who were disciples of John, who were waiting to receive the news of the gospel and the baptism of fire and the Holy Spirit.
One last point about John is that he embodies the Beatitudes. He was poor in spirit inasmuch as he always points away from himself toward Jesus, the Son of God. Again, in the fourth gospel, he says that Jesus must increase and he, John, must decrease. He hungered and thirsted for justice, and was persecuted to the point of death for the sake of righteousness.
John the Baptist was also meek. He came from a family of priests, and in his day, the priests were often politically very well-connected. But he left the privileges of the priesthood aside to go and live as a poor man in the desert, praying and watching for God. And by these renunciations, his heart became pure, and he was given the grace of seeing God. That is to say, John was the one who witnessed the Holy Spirit descend upon Jesus at His baptism.
So we see that the Church’s celebration of John’s greatness is no mistake.
That leaves the question of what it all means for us. By our baptisms, we are called to become prophetic people. Like John, our mission is to point away from ourselves toward Christ. By a holy life in imitation of John, we bear witness to the fact that God will come to judge, and by this witness, to call those around us to be prepared.
To do this effectively, we may need to find ways to separate ourselves from the perks and conveniences that our culture offers us, since these conveniences often entangle us that culture’s overall mindset, which is largely oblivious of God and the things of God.
By gathering here today, we have taken a good first step: setting aside time to celebrate the gift of God that we have in John’s example, and to prepare ourselves to see and receive the Son of God in the Holy Eucharist.