Saint John the Baptist

Zecharia Zacharie Father of John the Baptist, a priest of the Temple in the Gospel account of the birth of the Forerunner. h, the father of the Forerunner, was a priest of the family of Abijah, one of those that served in the temple, each in their turn. Elizabeth Élisabeth Mother of John the Baptist and relative of Mary in the account of the Visitation. , his wife, was also a daughter of Aaron, the first high priest of the Law and the origin of the priesthood. Setting aside his other ancestors, who nevertheless were linked to the royal race of David, the Gospel recalls that Elizabeth is a daughter of him whose memory is a pledge of holiness, because she herself, having preciously gathered this glorious heritage, was to transmit it to her son.

But what constituted the true glory of Zechariah and Elizabeth, and raised them in the eyes of the Lord more than this illustrious origin, was not the feeling of noble blood flowing in their veins; it was, on the contrary, to embellish this illustrious birth with the unborrowed luster of their virtues. "They were both righteous," not only before men, who attentively examine external actions, usually judge with severity, and seem to take pleasure only in seeing imperfections everywhere. But this external and apparent justice was also internal and real before God Himself, who penetrates the hearts and the reins, and judges the most secret intentions. The virtue and holiness of these pious children of Aaron were thus the reason for their mutual love, and made them models for spouses.

However, God, who sometimes deprives the righteous in order to exercise their virtues and to be the sole object of their affection and all their hope; God, who had been pleased to lavish His graces and spiritual favors upon Zechariah and Elizabeth, had left them until then in the midst of Israel in a kind of reproach. Wishing to give them to us as models of perseverance in prayer and resignation in deprivation, the Lord had until then appeared deaf to their vows. "They had no son" to whom they could transmit the heritage of the priesthood and the virtues which are its primary condition. They had even long been deprived of all hope in this regard, "because Elizabeth was barren, and they were both advanced in the days of their life."

This barrenness, far from being a curse, was on the contrary full of mystery. Childbearing was not refused to Elizabeth; it was only deferred. Happy barrenness that was reserved to give birth to the Forerunner of the Son of God!

From his conception full of wonders, John was to be the forerunner of Christ. The latter, says Bossuet, was to have a virgin mother; that was his prerogative. And what was there that approached this honor more than to be born of a barren woman, like another Isaac, like a Samson, like a Samuel: these miraculous children of barren women are children of grace and prayer. It is by this that the birth of Saint John the Baptist was consecrated to be the forerunner of that of the Son of God.

The week when the family of Abijah was to perform the service of the sanctuary having arrived, Zechariah left his home to go to the temple "to perform the function of priest before God." As all the priests of a family could not be occupied with the same functions, lots assigned to each of them the office he had to fulfill. God chose this means to call Zechariah into the interior of the temple, in order to offer incense. This kind of sacrifice was the most solemn of the religion, the purest and the most pleasing in the eyes of the Lord.

During these august functions, this "man of desires" let escape from his heart a prayer more ardent than the fire that consumed his sacrifice, and more pleasing to the Eternal than the sweet odor that exhaled from it. "O God," he cried, "may your name be glorified and sanctified in this world that you have created according to your good pleasure; let your kingdom reign; may redemption flourish, and may the Messiah come promptly."

Suddenly an angel appears, standing to the right of the altar. At the sight of the heavenly messenger with dazzling garments, a radiant face, and a majestic and heavenly bearing, Zechariah experiences an extraordinary trouble; the effect of that religious fear with which the soul is occupied when God makes Himself present by any means whatsoever. The impression of divine things makes the soul return to its nothingness; it feels, more than ever, its unworthiness: the terror that accompanies what is divine disposes it to obedience.

As the first effect of the divine presence is fear in the depths of the soul, the first effect of the word brought from God is to reassure the one to whom it is addressed. The angel, seeing the fear of Zechariah, said to him immediately: "Do not fear, Zechariah, for your prayer has been heard; and Elizabeth, your wife, will give you a son whom you shall name John. You will be in joy and rapture, and many will rejoice at his birth; for he will be great before the Lord; he will drink neither wine nor anything that can intoxicate, and he will be filled with the Holy Spirit from his mother's womb. He will convert a great number of the children of Israel to the Lord their God; he will walk before His face in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the fathers toward their children and recall the disobedient to the prudence of the righteous, to prepare for the Lord a perfect people." — "By what shall I know the truth of what you tell me?" replied Zechariah, "for I am old and my wife is advanced in age."

The angel then, to dispel all his doubts, replied to him with these imposing words: "I am Gabriel, one of the spirits standing before God; and I have received a mission to come and speak to you to announce this happy news. And behold, you will be deaf and you will not be able t o speak Gabriel Archangel bearer of the divine ring. , until the day when this happens, because you did not believe in my words which will be fulfilled in their time."

Immediately, the word expires on the lips of Zechariah, his tongue is chained and his ears sealed. The divine omnipotence has made itself felt. He did not want to believe the word of the angel and he opposed it with the resistance of his reason; but he will be punished for it by undergoing a rigorous silence, until the day when the voice of the Word will be revealed to the world.

While the priest was thus conversing with the angel of the Lord, the people were waiting at the door of the temple to receive the blessing prescribed in this circumstance; but hearts were in lively anxiety; it was already noticed with dread that Zechariah was remaining a long time in the sanctuary. What an impression of astonishment and fear he must have produced on the crowd when, coming out of the holy place, he appeared to all eyes bearing on his face, until then so serene and calm, an inexplicable change, mixed with terror and hope, confusion and rapture, the result of the conversation he had had with the envoy of the Most High? But fear penetrated hearts above all when it was noticed that, deprived of speech and struck with deafness, he was obliged to resort to signs to make himself understood. It was thus known that Zechariah had had a mysterious vision in the temple.

The rumor of this event, which one hesitates to call a punishment, so much does it make the wisdom and mercy of God shine; the news of this miracle soon spread in Jerusalem and throughout Judea, and kept minds attentive and impatient to know the outcome; for Zechariah was known to all the people by his priestly functions, by his eminent virtues, and by his reputation for holiness.

Saint Luke makes us notice with care that the holy priest finished his week of service and did not interrupt his august functions in the temple. Now, according to the law of Moses, the double bodily vice with which he was afflicted should have kept him from the altar; but it was not so, because it was evident to all that there was something prophetic and mysterious here.

"When the days of his ministry were accomplished, Zechariah returned to his house," very sad, says Saint Paulinus, and asking God for forgiveness in the secret of his heart.

Elizabeth, informed of what had happened in the temple, either by revelation from above, or by fame, or by what her husband could make her understand, was not long without experiencing the effects of the angel's promise, for she conceived despite her years and her barrenness.

The noble wife of Zechariah did not want to expose to public derision the first signs of a pregnancy which, by reason of her age, would have appeared at least equivocal. But she no longer feared to show herself when her pregnancy, having become incontestable, could no longer excite anything but surprise and admiration. This is the most likely reason that can be given for the conduct she observed in this circumstance. "She therefore kept herself hidden for the space of five months, because this is," she said, "what the Lord has done for me, when He willed to cast His eyes upon me, to take me out of the reproach where I was before men."

"Elizabeth was in her sixth month, when the angel Gabriel was sent from God into a city of Galilee called Nazareth, to a virgin espoused to a man of the house of David whose name was Joseph, and the virgin's name was Mary. And the angel being come in, said unto her: Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with thee: blessed art thou among women. Who having heard, was troubled at his saying, and thought with herself what manner of salutation this should be. And the angel said to her: Fear not, Mary, for thou hast found grace with God. Behold thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and shalt bring forth a son; and thou shalt call his name Jesus. He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the most High; and the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of David his father; and he shall reign in the house of Jacob for ever. And of his kingdom there shall be no end. And Mary said to the angel: How shall this be done, because I know not man? And the angel answering, said to her: The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the most High shall overshadow thee. And therefore also the Holy which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God. And behold thy cousin Elizabeth, she also hath conceived a son in her old age; and this is the sixth month with her that is called barren: because no word shall be impossible with God. And Mary said: Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it done to me according to thy word." And the angel departed from her.

"In those days," continues Saint Luke, that is to say, a few days after the angel had announced to Mary that she would be the mother of God, "Mary rising up, went into the hill country with haste." Mary knew, therefore, that the first design of the eternal Word, in becoming incarnate, was to come to fight and destroy original sin. She rose, therefore, first to the execution of this great design, and, holding hidden in her womb the sovereign remedy of the world, she went with haste to apply it to John the Baptist, whom original sin had already tarnished in the womb of his mother, Saint Elizabeth.

It was therefore through the intercession of Mary that this word of Gabriel concerning Saint John was to be fulfilled: "He shall be filled with the Holy Ghost, even from his mother's womb."

Theophylact is therefore far from the truth when he gives as the purpose of Mary's journey the desire to assure herself of the truth of the angel's word. Many other authors, in assigning as the cause of this action the desire to be of service to Elizabeth, have only half-guessed the true motives that urged the Virgin of Nazareth to direct her steps toward Hebron. However, as grace everywhere only perfects nature, Mary also wished to take part in her cousin's joy, to communicate her own happiness, and thus to show her gratitude to relatives whose protection had surrounded her childhood, and who had long considered her as their daughter.

The place where the young virgin directed her steps was a hill country, situated in the tribe of Judah, and which authors believe to be Hebron, also called Kiriath-Arba, a priestly city, south of Jerusalem, and only seven long hours away from that city. This city was famous for its antiquity and for traditions dear to the Jews; for Abraham had once pitched his tent there; there, David had been crowned king; there, the sepulchers of the patriarchs and the forest of Mamre, where three angels appeared under the terebinth to the father of believers, were still to be seen.

We must say, however, that travelers who have traversed the country and consulted local traditions think otherwise regarding the homeland of the holy Precursor.

Saint Helena, mother of the great Constantine, who gathered all the traditions on this subject a few centuries later, had a church built on the very spot where John the Baptist was born, in a city named Ain or Aën, or Ain-Karim, a priestly city, about two leagues south of Jerusalem. Today it is nothing more than a village called Saint-Jean-du-Désert or Saint-Jean-de-la-Montagne. A short distance away, about two hundred paces, was the country house that Zechariah inhabited during the summer, and where Elizabeth had retired during her pregnancy; it is this house that is believed to be that of the Visitation of the Blessed Virgin. Nothing remains but the ruins of the church that replaced this dwelling where the first meeting and the first manifestation of the incarnate Word took place.

The Venerable Bede, Cardinal Hugo, Eckius, and Clichtoveus think that the city where Mary went to find Elizabeth was none other than Jerusalem.

"Arriving on the slope of a mountain, the small village, called by Christians Saint-Jean-de-la-Montagne, appeared to us on the side of a hill. Twenty minutes away, one finds next to the path some quite considerable ruins, which are called Mer-Sakaria; it is there that Saint Elizabeth lived when she was visited by the Blessed Virgin... While heading toward this village, we found, halfway, a large and beautiful fountain, which Christians call the Fountain of the Virgin, because the Blessed Virgin obviously used its water, since there is no other in the vicinity; the Arabs call it Ain-Karim... We arrived early at the convent, where the most friendly reception awaited us. Above all, I went to the church, accompanied by the Father Guardian and some religious. It is one of the most beautiful in the Holy Land. To the left of the high altar, one descends by a beautiful staircase into the chapel of the Nativity of Saint John the Baptist. It is therefore here that God manifested His mercy upon Saint Elizabeth, by giving her in her old age a son who was to be great before the Lord.

"The sanctuary of the Nativity of Saint John is arranged like that of the Nativity of our Savior. Five white marble bas-reliefs, framed in a black background, and which are about fifteen inches high, represent the main scenes of the life of the Precursor; his birth, his preaching in the desert, his martyrdom, the Visitation, the baptism of Jesus Christ; they are arranged in a circle around the sanctuary. All this is of very beautiful workmanship, and was sent by the King of Naples. Six lamps burn continually in this place. Above there is a marble table where Mass is said. On the altar is a beautiful painting by a Spanish master; it represents the birth of Saint John. In the upper church, there is a painting by Murillo."

Arrived at the priestly city, Mary had herself led to the well-known dwelling of Zechariah. Elizabeth, informed of the unexpected visit of her cousin, came to meet her with great demonstrations of joy. Seeing her coming, the young virgin bowed, and placing her hand on her heart: "Peace be with you," she said, hastening to greet her first, and at the same time she threw herself into her arms.

As soon as Elizabeth heard herself greeted by Mary, her child leaped in her womb; she was filled with the Holy Ghost, and cried out with a loud voice: "Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb. And whence is this to me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me? For behold as soon as the voice of thy salutation sounded in my ears, the infant in my womb leaped for joy. And blessed art thou that hast believed, because those things shall be accomplished that were spoken to thee by the Lord!"

The Word incarnate in the womb of Mary had used the tongue of His mother to speak to His voice, that is to say, to Saint John, still enclosed in the womb of Elizabeth; and Saint John used the ears of his mother to listen to the Word."

Indeed, at the moment when these two holy women, miraculously fruitful, embraced in a close and mysterious clasp, the Savior and the Precursor were separated only by two thin walls, as Saint Bernard says; so is it surprising that the voice stirs and leaps upon hearing and feeling the Word? How could a multitude of wonders not have been wrought in favor of the son of Elizabeth, in the presence of his God, at the word of his Savior, and in the face of Mary?

Thus all the Fathers and Doctors of the Church are unanimous in proclaiming that from this moment the Precursor of Christ received the first touch of grace, was purified of original sin, enjoyed from then on the use of reason, was filled with the Holy Spirit to a very high degree, and enriched with all infused virtues, as befitted his high and sublime mission.

The humble virgin of Nazareth was far from wishing to attribute to her own merits the favors and blessings with which she had been anticipated by the Lord. Elizabeth had hardly ceased speaking, when Mary hastened to trace back to their source the praises, the prerogatives, and the glory that had just been offered to her; she composed, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, this sublime chant which made Bossuet say: What shall I say of this divine canticle? Its simplicity, its height which surpasses my intelligence, invites me to silence rather than to speak.

Saint Elizabeth and Saint John the Baptist were undoubtedly the only ones who could hear the Magnificat pronounced for the first time, with such inspiration, by the voice so sweet, so suave, so virginal, so angelic of Mary. Who will tell the transports that John must have felt within himself while listening again to the voice that had already made him leap? If the mere salutation of the mother of Christ was for him a source of graces and privileges, the richness and extent of which we could not appreciate, what did it not produce in his soul, from then on capable of meriting, a long series of truly divine words, accented with the voice of the most sublime prophetess who ever was?

The Gospel does not tell us in a precise manner if Mary was still in Hebron at the birth of the son of Elizabeth. Origen and Saint Ambrose affirm it positively; the Venerable Bede even says that "she had especially come for that." It is the common sentiment of the commentators. Is it believable, says one of them, that Mary would have left Elizabeth at the moment when John was about to be born, and that she would have left without waiting for the birth of this child of miracle? Was she not rather impatient to behold with her own eyes and to touch with her chaste hands the Precursor of her Son?

It was on March 25th that the Blessed Virgin received the visit of the angel and conceived the Son of God. She did not go immediately to find Elizabeth, but only a few days later, toward the tenth day of the April moon. This is what Saint Luke insinuates. She therefore remained with her cousin the rest of the month of April, all the month of May, and did not return until toward the end of June. The Church, which does nothing without a motive, has placed the feast of the Visitation, and consecrated the memory of the presence of Mary at Elizabeth's, on July 2nd, a day that coincides with the day after the circumcision of Saint John. The reason for this choice is easily guessed: it is because the mother of the Savior said her farewells that day to the father and mother of the Precursor. Moreover, the commentators authorize us rather to extend than to restrict the words of the Evangelist:

"However," says Saint Luke, "the time for Elizabeth to give birth arrived, and she brought forth a son."

The Scholastic History of Peter Comestor recounts, according to the authority of the Book of the Just, or of the Nazarenes, that the son of Zechariah was received at his birth by the most holy Virgin and that he thus had the privilege of having for his first cradle the bosom of her who carried the Word of Life in her womb. Saint Bonaventure tells us, with his tender and naive piety, that Mary took into her arms the son whom Elizabeth had just brought into the world; she clothed him with eagerness, as his position required. This child fixed his gaze upon her, as if he had understood who she was; and when she wanted to offer him to his mother, he inclined his head toward the Virgin, and seemed to find pleasure only in her; Mary caressed him with happiness, held him in her arms, and covered him with her kisses.

"The relatives and neighbors soon learned of the signal grace that God had shown Elizabeth" by removing from her the reproach of her sterility, and by favoring her with a happy delivery, despite her old age. As Zechariah and Elizabeth enjoyed general esteem and affection because of the rank they occupied and the irreproachable holiness of their lives, everyone took part in their happiness and offered them congratulations.

God, says Bossuet, disposes the fabric of his designs with an admirable order. He wanted to make the birth of Saint John the Baptist famous, where that of his Son was also to be celebrated by the prophecy of Zechariah; and it was important to the designs of God that he whom he sent to show his Son to the world be illustrated from his birth: and behold, under the pretext of ordinary civility, God gathers those who were to be witnesses to the glory of John the Baptist, to spread it, and to remember it. For "everyone was in admiration"; and the wonders that were seen to appear at the birth of John the Baptist "spread throughout the whole neighboring country: and all those who heard the account kept it in their hearts, saying: What do you think this child will be? For the hand of God is visibly with him."

Now, the eighth day following the birth of a newborn was for the Jews a day of feast and rejoicing: for the child then received the sign of the covenant that God had given to Abraham by prescribing circumcision for him.

The priests and relatives of Zechariah, who were to circumcise the child, or honor this solemn circumstance with their presence, were therefore gathered according to custom. It was judged that a child born under such happy auspices should be worthy to bear his father's name, just as he was to inherit his goods and his dignity. They wanted to give John a name according to the custom of the world; but John was a citizen of heaven: that is why a name had been brought to him from on high. It was not a family name, but a prophet's name, says Saint Ambrose. The godfather and godmother had agreed to call him Zechariah. The latter, handing the child to Elizabeth, announced to her that they had given him his father's name. But the mother, to whom no doubt a revelation had been made from on high, spoke up and said: "It shall not be so, but he shall be called John." They replied to her: "There is no one of this name in your family." They were already surprised by Elizabeth's response.

However, Zechariah had remained until now the silent witness of everything that was happening before his eyes. While joy brightened all faces, while hope shone on all the brows of his friends and relatives, and while all mouths burst into thanksgiving or words of admiration, Zechariah was still struck with mutism. He followed with his gaze, with anxiety, everything that was being done; unable to gather the words that came from the lips of those present, he sought to penetrate their thoughts by reading in their eyes. He was not unaware that he had a role to fulfill in this circumstance; seeing everything that the angel had predicted and announced to him being accomplished to the letter, he was astonished to feel his tongue still chained. They no doubt noticed his anxiety, and they had the idea of questioning him by signs and taking him as the arbiter of the name that should be given to his son. Then "he asked for tablets, and he wrote these words: John is his name. All those present were struck with a new admiration." But it was soon to reach its peak.

Hardly has Zechariah manifested his faith by writing the name that must be given to his son by order of God, when immediately his mouth opens and his tongue is loosened. Obedience makes him recover the speech of which he had been deprived in punishment for his resistance. But when his voice is returned to him, he no longer makes only the sound of a human voice heard; for, filled with the Holy Spirit, happy to finally be able to give free rein to the transports of his soul, he abandons himself to prophetic inspiration. Happy home of Zechariah and Elizabeth, where were sung for the first time, in the presence of the Voice of the Lord and under the inspiration of the Word of God, both this incomparable canticle of Mary, the happiest of mothers, and the enthusiastic hymn of Zechariah, the most fortunate of fathers! In order that these two songs of gratitude and love intoned at Hebron, one at the first manifestation of Christ and the other at the birth of his Precursor, be constantly repeated until the end of ages, the Church wants "day to announce this word to day, and night to give knowledge of it to night; there is no mouth or tongue that does not make its accents resound. Its sound has spread throughout the whole earth; its words are repeated to the ends of the world." At the decline of day, the Church sings the canticle of the Virgin; and the echo of the sanctuary has not yet ceased to repeat its last accents, when already she begins again the hymn of Zechariah to invite the soul to revive its confidence and to redouble its fervor, in order to worthily finish "the office of praises" of which it pays tribute to the Most High, at the moment when the dawn, forerunner of the sun, as John was of Christ, the true light, dissipates and chases before it the darkness of the night.

"Blessed be the Lord," cries Zechariah, "blessed be the God of Israel, because he has visited and redeemed his people, and has raised up for us a power of salvation in the house of David his servant, just as he had announced by the mouth of his holy Prophets since the beginning of the ages; that one day he would save us from our enemies and from the hand of all those who hate us, by showing mercy to our fathers and remembering his holy covenant. He swore an oath to Abraham our father; he swore to him that he would give himself to us, so that being free from all fear and delivered from our enemies, we might serve him in holiness and justice, walking in his presence all the days of our life."

"And you, little child, you shall be called the prophet of the Most High, for you shall walk before the face of the Lord to prepare his ways, to give his people the knowledge of salvation, so that they may obtain the remission of their sins, through the bowels of the mercy of our God, according to which this rising sun has visited us from on high, to enlighten those who were buried in the darkness and shadows of death, and to guide our steps into the way of peace."

The miracles of grace were added one to another with a marvelous sequence. Thus the Gospel observes that all "those who lived in the neighboring places were seized with fear. The report of it spread throughout the whole country of the mountains of Judea. And all those who heard these wonders kept them in their hearts, and said among themselves: What do you think this child will one day be? For the hand of the Lord was with him." Zechariah was the only one who had the answer to this question; the archangel had taught him that his son "would be great before God." This greatness he was about to inaugurate.

Moses had ordered the Jews to consecrate their firstborn sons to the Lord, leaving them the faculty of redeeming them by means of a ransom of five silver shekels which they offered to the priests. But the children of Levi were to remain attached to the service of the altar; they could not therefore be redeemed by their parents.

The days having passed when the mother of John had to occupy herself with presenting a sacrifice to be declared purified of the legal defilement that mothers contracted in their childbirth, Elizabeth set out for Jerusalem, accompanied by her spouse, and carrying in her arms the holy Precursor whom she was going to consecrate irrevocably to the Lord. The relatives and friends who had rejoiced at the birth of this child, who had been witnesses of the miracles already accomplished and observed that "the hand of the Lord was with him," could not fail to gather to form a procession for Zechariah and Elizabeth in this circumstance.

John was therefore carried by his parents into this same temple of Jerusalem, recently still the theater of the apparition of the angel Gabriel and the miracle that had announced his birth. Elizabeth, stopping in the part of the temple reserved for persons of her sex, offered the priests a lamb to be immolated as a holocaust, and a young dove as a sacrifice for sin, in order to thus satisfy the law of purification. As for Zechariah, taking into his arms the son that God had given him in his mercy, he advanced into the interior of the temple reserved for the priests, renewed the offering that he had already made in the secret of his heart, and presented him to his brothers in the priesthood to have his name inscribed in the register intended to establish the descent of the children of Aaron, and to verify his rights to the service of the altar.

The son of Zechariah received, in this circumstance, a triple character of holiness; for he was presented as the firstborn of his mother, just as Moses had prescribed; as the son of a pontiff, he was offered for the service of the temple and the altar, and destined to one day fulfill the functions of a priest, according to the prescriptions of the law and the intentions of his parents. Finally, he was consecrated as a Nazarene, according to the order of the angel who had announced "that he would drink neither wine nor any intoxicating liquor." Now, the law said on this subject: "He shall be Holy, letting the hair of his head grow. During all the time of his separation, he shall be Holy and consecrated to the Lord." The Nazarenes were among the Israelites what religious are among Christians. Their institution, which one could embrace without distinction of sex, for a time or forever, had God himself for its author.

Elizabeth and Zechariah had seen with regret the humble Virgin who carried in her womb the blessed fruit, hope and salvation of the world, depart from their hospitable home; but their hearts had not separated from her. Their vows and their blessings had followed Mary to Nazareth. Zechariah had watched over the youth of Mary, with paternal solicitude, during all the years she spent at the temple before being given as a spouse to the chaste Joseph. Could he not follow her with his attention and his love even into the artisan's workshop, especially since he knew the secret of her mysterious pregnancy? The duties of his office called him frequently to Jerusalem, where the children of Israel flocked every day coming from all points of the country. He could not therefore fail to maintain intimate and frequent relations with the mother of his Savior and with Joseph whom he had given her as a guardian of her virtue. Could the holy spouses of Nazareth have had secrets for a relative, a protector, a priest, to whom God had revealed the whole mystery and whom he had endowed with the gift of prophecy?

It is therefore impossible to suppose that Zechariah and Elizabeth had not been informed of the time when Mary was to bring into the world the Expectation of the nations; they could not therefore be any more ignorant of the journey she was obliged to make to Bethlehem to obey the edict of Caesar. When the shepherds had recounted the wonders that had been announced to them by the angels, and of which they had been witnesses at the grotto, Zechariah and Elizabeth were no doubt in admiration like all those who heard the account; for their dwelling was not a half-day's walk from Bethlehem; but we cannot believe that they limited themselves to a sterile admiration, as the Jews appear to have done.

Undoubtedly, and we repeat it again, we can only offer conjectures here; history fails us in this as in many other points. But what was to be done according to the customs and holy prescriptions of a nation that had God himself as its legislator was the rule of conduct for Zechariah and Elizabeth. Moreover, did they need to consult ordinary customs in such a circumstance, when charity, affection, piety, and admiration drew them by a transport of gratitude toward the Lord who had already anticipated them with his visit? Bethlehem was on the road that led from Hebron to Jerusalem, where Zechariah was frequently called by his piety no less than by his duties.

It is therefore not strange to believe and to assert that from the manger which served as his throne, in the midst of the swaddling clothes that took the place of purple, in the stable which he made his palace, Jesus Christ counted, among his first adorers, Zechariah and Elizabeth, eager to present the holy Precursor to him to pay homage with what they held most dear and precious in the world, and to draw upon him new blessings.

We could not say how long Zechariah and Elizabeth remained in Bethlehem with the Holy Family, to whose needs they undoubtedly hastened to provide. But the ceremony of the circumcision of the divine child must have been a new reason for them to be there. It is known, in fact, that on this occasion, there was a gathering of relatives and friends. Now, what relatives and friends could have lent their assistance to Joseph and Mary in the city of Bethlehem, where they had been able to find no other asylum than a stable? Zechariah and Elizabeth must therefore have been there when the Son of God was subjected to circumcision, thus proclaiming that he was making himself a slave to the law.

It was five days after the circumcision, and the thirteenth after the birth of the Son of God, according to the sentiment most commonly accepted by the doctors, that the Magi came to lay their offerings at the feet of the son of Mary. We will not hazard any assertion regarding the presence of Zechariah and Elizabeth at this touching and mysterious adoration of the sons of the Orient, prostrating themselves humbly before the manger of Bethlehem. However, there is no reason to doubt that Zechariah was informed of the arrival of the Magi; for he was counted among the chief priests. Now, Herod had ordered the Sanhedrin to be fully assembled to consult it regarding the place where the Messiah was to be born; he had ensured that not a single one of the chief priests, not a single one of the scribes or doctors who interpreted the law and explained it to the people, was missing. Et congregans omnes principes sacerdotum et scribas populi. Thus, everything leads us to believe that when Joseph and Mary presented themselves at the entrance of the temple, forty days after the birth of Jesus, in order to satisfy the prescriptions of the law, the priest Zechariah was there to receive them, introduce them, and serve as their intermediary; and that Elizabeth accompanied them, carrying the holy Precursor.

Besides the inductions that we would have to provide regarding this affirmation, we can invoke here the authority of history. Those who have written the life of the Mother of God recount, in fact, that presenting herself to satisfy the precept of purification, she placed herself in the temple on the side assigned to virgins. The priests wanted to remove her from it; but Zechariah opposed them, maintaining that her childbirth had not infringed upon her virginity, and by this he drew upon himself their hatred, and later their vengeance.

The father of the Precursor was therefore a witness to the happiness of Simeon, that holy old man whom a close friendship, as well as the functions of the same priesthood, made dear to Zechariah. He heard him prophesy his canticle of thanksgiving to the Lord, and predict to Mary that her child would be for the ruin and resurrection of many in Israel; a prediction that was soon to begin to be fulfilled regarding him.

However, Herod sent his most devoted satellites to Bethlehem, designated by the doctors of Israel as the place of the birth, and, consequently, of the residence of the Messiah; and he ordered them to put to death, in that city and in the neighboring places, without delay, without pity, and without distinction, all male children from the age of two years and under, according to the time that had been indicated to him by the Magi. By immolating all the children from the age of two years, he thought he would be sure to avert the peril he feared. This massacre of the children of Bethlehem, according to the opinion of authors, took place only about two years after the birth of the Savior; it is mentioned by Macrobius, who adds that one of Herod's own sons fell under the blows of the emissaries, too faithful executors of his orders. Fourteen thousand children, some say, were thus victims of the fury of this tyrant.

But this general massacre did not give the despot the certainty of having killed the one he regarded as a rival and competitor for his throne; having become suspicious to excess, he wanted to kill the son of Zechariah as well. The wonders he had heard recounted regarding the conception and birth of John were indeed capable of making him pass in his suspicious mind for the Messiah, since the Jews themselves later shared this persuasion. He therefore gave express orders to have the holy Precursor slaughtered as well; but, this time again, God did not permit its execution.

This tyrant therefore sent soldiers to find his father Zechariah, saying to him: "Where have you hidden your son?" He replied in these terms: "By the God whose priest I am and whom I serve in his temple, I do not know where my son is." And the satellites went to report this to Herod. "What," said this prince in anger, "is his son to reign over Israel?" And he sent his servants to Zechariah, with orders to repeat to him: "Tell the truth: where is your child? Do you not know that your blood is under my hand?" And the assassins left and reported these words to Zechariah. "God is my witness," he replied, "that I do not know where my son is. As for you, shed my blood, you can; God will receive my soul, for you will shed innocent blood."

Herod had until then had respect for Zechariah; but was this respect capable of always imposing silence on the anger and vengeance of a tyrant who had, in cold blood, slaughtered two of his sons and massacred the dearest of his wives? He counted, moreover, on the silence or connivance of the Jews, to whom the holy old man had become odious for having spoken of the virginity of the Mother of Christ. Herod therefore pushed impiety and fury to the point of having him pursued into the sacred enclosure where this holy pontiff exercised functions that should have protected him: Zechariah was massacred between the temple and the altar. Tertullian reports that one could still see, in his time, stains of Zechariah's blood imprinted in indelible characters on the pavement where this sacrilegious homicide had been accomplished.

Thus died this illustrious priest; his virtues had made him worthy of martyrdom, and he deserved to be praised by the Holy Spirit himself. Father of the greatest of simple mortals and of the most glorious of the Prophets, he was himself the last echo of the prophetic spirit that had animated until then the aged priesthood of Aaron, and enlightened the expiring synagogue. The Christian Church counts him among its Saints, and honors his memory on November 5. The Greeks regard Saint Zechariah as a priest, a prophet, and a martyr. Usuard, Ado, and other Latins also venerate him as a prophet on November 5; and the Roman Martyrology joins Elizabeth, his wife, with him.

The priests went to the temple at the hour of prayer; but Zechariah did not present himself to meet them to offer them his blessing, according to custom. They refrained from greeting him and praising the Most High. Noticing also that they were slow to open for them, they feared to enter. However, one of them, bolder, advanced; but he returned to announce to the others that Zechariah had been killed. At these words, they determined to enter; they saw what had happened, and noticed that the paneling of the temple was groaning and torn from top to bottom. The body of the victim was not found; but his blood spilled in the vestibule had become like stone. The priests, seized with fear, left the enclosure and announced to the people that Zechariah had been put to death. At this news, all classes of the people went into mourning, and they wept for three days and three nights. After these three days, the priests held a council to give him a successor. The lot fell on Simeon.

While the fury of Herod sought to satisfy itself on Zechariah, Elizabeth, deprived of support and backing, and not daring to implore any human help, for fear of seeing her precious deposit taken from her, fled, carrying in her arms and pressing against her heart the child of the promise; she asked the mountains and the rocks for an unknown retreat and a protective shelter for her son. It is said that, in her sorrow and abandonment, this mother, desolate but nevertheless confident and resigned, did not fear to implore from the rocks of the desert a grace that would have been refused to her by the satellites of the tyrant, and that, upon her prayer, God offered her an asylum by opening the sides of a rock that closed back over her. The Lord entrusted the mother and the child to the care and protection of an angel. It is added that Elizabeth died forty days later.

John, persecuted, pursued, and vowed to death from his childhood, had miraculously avoided the murderous sword that earned the children of Bethlehem the happiness of shedding their blood first for Jesus Christ. However, he was not to be deprived of the glory of martyrdom for that.

Deprived of a father whom God seemed to have given him to prepare him worthily for his high destiny; abandoned, not yet three years old, by a mother worthy of having a son proclaimed without equal by Truth itself, the holy Precursor could not enjoy for long the delicious embraces of the one, nor receive from the other the teachings of virtues, science, and holiness that made her the glory of Israel.

But "the hand of the Lord was with him," adds Saint Luke; and his Providence watched over his days. God, who feeds the birds of the sky every day, had formerly provided miraculously for the needs of the son of Hagar, who was not the child of the promise; he had fed, for forty years, an entire people in an arid desert; and, later, he entrusted to a raven the care of bringing to the first Elijah his daily bread. He also wanted to protect the days of the son of Zechariah, and he charged his angels to feed and raise him.

According to the thought of Saint John Chrysostom and Saint Augustine, God seems to have acted toward the Precursor as he did toward the first man; when he had created Adam in the plain of Damascus, he transported him immediately into paradise to perfect and protect him. He also put John in the desert as in a paradise; it is there, in fact, that God perfects his Saints by giving them an idea of his glory, which one can only contemplate in retreat. He did not want to have the preacher of truth raised in the midst of the world; for it is not known in the world, and especially in palaces. It is thus that he withdrew Moses from the court of Pharaoh, where he was raised too delicately, and sent him into the desert of Midian.

"What God does in this child is unheard of," says Bossuet. "He who, from his mother's womb, had begun to enlighten Saint John the Baptist and to fill him with his spirit, took hold of him from his childhood. What must one not think of a young child whom one sees all of a sudden, after the great brilliance that his miraculous birth made, disappear to be alone with God, and God with him? Far from the commerce of men, he had only that with heaven. Who would not admire this profound retreat? What did this God who was in him not say to him? One must not, therefore, be surprised if the Gospel says of him these words well worthy of note: 'So the child grew and became strong in spirit, and he lived in the desert until the day of his manifestation in Israel.'"

The Gospel does not make known to us the deserts where Saint John the Baptist spent his life, until it pleased the Lord to send him to preach. But tradition has preciously gathered everything that could put one on the tracks and make one follow the steps of the one who was preparing the ways for the Messiah.

Antonio Aranda, a religious of the Order of Saint Francis, who had explored the Holy Land with great care, recounts that the Precursor lived in three different places. Five miles from Jerusalem, says this author, is a small town that possesses a temple built on the very place where the house of Zechariah and Elizabeth was located. One visits there a chapel famous for the birth of Saint John the Baptist. Not far from there is another church that is also said to have been a house of Zechariah; it is believed to be the place where the Blessed Virgin went to visit Elizabeth. At a distance of one mile is a narrow and deep valley. This valley is backed by a rock in which one sees a cave carved into the rock. It is in this cave, it is said, that John spent his childhood. This is the first desert inhabited by the Precursor; it is six miles from Jerusalem.

Not far from this grotto, located in the valley of the Terebinth, is a small eminence dominated by a rock. Local traditions, according to modern travelers, say that the holy hermit addressed the people from the top of this rock, which still bears today the name of the Chair of Saint John the Baptist.

Having reached a more advanced age, tradition also says, he withdrew to another place, and buried himself in a solitude near Hebron, eight miles south of Jerusalem. It is there that he lived when the voice of God ordered him to go and begin his mission.

By the Lord's command, he came into a vast desert on this side of the Jor Jourdain River miraculously crossed by the Hebrews. dan, not far from Jericho; this is the third desert that served as his retreat.

John Moschus reports, on the faith of a revelation, that Jesus Christ came several times to visit Saint John in a desert named Samsas, located about a mile beyond the Jordan. Saint Bonaventure says that John inhabited a desert not far from the place where the Hebrews, under the leadership of Joshua, miraculously crossed the Jordan on their return from Egypt. If we are to believe this pious doctor, the child Jesus, returning from exile with Mary and Joseph, went to see his Precursor, already given over to a solitary and arduous life.

"With what eagerness," he says, "and what joy the son of Zechariah received this august visit! What must his happiness have been! The Holy Family would have stayed some time with Saint John, would have shared his frugal meal, and after having showered him with ineffable blessings, would have said goodbye, leaving him to his holy contemplations!"

"Saint John," says Peter of Blois, "preferred the solitude of the desert to the solicitudes of the world, peace to noise, tranquility to tumult; he knew that flight and distance from men were his strongest safeguard against the contagion of vices." However, we cannot doubt that he sometimes left his desert to come to Jerusalem to satisfy the precept of the law. Moses had prescribed to the Jews to present themselves each year before the Eternal to offer him the tribute of their adorations; Jesus Christ himself conformed to this order, as Saint Luke teaches us. No reason authorizes us to believe that John the Baptist should have been exempt from it. For, as a Nazirite, as a priest, as a prophet, and above all as the Precursor of the Messiah, he was bound to observe the holy prescriptions of the law. We are therefore permitted to suggest that at the solemnity of Pentecost or the Feast of Weeks, at the Feast of Tabernacles, and on the occasion of the Passover, the son of Zechariah left his solitude, mingled no doubt in the crowd of the people, and went to present to the Lord adorations in spirit and in truth. His Nazirite hair, his austere face, his strange clothing, did not fail to fix the gaze and attention upon him. Pious souls will love, in these circumstances, to see him meet sometimes at the temple, and eat the Passover with Jesus, Mary, and Joseph; they will imagine the sweet exchanges, the holy conversations that must have taken place between Christ and his Precursor; for nothing opposes this idea, which is more than a fiction; it is not only plausible, but one would find all sorts of probabilities for it."

He who was "the true light" descended from heaven to "enlighten every man coming into this world" and to manifest himself to all flesh, remained until then in the deepest oblivion. Despite the wonders of his birth, revealed first by the angels, then recounted by the shepherds, and soon divulged everywhere by the Magi and by the very furies of Herod; despite the short but luminous manifestation he had made of himself in the temple to the doctors themselves, Jesus Christ, the son and heir of David, the Messiah, the Savior, who had for so long been the object of the expectation of the nations, still remained in the deepest oblivion. He shone, however, but in the midst of darkness, and the darkness did not understand him; he was in the world, and this world, the work of his hands, did not know him; he had come among his own, but his own did not receive him.

Thus, the scepter having escaped from the hands of Judah, the principality taken away from the nation, the weeks of Daniel elapsed, the country in ruins, the time arrived when everyone was waiting for the liberator, the fulfillment of the prophecies, nothing had been capable of fixing the attention of the children of Abraham on Him in whom this privileged race was to be blessed. Already more than thirty years had passed without the world deigning to occupy itself with Jesus, reputed to be the son of an unknown artisan, himself devoted to an arduous and dishonorable trade, enclosed in a narrow workshop, inhabiting an unknown village; the Son of God, equal and consubstantial to the Father, the Word made flesh and clothed in the form of a slave, awaited the moment fixed for his manifestation in Israel. Coming to save the human race that pride had lost, he thus wished to heal and redeem it by his own abasement. It is for this that he consecrated his whole life in Nazareth to an oblivion as instructive and as meritorious, perhaps, as the glorious humiliations of Calvary.

But there were deep and mysterious motives for this conduct of divine Providence. The speech of each of us needs a clear and resonant voice to be better heard; thus the Word of God made flesh needed the testimony of John, so that men might be less scandalized by it. Also, the authority of John served Jesus Christ to justify himself not only before the simple, but also in the face of the envious and those who were voluntarily scandalized.

John the Baptist, adds Saint Augustine, mysteriously fulfilled the role of the voice; but he was not the voice alone; for every man who announces the Word is also the voice of the Word. Indeed, what the sound of our mouth is with regard to the word we have in our mind, is also what every pious soul is toward the Word of whom it is said: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God; he was in the beginning with God." What august words, and even what solemn voices the thought conceived in the heart produces! What illustrious preachers the Word who dwells in God brings forth! It is he who sent the patriarchs, the Prophets, and the numerous procession of all those who spoke of him with such brilliance. The Word, remaining always in the bosom of the Father, sent voices; and, following these numerous voices that came before him, he arrived himself alone as on his chariot, with his voice, in his flesh. Gather then, as into one, all these voices that preceded the Word, and put them all in the person of John the Baptist. He was by himself the complete recapitulation, the august and mysterious personification of all these voices. It is for this that he is called properly the Voice, for he was like the figure, the mysterious emblem of all these voices.

Saint John "was not himself the light by essence; but he had come to bear witness to the light"; and such was the sublime character of his mission that the doctors have not feared to say that it was necessary that he bear witness to the light, and that in the order, or at least in the execution of the divine decrees, the Savior of the world, God though he was, needed the testimony of Saint John, and that this testimony was necessary for the establishment of our faith. Now, the Savior himself acknowledged it when he said to the Jews: "If I bore witness of myself, you would say," though unjustly, "that my testimony is not admissible; but here is another who bears witness of me." For, according to the thought of Saint John Chrysostom, explaining this passage literally, this other, of whom Jesus Christ spoke, was Saint John, his Precursor. Moreover, in the order of divine decrees, the testimony of Saint John was necessary for the establishment of our faith; for the same evangelist, who teaches us that John came to bear witness to the light, immediately provides the reason: "That all might believe through him." From which it follows that our faith in Jesus Christ is originally founded on the testimony of this great Saint, since indeed it is through him that we have believed; through him that the way of salvation was first revealed to us; in a word, through him that we are Christians.

He did not speak of himself, says Saint John Chrysostom, but he revealed the mysteries of Him in whose name he came. It is for this that he is called an angel. This name, under which the Precursor designated himself according to the Prophet, means nothing other than messenger, ambassador; it does not necessarily indicate the nature of the celestial spirits, ordinarily called angels; but it makes known an august function, which God deigns sometimes to entrust to mortals. It is thus that the prophets Haggai and Malachi are designated under this name, and that all priests, in general, are called "angels of the God of hosts."

John the Baptist did not have the celestial nature of the angels, as some of the Jews believed, and even Christians illustrious for their science, like Origen; for they claimed that the son of Zechariah was none other than an angel, incarnate, like the Son of God, to be his precursor and to serve him under the same form of a slave that he had also deigned to assume. It is to refute this error that the evangelist Saint John says expressly, from the beginning of his book, that the Precursor sent by God was a man.

However, by a privilege of grace, John was an angel; for God had sent him as a herald to bring men to Jesus Christ. — Similar to the celestial spirits, he had had no childhood, since, from his mother's womb, he was sanctified, endowed with the spirit of prophecy and the use of reason; indeed, he knew from then on, greeted, and adored his God with a transport of joy. — By his life, which was but a continual fast, says Saint Basil, he seemed to belong to the nature of the angels. — If, according to Saint Bernard, the chaste man is comparable to the angels by his happiness, and surpasses them by his virtue, the son of Zechariah must occupy one of the most glorious and highest places in the celestial hierarchy; for he drew, so to speak, chastity from God, who willed to make him born under exceptional and entirely miraculous conditions. — The property of the angels is to see the face of God unceasingly; now, since he had received in his mother's womb the visit of the Son of God, did John the Baptist cease for a single instant to live in his presence, to stand before him, and to serve him as the angels stand before God and serve him? — He was, according to the opinion of most doctors, confirmed in grace like the angels, for he never let himself fall into any fault. The austerity of his life, the severity of his penance, his deprivations in terms of food, clothing, rest, and sleep, which made his existence a continual martyrdom, obtained for him this privilege that we envy the angels. That is why Saint John Chrysostom says that his life was entirely angelic; he lived on earth as if he had been in heaven. Triumphing over the necessities of life, he followed a career that one cannot admire enough; for, unceasingly occupied with orison, prayer, and the praises of the Lord, he avoided all human society, and God alone was the object and the end of his conversations. — The angels of a higher order teach those who are below them; they purify, enlighten, and perfect men; this is also what John the Baptist did, according to what the angel Gabriel had announced to Zechariah: "He will convert a great number of the children of Israel to the Lord their God; he will walk before him in the virtue and spirit of Elijah, to convert the hearts of the fathers toward their children, to bring back the incredulous to the prudence of the just, and to prepare for the Lord a perfect people." — Finally, a last character that made Saint John similar to the angels is that he had, like them, no other master than the Holy Spirit. It was through his care that he knew the deepest mysteries, not according to the limits of a human intelligence, but with all the penetration of a celestial spirit. This is what Saint Ambrose and Saint John Chrysostom teach. It is at the school of the Holy Spirit that John received the understanding of the Scriptures and even the power to speak and write with the authority of the sacred authors. It is there that he drew the science and the zeal that were necessary for him as a doctor and as a preacher, to reconcile to Christ the faith of the entire world.

After these general considerations, proper to shed more light on the life of the holy Precursor, let us resume the thread of his history.

We know, in a general way, that the Savior began first by practicing, and only then by teaching. But in this also, John the Baptist had to be his precursor. Before raising his voice to call men to penance, he had practiced it himself to the highest degree; before teaching virtue, he had followed its most arduous paths. Indeed, he was clothed in camel's hair and, according to the custom of the Nazirites, he had a leather belt around his loins, a sign and emblem of mortification and penance. This exterior, enhanced by long, wavy hair as the Nazirites wore, and which recalled the costume of the ancient Prophets, was in itself already a sermon. For, as Saint Gregory remarks, the coarseness of Saint John's clothes was a proof of his mortification and above all of his rare humility. One does not, in fact, put on precious clothes except for a motive of vainglory and with the design of appearing more honorable than others; the proof results from this: that no one attaches importance to being dressed richly when he is not to be seen, and that he does not seek to appear. Also, among the causes of the reprobation incurred by the bad rich man, Jesus Christ takes care to highlight the splendor of his clothes; and in enumerating the reproaches with which he overwhelms the Pharisees, he mentions the luxury of their flowing robes, adorned with magnificent fringes. On the contrary, in praising his Precursor, he asks if one has seen him dress with softness. Scripture shows us everywhere that the opulence of clothes irritates the Lord, while abject clothes appease his anger.

By his way of dressing, Saint John resembled Elijah, whose memory had not ceased to be alive among the Jews. One even saw in this new prophet a virtue much more admirable than in the one from Tishbe; for if the latter was formerly dressed as the son of Zechariah is today, he still inhabited cities and lived ordinarily like other men; while John dwelt in solitude from the cradle, and took his food in such small quantity that the Son of God could say of him, as a thing known to all, that he neither ate nor drank.

Was it, moreover, food that the wild honey and the locusts with which he sustained his body? For, not only did he not feed on bread and wine, nor on the flesh of animals, birds, or fish that he would have had the faculty of finding in the desert or in the Jordan; but, according to Clement of Alexandria, he made use of neither the berries of trees, nor the seeds of plants, nor vegetables.

It is commonly admitted that Saint John ate locusts, a vulgar and common enough food that the law of Moses contained provisions on this subject, by ranking them among the number of pure animals.

However, this opinion, although generally credited, is far from gathering the unanimous assent of authors; and those who seem to have best understood and explained the word of the Gospel say formally that the food of Saint John consisted of buds of plants and young stems of trees. This is the meaning of the Ethiopian version; what Saint Athanasius and Clement of Alexandria say formally; it is also the sentiment of Saint Isidore of Pelusium, of Nicephorus, of Cajetan, of Bochart, etc.

This last author, in the description he makes of Palestine, says that there are on the banks of the Jordan herbs known under the name of aerides, and of which the monks made their food. — It is thus that we read in the life of Saint Hilarion, that his food consisted of some figs and the juice of herbs.

The inhabitants of the country, founded on local traditions, always so vivid in the East, take pleasure in showing pilgrims to the Holy Land a shrub of which the holy Precursor formerly made his food: it is the carob tree.

"The poor people feed on it, they chew the pulp or mix it with water. Among the trees that one notices on the hill where the grotto of Saint John is found, there are still today several carob trees. This tree is called in German Saint John's Bread Tree, precisely because it is believed that Saint John fed on its fruits. It is also the food of which it is spoken in the story of the Prodigal Son, who would have been very glad to satisfy himself with it with the pigs.

"Successor of the prophets Elijah and Elisha, who lived on herbs and roots in the grottoes of Mount Carmel, Saint John was therefore the first anchorite of Christianity, and his example was soon followed by thousands of others. From the first centuries, these deserts were populated by his pious imitators."

This rude and rigorous life, says Bossuet, was not unknown in the old law. One sees there, in its prophets, the Nazirites, who did not drink wine. One sees there, in Jeremiah, the Rechabites who, not content with depriving themselves of this liquor, neither plowed, nor sowed, nor cultivated the vine, nor built houses, but lived in tents. The Lord praises them through his prophet Jeremiah for having been faithful to the commandment of their father Jonadab, and promises them, as a reward, that their institute will never cease. The Essenes, in the time of the Savior himself, held much to it. The prophetic life that appears in Elijah, in Elisha, in all the Prophets, was full of austerities similar to those of John the Baptist, and was spent in the desert, where they lived nevertheless in society with their families.

But that one should never have sequestered oneself from the world, and devoted oneself to a rigorous solitude, as much and as early as John the Baptist, with such frightful food, exposed to the insults of the air, and having no retreats but the rocks, for one does not speak to us of tents or pavilions, without help, without servants, and without any maintenance, is something of which one had yet no example.

At first glance, it seems strange and extraordinary that the herald of the Gospel, the messenger sent by God himself to prepare the good news, should begin his career by preaching penance. Why did he not announce joy instead? It is because in the state of servitude in which they groaned, the children of Jacob were waiting for a liberator who would occupy himself solely, or at least mainly, with restoring them to their political liberty and their national independence. They had forgotten, or else they did not understand under what traits the Prophets had depicted the Savior, the Emmanuel who was to come to effect their salvation, to occupy himself above all with their souls and to propose to them the goods of another life. They would have hailed with acclamation a Messiah who was a restorer of their country, this promised land so solemnly promised to their fathers, and of which they were nevertheless dispossessed by Gentiles. They would have imposed upon themselves all sacrifices, would have braved all dangers, endured fatigues, and faced death itself, to second the views of this liberator and give him the means to restore them to liberty. That is why the Jews were kept, for some time, in a continual alert, ready to hail the first who would show himself as the Messiah, and to give him the support of their goods and their persons.

But as much as they were mistaken about the mission they supposed for this liberator, as much were they under an illusion about the means to be implemented to ensure and facilitate the success of his coming. Like the conquering Messiah expected by the Jews, the peaceful King, who was their true liberator, had to demand from them cooperation and sacrifices, but of a completely different kind. As the kingdom he came to ensure them and the deliverance he was going to offer them were entirely supernatural and divine, so the cooperation that had to be brought to it had also to have an exclusively spiritual and celestial character; for what he wanted to conquer, to subject to his laws, and to submit to his empire, was the heart of the Jews; and he was not to use, for that, other weapons than those of penance. His Precursor, who was charged with going before him to prepare the way for him, could not therefore preach anything else.

It is also for this that Saint John the Baptist, recalling the words pronounced formerly by Isaiah, declares that he is himself charged with putting them into execution, and calls to this war, to this conquest of a new kind, by crying to all: "Prepare the way of the Lord, make straight his paths." This metaphorical language, ordinarily used by the Prophets, had to be understood by the people.

The Gospel does not make known to us what was the precise subject of the first discourse that Saint John the Baptist addressed to the people after having announced his mission in a general way. According to Saint Matthew, he exhorted the Jews to penance, and gave as a motive the approach of the kingdom of heaven. According to Saint Mark, he came baptizing and preaching the baptism of penance for the remission of sins. Thus it would result from their accounts that the Precursor had spoken, from the beginning of his preaching, of three different subjects: of penance, of baptism, and of the kingdom of heaven. It does not seem to us, nevertheless, that he could have developed and made understood these different matters in a single discourse; for they required explanations on his part. We can therefore suppose that he made three special instructions of them.

The Pharisees believed they expiated all their faults by practicing frequent ablutions; and, in their pride baptême de pénitence Baptism preached by John as a sign of conversion and preparation for the Kingdom. , they did not see that without repentance and the tears of the heart, the penance and the purifications of the body are incapable of justifying before God. Now, they had infected all the people with the leaven of their doctrine.

To disabuse the Jews of this pernicious belief, Saint John the Baptist began to preach penance; no longer only this penance which consisted of afflicting momentarily and washing the body, and which did not address itself to the soul to humiliate its pride and repress carnal concupiscence; but this interior penance which consists of breaking, of tearing the heart to make the mortal venom that sin has left there come out. He announced, at the same time, that this penance of the heart operated the remission of sins with the help of a new baptism, entirely different from the legal and traditional ablutions.

One cannot deny, no doubt, that the dogma of the remission of sins is at least insinuated under the regime of the law; but the expiatory sacrifices, the satisfactory penances had rather the goal of hiding sins before God than of operating their remission. This is what made Saint Gregory the Great say: Before the arrival of Christ, it was uncertain if those who had fallen into grave sins could be pardoned; and the remission of sins was unknown to a great number.

Thus, therefore, it was reserved for the holy Precursor to be the first messenger of mercy and to announce in a formal, positive, and general way the consoling dogma of the pardon and redemption of sins by means of penance.

It would be difficult for us, who have lived only under the law of grace and love, to form an idea of the effect that this solemn announcement must have produced on a people bowed, so to speak, under the weight of a law of justice and rigor. The news of an unexpected amnesty, which restores a prisoner to liberty, an exile to his country, or which breaks the chains of a condemned man, does not cause more joy, does not excite more transports.

Also, the crowd of the people soon pressed around the new prophet with a concourse so extraordinary that Elijah, that prophet so venerated for the power of his word and his works, never saw such a numerous, eager, and well-disposed multitude to obey. At the voice of John the Baptist, everything yields, everyone surrenders; he makes as many penitents as he has listeners. However, those who convert are not struck nor attracted by the brilliance of his miracles; for he performed none. It is his virtues and his austerities that make such powerful impressions on the mind and heart of those who listen to him. The holiness of his life engages those who hear him to reform their own; the most voluptuous cease to be so upon seeing a man so mortified.

According to the prediction of the angel, the son of Zechariah had to precede the Son of God in all his ways; his annunciation, his birth, his penance, his preaching were already preparations for those of Christ; he had therefore also to precede him by his baptism. The baptism of Saint John was, in effect, for those who found themselves animated by the spirit of faith, what the teaching of doctrine is for catechumens before their admission to the sacrament of regeneration. In conferring it, Saint John had moreover the occasion to make felt the necessity of interior purification and of the penance of the heart, contrary to what the hypocritical Pharisees practiced, who were content to clean the outside of the cup without bothering to purify their hearts filled with rapine and impurities. By this means, the Precursor could, moreover, bear witness to Jesus Christ.

He said, in fact, himself, that he had come to baptize in water to manifest to Israel Him who was to baptize in the Holy Spirit. None of the ancient Prophets having announced and administered baptism, the novelty of the role of Saint John, which earned him the surname of Baptizer or Baptist, attracted an immense crowd to him. He could thus announce to all the people the coming of the Messiah, of whom he called himself the precursor.

Finally, the baptism of Saint John also had the goal of disposing men to receive that of Jesus Christ. As it was given in the name of Him who, for so long, was the expectation of the nations and especially of the Jewish people, it was like a declaration and a profession of faith in the Redeemer, and a commitment to bring forth worthy fruits of penance. The knowledge and faith of the mystery of redemption and the practice of penance were the end of the baptism given by Saint John. And because penance is not obligatory for children, and women had to be instructed by their husbands, the Precursor did not admit to his baptism, according to some authors, neither children nor women.

The baptism of the Precursor was a sacrament, since it was the sign of a holy thing, to wit: the sign of the baptism of Jesus Christ. It did not confer grace by itself; however, it was like the preamble of the sacraments of grace and of the new law. That is why it is called properly the intermediary between the sacraments of the Old Testament and those of the new. It had this in common with the sacraments of the old law, that it was only a sign; with those of the new law and of grace, that it disposed proximately to grace, and that, by its form and its matter, it had similarities with Christian baptism; for it was given in water and in the name of Christ.

One cannot doubt that John used a formula to give his baptism. Saint Paul insinuates it in a clear enough way by these words: "John baptized the people with the baptism of penance, saying that they should believe in Him who was to come after him"; the Greek text carries "in Jesus Christ." The holy Fathers and the Doctors of the Church infer from there that the form of the baptism of Saint John was: "I baptize you and I initiate you into the faith of Christ who is to come." John, says Saint Ambrose, baptized for the remission of sins, not in his name, but in the name of Jesus Christ. According to Saint Jerome, those who had received the baptism of John were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus who was to come after him. The Master of the Sentences, and with him Saint Thomas and Saint Bonaventure, Hugh of Saint-Victor, Tostatus, and other more modern authors have shared this persuasion.

The Precursor had received from God himself the mission to baptize; his baptism was therefore divine, and all the Jews were persuaded of it. If one judges by the eagerness that the people and the Pharisees themselves put into receiving it, it will appear evident that one believed in its necessity. It was, without contradiction, a more effective means than all the ancient purifications, and even than the sacrifices of the law, to obtain the pardon of sins. Also, according to Eusebius, it was to detach the Jews little by little from the Mosaic rites that God had intimated to Saint John the order to baptize. If this baptism was not indispensable to salvation, like that of Jesus Christ, it entered nevertheless into the divine plan of the work of redemption; for it was destined to serve as a term to the law and as a beginning to the Gospel; it had to prepare men for the penance of the heart, to make them feel the necessity of the purity of the soul, to accustom them to the baptism of Jesus Christ; finally, it is by this means that the Son of God wanted to be manifested in Israel.

What distinguished above all the baptism of Saint John, and gave it a particular efficacy, is that it was accompanied by the confession of sins. "All Judea," says Saint Mark, "and all those of Jerusalem came to him, and, confessing their sins, they were baptized by him in the river Jordan." This is the place to seek what was the nature of this confession required by the Precursor to be admitted to his baptism.

The public or secret avowal of one's faults was not an unheard-of thing among the ancients, and especially among the Jews. It had to be so; for is not confession a need of the human heart?

To grant his pardon to the guilty, God has always required of him a humble and sincere confession. Under the law of nature as well as under the law of Moses and under the Gospel, this confession had to be made not only with heart and mouth, but also entrusted to the minister chosen by God; it had to be not only general, but particular and special. This is what we see by Genesis, where God questions separately first Adam, then Eve, and, later, the fratricide Cain, to receive from their mouth a sincere and complete avowal of their fault in the presence of his minister, that is to say, of this angel who appeared to them under a human figure, since he walked in paradise.

The doctors believe that if Adam, instead of rejecting the fault on the woman, as the woman on the ruse of the serpent, had confessed his sin sincerely, God would have restored our first parents to their primitive state, or at least would have mitigated their condemnation, and would perhaps not have made the punishment weigh on their posterity.

Such was the high esteem and admiration held for the son of Zechariah that people flocked from all sides to hear his doctrine and receive his baptism. It was an honor and a glory that even the Pharisees did not disdain, forced in this to follow the torrent of the multitude to maintain their popularity and not compromise the reputation for perfection and holiness they affected. These proud sectarians therefore also presented themselves to the Forerunner to be baptized by him. But without being seduced by this forced testimony of respect that the Pharisees rendered to his holiness and mission, Saint John penetrated into the secret of their hearts, and, discovering the pride and spite that animated them beneath this apparent humility, he made them undergo the test of confession. He admitted to his baptism only those who gave him, by doing so, a sign of repentance, a testimony of the humility and compunction of their hearts, and a pledge of the docility of their spirit to receive the subsequent teachings of a new doctrine. For those who refused to reject the venom of their souls through a sincere admission of their faults, he treated them harshly, reproached them for their hypocrisy and blindness, and refused to purify them in the waters of the Jordan, thus denying them the initiatory baptism intended to prepare, for the day of the Lord's coming, those who did not render themselves unworthy of this favor. Most of the great men of the Jewish nation refused to submit to this test and were not admitted to John's baptism. This is why Saint Luke tells us that "the Pharisees and the lawyers rejected God's purpose for themselves, and were not baptized."

The lofty language of the holy Forerunner, the subject of his discourses, so far removed from that of the ancient Prophets, but above all what he said about the kingdom of heaven, must have seemed strange to the Jews: they had never heard its name pronounced. This language was certainly obscure to them, and they were incapable of understanding it; for it does not appear that Saint John explained its mystery to them. Jesus Christ had, no doubt, reserved for himself the task of providing understanding through the comparisons, parables, and various explanations of which we find so many examples in the Gospel. However, it was hardly possible, even for the coarsest minds, to take in a material and earthly sense the promise of the exclusively spiritual kingdom announced by the Forerunner.

One can, in fact, ordinarily judge the wealth, opulence, and glory of a kingdom by the pomp and splendor with which the monarch who presides over its destinies chooses to surround his ambassador. Now, John the Baptist was certainly, in the very eyes of the Jews, the ambassador whom God had endowed with the most glory, favor, and credit; none of the ancient Prophets could be compared to him with advantage. But was it possible to expect and hope to find material riches, earthly pleasures, sensual happiness, or carnal delights in a kingdom whose representative practiced the most absolute poverty, the most rigorous fasts, the most complete mortification, and the most cruel war against himself? The son of Zechariah was the worthy forerunner of Him who had no place to rest his head, who was born in a stable, lived by his work or the offerings made to him, and who was finally to end his life on a cross. That is why Jesus Christ said: "From the days of John the Baptist until now, the kingdom of heaven has been subjected to violence, and the violent have been taking it by force; for all the Prophets and the Law have prophesied until John," that is to say, they were content to announce things to come, while the Forerunner showed them as present and indicated that it is through penance that one can conquer them.

At the sound of Saint John's first preachings, the people flocked in crowds; "and all the Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem were going out to him, and they were baptized by him in the Jordan River, confessing their sins." The Pharisees themselves and the Sadducees could not resist the general impulse that drew all the cities toward the desert banks of the Jordan; they mingled with the crowd to go and listen to Saint John the Baptist, and even to receive his baptism. But knowing that they came to him to manage public opinion, or perhaps to catch him in his speech, rather than to do penance, he did not fear to address harsh and humiliating words to them, and to publicly uncover the mask of hypocrisy under which they concealed their secret vices.

These proud Jews boasted incessantly of being children of the patriarchs and the Prophets. "We are," they said proudly, "we are of the race of Abraham." They wanted, by this, to appropriate in some way the glory of these holy personages; in their pride, they believed that being recognized as heirs of their blood, they also had an incontestable right to the merits of their virtues and their holiness.

To make them lay down this illusion, the Forerunner calls them, on the contrary: brood of vipers. This locution, according to the style of the Hebrew language, means nothing other than this: detestable children of corrupt fathers, you have in yourselves all the venom you have inherited from them, and you poison all others with your scandals. He thus compared them to harmful reptiles, because they were intent on biting and tearing the saints themselves, poisoning the words and actions of the latter with the venom of their calumnies.

The Forerunner struck and frightened them from the beginning of his discourse by speaking to them of hell. He was indeed far from using ordinary language with them; he did not say to them, for example: Who taught you to avoid wars, to flee invasion or captivity, famine or disease? But he threatens them with another torment of which perhaps they had never heard. "Who warned you," he said to them, "to flee from the coming wrath?"

However, the Forerunner is not content with addressing reproaches and making threats; he adds salutary advice: "Produce, therefore," he tells them, "fruit in keeping with repentance." It is not enough, in fact, to flee from evil; one must, moreover, devote oneself to the practice of virtue.

With what wisdom he respects the memory of the patriarchs, while striving to correct their children! In addressing these words to them: "And do not think you can say to yourselves, 'We have Abraham as our father'"; he does not add: This patriarch can be of no use to you; he continues, on the contrary, with more gentleness and moderation by saying: "God is able to raise up children for Abraham from these stones." Most interpreters think that the Forerunner intended to designate, by these words, the vocation of the Gentiles, whom, by metaphor, and to indicate their initial insensitivity, he calls stones.

Some authors say that in pronouncing these words, Saint John pointed with his finger to the twelve stones brought by the leaders of the twelve tribes of Israel from the middle of the river and piled up on the shore; and those, in equal number, that they had taken from the shore to deposit in the Jordan, to serve as a monument of testimony.

Let us remark how Saint John the Baptist, that admirable model of preachers, strikes the Pharisees with terror, without however taking away all hope from them; for he does not say: God has already raised up; but he contents himself with these words: "God is able to raise up." He does not add: God can make men out of stones; but, which was much stronger, children of Abraham. With what art he removes from them any pretext of pride stemming from their birth according to the flesh, and pursues them even into this refuge of their kinship with the patriarchs, to leave them no other means than a sincere conversion, no other hope than in the holiness of their lives!

After showing them that carnal alliance can be of no use to them before God, he makes them feel the necessity of the kinship that faith gives, and then continues to increase this salutary terror, this anxiety of the soul that he has already inspired in them. For, after saying: "God is able to raise up children for Abraham from these stones," he adds, to frighten them even more: "The ax is already at the root of the trees. Every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire." By this comparison, Saint John excites his listeners to bear fruits of penance, by putting before their eyes the horror of eternal fire. It is as if he were saying to them: Produce fruits worthy of penance, produce good works, and do not flatter yourselves with the holiness and nobility of Abraham; do not count on the fruitfulness of the faith of your fathers to remain sterile yourselves; for if you do not bear fruit, although descended from Abraham who bore so much, you will be cut down like sterile trees and you will be thrown into the fire. The ax of divine justice is already near the root of the trees, that is to say, it threatens the lives of men who produce nothing. Every tree, or rather every man who does not produce the fruits that one has the right to expect from him, will be cut down to the root by the ax of the justice of God, and will become the prey of eternal fire.

It was with such words that the son of Zechariah terrified the Pharisees and brought trouble into the souls of the soldiers themselves; he did not cast them into despair; but he withdrew them from the abyss of indifference in which they were asleep. His language, capable of causing such lively alarms in his audience, was nevertheless mixed with many motives of consolation; for, by threatening only the tree that does not bear good fruit, he showed that the one who produces good fruit would certainly be spared and spared.

The discourse of the holy Forerunner was addressed to all the people who had flocked to hear him; but it was especially pronounced for the great, the Pharisees and the Sadducees whom he had spotted in the crowd, as Saint Matthew informs us. One can hardly doubt that some of them were converted by his voice; however, it is certain that most resisted the call of grace that spoke through his mouth. That is why Jesus Christ later made this reproach to them: "The tax collectors and the prostitutes will enter the kingdom of God ahead of you, because they believed the word of John."

The crowd, shaken by the threats of the holy Forerunner, troubled by the thought of the punishments he had just announced to them, but nevertheless confident in the mercy of God, who was willing to delay the action of justice a little longer, the simple people, above all, hastened to ask what they must do to produce good fruit and thus prevent the blows of the threatening ax. For it seemed to them that vengeance was no longer going to delay, and they wanted to hasten to avert the storm whose announcement had frightened them. "What should we do then?" they cried out from all sides.

The way to appease God is given to us by God himself. His divine oracles teach sinners that it is through good works and the merits of almsgiving that sins can be expiated.

The Old Testament spoke of beneficence and almsgiving only in a vague manner, and did not specify in any way to what limit this duty was mandatory. It was the regime of strict and rigorous justice; and the highest degree of perfection, admitted and recognized then, was contained in these words of the Sage: "If your enemy is hungry, give him food to eat, and if he is thirsty, give him water to drink."

Saint John the Baptist, who was the intermediary of the two Testaments, does not only prescribe giving to those in need, but he commands sharing with them. It was, so to speak, the preface to the new precept brought by Jesus Christ. "Whoever has two tunics," he says, "should share with him who has none, and whoever has food should do the same." He does not, therefore, only order beneficence, that human virtue that one practices quite easily by a natural inclination of the heart; he does not stop at a sentimental, but sterile, compassion; he goes all at once to true charity, which is not content with giving with an indifferent, cold, or narrowed hand, but which adds a new value, a new degree of excellence to almsgiving by doing it out of love and at the price of real and personal sacrifices.

One of the most remarkable triumphs of the apostolic eloquence of Saint John the Baptist, the most capable of giving us an idea of the effectiveness of his preaching, of the resonance it had throughout the country, and of the empire it exercised over minds and hearts, is that he brought the tax collectors themselves to come and hear him, to let themselves be convinced and persuaded to the point that they asked him, with as much docility, submission, and simplicity as the common people, what they had to do to work out their salvation.

The tax collectors were the farmers or receivers of public funds, the officials in charge of customs receipts and certain duties odious to the people. These employees, always quite ill-regarded everywhere because of the nature of their functions, were, for the Jews especially, an object of execution. This nation prided itself particularly on liberty and could only view with extreme repugnance the tax collectors demanding tributes imposed by the Romans for their own profit. Many Jews did not even believe that it was permitted to pay tribute to a foreign power. Those of their nation who entered the ranks of the tax collectors were regarded as pagans. It is even said that they did not permit them to enter the temple or the synagogues; they did not admit them to the participation of their prayers, nor to judicial offices, nor to bear witness in court; their offerings were not even received.

A considerable portion of these officials were Jews by nation; but taking no account of the religion, which they were supposed to have abjured by the fact, they united with the Romans in a society so close that they even placed themselves at the service of these foreigners to make a more tyrannical oppression weigh upon their brothers.

These tax collectors, gathered together, therefore came to find Saint John the Baptist to be baptized by him. While the scribes and the lawyers despised God's purpose for themselves, by believing themselves wise and remaining filled with themselves, they let themselves be preceded into the kingdom of God by the most discredited sinners, such as the tax collectors and the prostitutes. The Gospel reports only one word of the conversation of the tax collectors with the Forerunner, and of the answer he addressed to them to exhort them. "Teacher," they said to him, "what should we do?"

In the minds of the Jews, and especially those of the sect of the Pharisees, the son of Zechariah should have repelled and distanced these defamed and odious men from his person. But the forerunner of Him who came to seek and save sinners was not to conduct himself according to the opinion of the world. That is why, far from despising them publicly, he welcomes these men stained with rapine and injustice; instead of addressing reproaches to them, as to the Pharisees, he does not disdain to regard them as his disciples, by allowing them to give him the name of teacher. What is he going to prescribe to them, this man so detached, so austere, so hard on himself; this inflexible censor of all disorders? Is he going to order these public sinners to renounce their debased and dishonorable functions on the spot? Will he command them to give themselves to a rigorous penance in proportion to the blame and contempt that makes them the object of general execution?

The saints, always skillful and experienced in the difficult art of the guidance of souls, are not accustomed to frightening and discouraging sinners from the beginning of their conversion; they take care to show them the easiest way first, and, to encourage and stimulate them, they themselves take arduous and difficult paths, which they cross as if in play. Thus did Saint John the Baptist with regard to the tax collectors. To make them worthy of corresponding to grace, he asks on their part only to conform to the strict and rigorous duties and obligations of their employment. "Do not collect any more than you are authorized to," he tells them.

God was pleased to bless this conduct of the Forerunner. For the tax collectors correspond to the design of the Lord and the advances of grace. Not only did they make themselves worthy of being admitted to the baptism of John, while the Pharisees were repelled from it; but there were some among them who deserved to be counted among the disciples, and even to take rank among the Apostles of Christ. Such were Zacchaeus, prince of the tax collectors, and Matthew, who was still at his counting-house when he heard an august voice give him this order: "Follow me."

Following the example of the tax collectors, the soldiers also came, in their turn, to listen to the voice that resounded with so much echo and so much success on the banks of the Jordan. There were then in Judea three different categories of soldiers. Some, under the orders of Herod, were occupied in waging war against Aretas, king of Arabia; others, under the command of the prefect of the temple, were charged with watching over the guard of this building, which was a true fortress; the last, finally, obeyed the Romans in the person of Pilate, governor of the province. With the exception of the latter, who were foreigners, the others belonged to the nation and the Jewish religion.

These men, whom their state rendered naturally insensitive and indifferent, and among whom the license of the camps had further increased audacity, insolence, and cruelty, were soon moved to the depths of their hearts upon hearing the voice of Saint John the Baptist. Touched with compunction, repentance in their hearts, they also claimed the privilege of being admitted to the baptism of penance. Like the tax collectors, they humbled themselves in their own eyes, did not fear to degrade their valor and the glory of their arms by asking with loud cries, with as much simplicity as the crowd, and as much frankness as the tax collectors: "What should we do also in our turn?"

The answer of the Forerunner to the tax collectors makes one sense what he is going to require of the soldiers. He wanted, says Saint John Chrysostom, to engage them in a greater perfection; but as they were not yet capable of it, he contented himself with proposing common and ordinary things to them, for fear that by advising them of higher works and virtues, they would not be able to attain them, and would thus be deprived of both. He had learned, according to the advice of the Sage, not to be too righteous, and not to carry prudence further than is necessary. He does not, therefore, say to the soldiers: Lay down your arms, leave the profession, flee the dangers of war, give yourselves henceforth to prayer, and no longer taking account of the orders of your general, take care above all not to shed blood. He makes no other prescriptions to them, on the contrary, than these: "Do not extort money and do not accuse anyone falsely—and be content with your pay."

It was an ordinary vice among the soldiers to make false accusations against citizens, under the pretext of treason, relations with the enemy, etc.; by these shameful denunciations, they forced innocent citizens to deal with them. The Forerunner therefore forbids them to seek the slightest occasion to enrich themselves through calumny at the expense of the citizens, whom they have, on the contrary, the mission to protect.

John the Baptist, the greatest of the Prophets, could not fail to have disciples: his preaching won him some every day. Indeed, the Gospel speaks to us of them in several circumstances, but without saying anything precise on this subject, neither on their number, nor on their names, if it is not that of Andrew. We read, in a legend authorized by the Church, since it is found in the Roman Breviary, that a great number of these men who walked in the footsteps of the prophets Elijah and Elisha were prepared, by the instructions of John the Baptist, for the coming of Jesus Christ; and that after having convinced themselves of the truth of what had been announced to them by the Forerunner, they embraced the faith of the Gospel. They had the honor of building, later, the first sanctuary dedicated to the cult of the holy Virgin, on Mount Carmel. It is believed that they were Essenes.

Even if he had counted, moreover, in his school, no other disciples than those who deserved to be chosen by the Savior to go and carry his Gospel to the whole world, what glory for him to have begotten, according to the Spirit, as many sons destined to propagate the spiritual race as Jacob had children according to the flesh to give birth to a carnal people!

And in fact, one cannot doubt, says Tillemont, that the Apostles received the baptism of Saint John. They were even among the first admitted to this grace, according to Saint John Chrysostom, and that is not surprising; for, continues this illustrious doctor, if the prostitutes and the tax collectors presented themselves for this baptism, all the more reason for those who were later to be baptized by the Holy Spirit to have to rush to it. The Gospel, moreover, tells us this sufficiently. It is certain, on one hand, that Jesus Christ did not baptize himself; for why would he have baptized, says Tertullian? For penance? Then what need had he of a Forerunner? For the remission of sins? He remitted them with a single word. Would he have baptized in his name? But, out of humility, he wanted to be unknown. In the name of the Holy Spirit? He had not yet been sent by the Father. In the name of the Church? The Apostles had not yet established it. On the other hand, the Gospel also teaches us that Saint Peter had been baptized, since, upon the request he addressed to Our Lord to wash not only his feet, but also his hands and his head, Jesus answered him: "Those who have had a bath need only to wash their feet." It was the same, no doubt, with the other Apostles; for, continues Tertullian, is it believable that they were not baptized by John, those who were soon to go and baptize all nations? The Lord, who was not obliged to any penance, had received this baptism, and it would not have been necessary for sinners? We read, in the Acts of the Apostles, that Jesus Christ himself reminds his disciples "that they received from John the baptism of water." After the resurrection, Saint Peter, proposing to the faithful to designate a successor to Judas in the apostolate, declares to them that it is necessary that this new apostle be one of those who lived with Jesus since the baptism of John. Does he not seem to want to say by that that the candidate must not only have followed Jesus Christ since the beginning of his preaching, but also have been prepared for it by the baptism and the teaching of Saint John the Baptist?

We know, in a positive manner, that the first of the Apostles, chosen by Jesus Christ, was Saint Andrew, disciple of the Forerunner; another of the disciples of the latter was also found with Andrew in this circumstance; Saint John Chrysostom reports that it was John the evangelist; Theophylact affirms it positively. This is what seems even more certain by the very silence of the evangelist who reports this fact; for this evangelist is Saint John himself, who often avoided naming himself, as one can notice. If Andrew was a disciple of Saint John the Baptist, we cannot doubt that it was the same for Peter, the brother and inseparable companion of Andrew. We can conclude the same consequence with regard to James, son of Zebedee and brother of John the evangelist, all four associated for fishing. They united together to follow Jesus Christ, because already they were attached to each other by the identity of the faith and the holy dispositions that the Forerunner had sown and cultivated in their hearts.

We find still, in the Acts of the Apostles, the traces of another disciple of the Forerunner, who exercised even in the city of Ephesus the function of apostle without having been initiated into the Gospel by others than by our glorious Saint. Apollos, of whom Saint Luke speaks to us as an "eloquent man and powerful in the Scriptures, who was instructed in the way of the Lord, and spoke with fervor, teaching exactly what concerned Jesus," did not know, however, regarding the Savior, anything other than what he had learned in the school of the Forerunner; for "he knew only the baptism of the son of Zechariah."

We know nothing more positive and more certain about the disciples of the holy Forerunner. Some authors have thought that they did not follow their Master assiduously. It was the same for those of Jesus Christ, at least in the beginning of his preaching. The disciples of Saint John therefore often came to find him and converse with him; they then returned to their affairs, or else to the ministry that he entrusted to them.

However, the disciples of John had still other cares than that of instructing others and bringing them to listen to the teachings of their master: they had to work above all for their own perfection. Following the example of their master, they united the active life with the contemplative life. That is why Saint John had prescribed a rule of life for them, either to continue to dwell in their ordinary homes, or to devote themselves to evangelical preaching, or else to live in solitude like the Essenes. This is what made some Fathers of the Church say that Saint John was the prince of the monastic life. We cannot specify in what the way of life of the disciples of the Forerunner consisted. We know, however, that they observed frequent and austere fasts, following the example of their master, and that they had a special formula of prayers, different from all those that were in use among the Jews. Tradition does not teach us more than the Gospel on this subject.

We can, however, conjecture that the way of praying, taught by the Forerunner to his disciples, had something very remarkable, and, no doubt, was more excellent and more perfect than all the prayers and canticles of the Old Testament; for this holy personage, who was more than a prophet, had not believed he should be content with what he had found before him. Also, one of the disciples of the Savior, excited by what he already knew of the teachings of Saint John the Baptist on the subject of prayer, and in the hope of receiving a formula even more perfect from Jesus Christ, addressed this request to him one day: "Lord, teach us to pray, just as John taught his disciples." It was to answer this desire that the Savior dictated the Lord's Prayer, the most complete and the most perfect of all the formulas by which man can expose his needs to the Almighty, address his supplications to him, and express his hopes to him.

Saint John the Baptist did not usually have his disciples accompany him, because he had no goal of attaching them to his person, and of aggrandizing himself by making a retinue for himself.

On the other hand, he did not wish to give any pretext for incrimination against him on account of gatherings or political plots. This did not, however, prevent this accusation from being imputed to him later, as we shall see further on.

Not only did the son of Zechariah not seek to attach to himself those whom the force of his eloquence drew, whom the scent of his holiness attracted, or whom the spectacle of his virtues persuaded; but he also strove to direct their hope and their heart toward Christ, whom he announced to them as the end and object of his mission; and when the time of the manifestation arrived, he showed them the One they were to follow, and exhorted them to attach themselves to Him.

But such was the opinion and esteem that John's disciples had conceived of him that, despite his exhortations and the authority of his word, some did not wish to detach themselves from him, viewed with an envious eye the glory and renown of Christ growing day by day, and as long as their master lived, they wished to maintain an exclusive fidelity and devotion to him. There still exist today, in the East, the remnants of a religious sect known by the name of Christians of Saint John the Baptist. Although their doctrine is an incoherent mixture of Judaism, Christianity, and Gnosticism, it seems no less certain that their origin goes back to the disciples of the Precursor. Every year they celebrate a feast that lasts five days, during which they come in groups to their bishops, who rebaptize them all, both great and small, with the baptism of John.

This is perhaps the place to ask why, instead of attaching himself to Jesus Christ and following Him in the capacity of an ap Jésus Central figure of whom Isaac is considered the type or prefiguration. ostle or disciple, Saint John not only never followed Him, but even seemed at times to avoid His presence, continued to have disciples jealous of His glory and consumed with envy against the Son of God, and did not cease to preach and baptize, even when Christ had begun His public career. Saint Augustine teaches us that it was so, in order that the testimony of John the Baptist might exercise more authority over the minds of the Jews.

He could indeed pass as the emulator, the rival, or the adversary of Christ. He preached like Him, baptized like Him, and had disciples like Him. It is for this reason that the Pharisees, the secret enemies of one as well as the other, believed they could derive great advantage from the role they saw them filling simultaneously, to set them in contradiction with each other, and thereby diminish the authority and influence they exercised over the people. When they undertook to excite jealousy in the heart of Saint John against Jesus, they obtained only a response capable of covering them with confusion and further increasing the value of his testimony. Indeed, those who had confidence in the word of the Precursor were filled with admiration for the Savior, and the enemies of John the Baptist had the confusion of seeing that, instead of uttering words of envy against Christ, he solemnly bore witness to Him. The servant was thus put on notice to confess the Lord; the creature was led to bear witness to the Creator. But Saint John fulfilled this role without constraint and with joy; for he was the friend, and not the rival, of the bridegroom; he did not seek his own glory, but that of Him who had sent him.

Thus, his testimony had by that very fact much more authority than that of Saint Peter and the other Apostles. One could, in effect, object to the latter that they gave praise to Jesus Christ because they were His disciples, and that they had an interest in preaching Him as having attached their fortune to His. These testimonies therefore appeared interested. But that of the son of Zechariah had a completely different value in the eyes of the Jews. For, as he seemed to have an interest in disparaging Christ as a rival, he removed all pretext for the incredulity of his enemies by saying to them: "I have already declared to you, I am not the Christ. He to whom the bride belongs is the true bridegroom. He who comes from heaven is above all."

The admiration, respect, and extraordinary love of which he became the object was universal, Origen tells us. But especially the sinners, who were admitted to his baptism and who found themselves initiated by penance into a completely new life, set no bounds to their enthusiasm. This is why Saint Luke tells us that "all the people were in great expectation, and everyone was filled with the thought that John might well be the Christ."

Whether the Precursor had been instructed in this by the Holy Spirit, as some doctors think; or whether his disciples had reported to him what they could not fail to learn of it, he was soon aware of the opinion that was already spreading about him. Far from glorifying himself, and even from appropriating by his silence alone an honor that was not due to him, this faithful friend of the Bridegroom took advantage of these favorable dispositions to announce, more clearly than he had done until then, the principal object of his mission.

"He came as a witness," says the Evangelist, "to bear witness to the light, that all might believe through him."

Let us listen, then, to what the solemn voice of this august witness is about to proclaim in the presence of all. "As for me," he says, "I baptize you with water to lead you to penance; but He who is to come after me is more powerful than I, and I am not worthy to carry His shoes, nor to untie their straps while prostrating myself before Him. It is He who will baptize you with water and with fire."

The Precursor was, in the eyes of the Jews, the ideal of human perfections. All the virtues combined shone upon his brow; in him was the most complete assemblage of the most excellent and varied graces; one could imagine nothing above his holiness. However, without disparaging himself in any way, without failing to recognize any of the gifts that had been bestowed upon him, and which he appreciated better than anyone, he protests that there is another who surpasses himself.

In his symbolic and mysterious language, he declares that, far from wishing to compare himself to Christ, he is not worthy to render Him the smallest and most humble of services: such as carrying His shoes or untying their straps, even while prostrating himself at His feet.

Now, these words must not be understood in a purely literal and material sense; and, to understand them, one must, like the Jews, accustomed to this symbolic and figurative language, seek in them a spiritual meaning.

By the shoes, which are made from the remains of animals put to death, one must understand, according to Abbot Rupert, the humanity of the Son of Man, by means of which the Son of God had subjected Himself to suffering and death. The Psalmist had also used this term to predict the propagation of the Gospel: "I will extend my shoe into Edom," that is to say, I will make my incarnation known even among the idolatrous nations. This is, in effect, what was realized by the ministry of the Apostles.

As for Saint John the Baptist, he was not to live until the time when the Apostles thus carried the shoes of the Lord, by publicly preaching the Gospel. He was not even to have the favor "of untying their straps," that is to say, of making known the mysterious bonds that united the divinity with the humanity in the person of Christ. For the strap of the shoe, says Saint Gregory, is nothing other than the knot of the mystery. John does not find himself capable of untying the straps of Jesus Christ's shoes because he cannot understand the mystery of the Incarnation, although he knew it by the help of the spirit of prophecy.

If John the Baptist does not untie, in the eyes of the Jews, the mysterious knots of the incarnation and redemption, it is, says the Venerable Bede, because, being too carnal and too coarse, their minds were not yet capable of believing that the eternal Son of God, after having taken on human nature, had received a new birth from a virgin. An impenetrable mystery, to which they had to be prepared little by little by making them know the sublime prerogatives of the glorious humanity of the God made flesh, to lead them insensibly to the faith.

For the same reason, and in order to dissuade the children of Israel from expecting in the person of the Messiah a purely temporal power and greatness, the holy Precursor is going to insinuate to them what they should hope to find in Him, what they will have to ask of Him when He has appeared. He does not speak to them of conquest or victory; he does not put before their eyes the wonders and miracles that Christ is to perform; he does not promise them any temporal good; he does not even announce the deliverance from the slavery in which they groan from a political and civil standpoint: but, directing their hearts toward an exclusively spiritual order of ideas, he shows them the abundance of graces and the multitude of spiritual goods that they will receive through His intercession. The Messiah, in effect, is not only to give the Holy Spirit; for, according to the force of the metaphorical expression of Saint John the Baptist, and to show the abundance of graces that He will come to bring to men, "He will baptize in the Holy Spirit"; and, to bring out even more the efficacy of these graces, he adds that He will even baptize in fire.

Now, just as, by water, Jesus Christ designates the grace of the Holy Spirit, to show by this expression the brilliance and whiteness that it procures, and the ineffable consolations that it gives to well-disposed souls, so John the Baptist, by fire, expresses the justice and the fervor of the grace that destroys and annihilates sin.

He therefore taught his listeners that one should not hope for any goods from the coming of Christ other than those of grace, any gifts other than those that are suitable for the soul. He was thus battering down, in a clever and indirect way, the coarse prejudices and the ridiculous hopes that the Jews had formed regarding the Messiah; for they expected Him as a monarch destined to conquer the world at the point of a sword.

To make it felt that he was not the Christ, Saint John the Baptist had set in opposition his baptism of water and penance with that of the Son of God, which was to be given in the Holy Spirit and in fire.

However, he knew that the coarse minds to whom he was speaking could not form a notion of Christ except by relying on a term of comparison. He has just announced that the Messiah must come to bring to the world the gifts of the Holy Spirit; that is the object of his first event, whose benefits he reveals to the Jews. He discovers to them at the same time, and little by little, all the mysteries of the Gospel. This is why he is now going to speak of the second event of Christ, of the last judgment and the fire of hell, points of doctrine that were hardly less unknown to the Jews than the mystery of the kingdom of heaven.

Saint John had announced the rewards reserved for the just, in order to encourage them thus to the practice of virtue. To make it understood now that the Messiah is not to be content with turning his attention and his benevolence toward his elect, and to show at the same time that he is not the indifferent spectator of crime, the Precursor attributes to Him the judgment and the vengeance, by adding: "His winnowing fan is in his hand."

Let us remark, with Rupert, how he strives to bring out the power and strength of Christ. He does not say: His winnowing fan is in the hands of God. The expression he uses can be compared with this one from Isaiah: "He will carry his power on his shoulder." John does not say that the winnowing fan of the Messiah is in the hands of God; the Prophet also takes care not to announce that the power of Christ will be supported on the shoulders of the Almighty. It is that they both wanted to make us understand that His own power suffices for Him, that He is capable alone of exercising His judgment. The Precursor does not say that the Savior will clean the threshing floor of the Lord, nor that He will gather the wheat into the granary of God; but he declares positively that He will purge His own floor, that He will gather His own grain.

By putting a winnowing fan into the hands of Christ, the son of Zechariah announces clearly enough that the supreme judgment is reserved for Him; for the winnowing fan, an instrument intended to clean the wheat by expelling the chaff, signifies, says Denis the Carthusian, that the judicial power belongs to Jesus Christ, that the executive power is placed in His hands; that, by His own authority, and as God, He pronounces the sentence Himself. This is what we see confirmed by these words: "The Father judges no one; but He has given all power of judgment to the Son." This judgment belongs essentially to Christ as He is God; but as man, it is devolved to Him, because He is established as judge, and constituted executor of the sentence, according to this doctrine of Saint Peter: "It is He Himself who is established by God to judge the living and the dead."

The Messiah will purge and "clean his floor perfectly"; He therefore sees even into the depths of hearts; for how could He, without that, make an equitable discernment? Then He will take the winnowing fan in His hand; He will judge with impartiality, with justice and severity, by definitively drawing the good grain from the chaff, by separating the elect from the reprobate. "He will gather his wheat into the granary," that is to say, He will reunite in heaven, the abode of perfect rest and beatitude, all those whom humility will have made small in their own eyes; those who will be radiant with justice and adorned with virtues; those whom piety, courage, and perseverance will have strengthened against the breath of temptations; for it is they who form the wheat of Christ, and the food with which He nourishes Himself. The great martyr Saint Ignatius, condemned to be devoured under the teeth of lions, was alluding to this idea when he exclaimed: "I am the wheat of Jesus Christ; I ardently desire to be ground under the teeth of lions, in order to become a spotless bread."

But the duty of a judge is not only to discern the good to reward them according to their merits; he must also punish the wicked. This is also what Christ will do, and what Saint John indicates in a striking manner by adding that "he will burn the chaff" thus separated from the good grain, "in an unquenchable fire."

These words were a confirmation of what he had already said on another occasion, in engaging the Pharisees to penance, in order to be able to avoid thus the wrath to come; but here, he goes further in the development of his thought; for he makes known two truths touching the doctrine of hell: the torment of fire, and the eternity of punishment.

Finally, the moment has come when the expectation of the nations is to be revealed to men. The Savior for whom the patriarchs had sighed for four thousand years was in the world; but He was still leading an obscure and hidden life, in the retreat of Nazareth. While the son of Zechariah was stirring up Judea by promising it that it would soon see Christ, by speaking to it of His greatness, by making it know His divine nature, and by announcing Him as the sovereign Judge, rewarder of virtue and avenger of crime, what was the Son of God doing? O wisdom of the earth, be confounded! Pride of man, humble yourself! The creator of heaven and earth, He whose providence nourishes even the sparrow devoid of provisions, He whom the angels adore trembling, He whom the heavens envy the earth, the Son of man was occupied with a coarse and lackluster work.

"What a marvel," exclaims Bossuet, "an artisan still in the shop and earning his living, is the subject of the preachings of a Prophet more than a prophet, and so revered that one took him for the Christ. It was of this man in the shop that Saint John said: 'There is a man in your midst, whom you do not know, and whose feet I am not worthy to touch.' He is greater than Moses; He gives grace, while Moses gives only the law; He is, before all ages, the only Son of God, and in the bosom of His Father; we have grace only through Him: yet you do not know Him, although He is in your midst. In what expectation such high discourses must have held the world, and what preparation of the ways of the Lord! One was becoming accustomed to hearing the only Son of God named, who came to announce its secrets; but what! was it of this carpenter that one spoke thus?"

Although He was innocence itself and holiness by essence, Christ did not wish to undertake His evangelical mission without preparing Himself for it by penance. It is by penance that He had reserved for Himself to manifest Himself. In sending Saint John the Baptist before Him to prepare His ways, He had given him above all the character of a herald of penance; the entire ministry of the son of Zechariah had as its object penance; it is for this that he said: "I came baptizing in water, in order that Christ might be manifested in Israel." So that the voice which pushed, in the solitudes of the Jordan, this clamor: "Do penance, for the kingdom of heaven is near," the preaching of Saint John announced the very vocation of the Son of God.

The true motive of the preaching and baptism of the Precursor was therefore solely that the Holy of Holies, who alone was capable of doing penance for all the predestined, called by this public and solemn voice, approached openly the heavenly sanctuary in the presence of God His Father, and of the holy angels, and received in an authentic manner the investiture of His sovereign priesthood, in the face of the entire world. Now, it is by having Himself baptized by His precursor that Christ was to begin His manifestation, inaugurate His ministry, and receive the glorious testimony of His Father.

No one can doubt that the Son of God, in becoming incarnate, wished to take away the sin of the world by taking it upon Himself, according to what the Prophet had said: "The Lord has placed upon Him all our iniquities; it is for us that He groans; the punishment that was to give us death has weighed upon His person." Now, that this true and perfect penance was endured because of us, is what is clear: reason feels it, faith professes it.

But before following Jesus to the banks of the Jordan, let us search for the motives that had to lead Him to this mysterious step. We will find legal reasons and mystical reasons for it.

The apostle Saint Paul teaches us that God, in sending His Son into the world, wished to subject Him to the law. Jesus Christ Himself declares to us that He did not come to break this law, but to fulfill it.

Now, under the regime of the Mosaic law, one was deemed defiled and impure in a multitude of circumstances, and it was impossible to remain in this state of legal impurity without breaking the ordinances of the Lord. However, let us hasten to say it, these legal defilements did not affect the interior, and did not harm the purity of the soul, even among ordinary men; all the more reason they did not prevent the Son of man from being and remaining holiness by essence.

The Savior was therefore obliged to submit Himself to the use of baptism, washings, or legal purifications, according to the custom of the time.

Thus, the Savior celebrated the Mosaic Passover every year. Now, it was permitted to no one, and for no reason, to eat the paschal lamb without being purified and baptized. If therefore He was able to carry to these enemies this challenge: "Which of you will convict me of sin?" that is to say, will accuse me of having violated the law even in the slightest prescriptions, one must recognize that Jesus Christ often made use of the baths and purifications in force among the Jews; that He conformed to the ordinances of Moses and to the customs of the nation and of the epoch.

According to the law, one had to address oneself to a man to be purified; who other than the son of Zechariah was as worthy to fulfill this ministry near the Son of God? Was it not to prepare Himself for this august function, for this signal honor that, from his childhood, Saint John had withdrawn his virtue and his innocence from the deleterious influence of the world and by retiring into solitude?

On the other hand, never, says a holy pontiff, would the waters of baptism have been capable of purifying the sins of men, if they had not been sanctified by touching the body of the Lord. Jesus Christ had Himself baptized, not to purify Himself, says Saint Ambrose, but to purify the water by the contact of His sacred flesh, and to endow it with the virtue of baptizing souls.

The time finally having arrived when the Son of man was to prepare Himself for His public ministry, He addressed these words to His mother, says Saint Bonaventure: "It is time that I go, and that I glorify my Father by making Him known; the hour has come when I must show myself and work for the salvation of the world, for which my Father sent me here below. Remain therefore strong, O good mother, for I will soon return to you." And the Master of humility, kneeling down, asked for her blessing. But kneeling herself, and embracing Him with tears, she said to Him, full of tenderness: "O my blessed son, go with the blessing of your Father and mine; remember me, and take care to return as soon as possible." He therefore respectfully bade her farewell, and headed from Nazareth toward Jerusalem, to go to the Jordan, where John was baptizing, in a place ten miles away from that city. Thus the Master of the world advances alone, for He did not yet have any disciples. The Lord Jesus walks therefore humbly for several days, until He reaches the banks of the Jordan. It is the resplendent light that advances toward the torch, says Saint Gregory of Nazianzus; the Word that follows the voice; the Bridegroom who goes to find the paranymph; the Lord who goes to the servant.

For a long time already, Saint John had maintained in his heart a lively desire and a firm hope of finally seeing the arrival of his Lord. He constantly lifted the eyes of his spirit toward God, and pushing toward heaven powerful clamors, he asked constantly that it be given to him to see soon the Consolation of Israel and the Expectation of the nations, which he knew to be near and whose presence he had already saluted from the womb of his mother. The ardor of his desires certainly outweighed by much those of the holy old man Simeon, whose sighs and cries of the heart had touched the ears of the Most High, and had obtained from Him the promise that he would not see death before having contemplated the Christ of the Lord. The Precursor had earned, by his incessant prayers, an analogous response on the part of Him who had sent him; for a heavenly voice had said to him: "He upon whom you will see the Spirit descend and rest, it is He who baptizes in the Holy Spirit."

Some authors think that John the Baptist had not yet seen Jesus Christ, and that he did not know Him by face until the moment when he baptized Him. Pious traditions tell us, on the contrary, that they had had conversations together in the desert, where the son of Zechariah had retired.

Whatever may be the case with this question, to which we will still have the occasion to return, it was not possible that the Precursor would not notice, in the crowd of sinners, Him whom he had seen in spirit from the womb of his mother; his inspired gaze, his prophetic penetration, his heart so pure, could not fail to distinguish, among all, Him whom he was charged to make known to the world, and who was the object of his divine mission.

Thus, at the sight of this God whose justice, holiness, and supreme power he had preached, he is struck with astonishment and fear, says Saint Bernard, and an extraordinary fright takes hold of him. This is why he addresses these words to Him: "It is I who must be baptized by you, and not you by me; and yet you come to me." Jesus replied to him:

"Let it be so for this hour, for it is fitting that we fulfill all justice in this way."

One of the most striking characters of the holy Precursor is undoubtedly humility; this virtue appears in all his words and actions; but Jesus was to surpass him in this as in all the rest, and one cannot see without astonishment that His first outing is to be baptized by His servant.

It was therefore the order from on high, exclaims Bossuet, that Jesus, the victim of sin, and who was to take it away by carrying it, should place Himself voluntarily in the rank of sinners: that is that justice which He had to fulfill. And as John, in that, owed Him obedience, the Son of God owed it to the orders of His Father. Then John resisted Him no more, and thus all justice was fulfilled in an entire submission to the orders of God.

It is very probable that Jesus Christ instituted the sacrament of baptism and gave it the virtue of justifying, at the very moment of His baptism, although it was after His resurrection that He proclaimed its necessity.

Jesus was therefore baptized by John in the Jordan; but as soon as He was baptized, He came up immediately out of the water. Behold, all of a sudden the heavens were opened to Him, and He saw the Spirit of God descend under a bodily appearance, and rest upon Him. And a voice was heard from heaven, saying: You are my beloved son, in whom I have put my complacencies. Yes! this one is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased.

These heavenly words were a striking confirmation of the testimony given by the Precursor to Jesus at the very moment when he baptized Him. It is believed, in effect, that in giving baptism to the Savior, John solemnly showed Him to the people; for, as with regard to the others, he used this formula: I baptize you in the name of Him who is to come, it seems that at the coming of Jesus, and at the moment when he baptized Him, he must have said: This one is the Messiah whom I have predicted. Could he, in effect, miss an occasion so opportune to bear witness to Him, and to fulfill thus justice in all its extent?

The wonders that were accomplished at the baptism of Jesus Christ had as their goal to bear witness to this humiliated God; it is in His favor that they were produced. The sacred text declares it expressly. However, if the glory with which God wished to reward the humility of His Son was the principal and direct object of it, Christ was not the only spectator of it. For Saint John the Baptist says formally that he saw the Holy Spirit. It is no less indubitable that he heard the voice of the Father. Was it the same for all those who assisted at this scene? Some doctors have believed so.

We must say however that the Gospel contains no word from which one can conclude, with certainty, that all the witnesses of the baptism of Jesus Christ were admitted to see and hear this testimony. And, if one examines with care the texts of the sacred authors, one will see that they favor rather the negative. In effect, John the Baptist wishing to bear witness to Jesus: "I saw," he says, "the Holy Spirit descend like a dove, and it rested upon Him." Now, if all those who had been at the baptism of Christ had been able to see and hear like Saint John, the latter would not have had need to recall this apparition to those who had been witnesses of it; or else, if he were speaking to others, he would not have said: "I saw"; for he would rather have used these words: "We have seen, the people as well as myself..." And his testimony, being supported on a public testimony, would have been much more irrefutable. This is also what Saint Chrysostom remarked. — Christ said one day to the Jews in the form of a reproach: "My Father, who sent me, has borne witness to me; but you have never heard His voice." Could He have spoken thus, if the numerous witnesses of His baptism had heard the heavenly voice that resounded in this circumstance?

Moreover, in admitting that the heavenly vision took place only in favor of Christ, and that the Precursor was the sole witness of it, we do not in any way restrict its scope and value; for it served no less as a testimony to those to whom this mystery was revealed later. It is for this that Saint John the Baptist said one day to the Jews these solemn words: "It is I who saw Him; and I have borne witness that He is the Son of God."

Thus therefore before Saint Paul, and no doubt much better than him still, the divine Precursor, the most clear-sighted of the Prophets, the most privileged and the greatest among all those who are born of women, in baptizing his divine Master, was admitted to contemplate things that the eye had not yet seen, to hear secrets that the ear had never listened to, and to taste in advance the delights that the heart of man had never conceived, and which are reserved by God for those who love Him. For he was the first to whom the adorable Trinity deigned to reveal itself in a clear and manifest manner.

We must not therefore be surprised that one has said of the Precursor that he was established, in some way, the witness of the revelation of the mystery of the august Trinity, and as the depositary of the faith of all the human race in this ineffable dogma. Also Saint Bernard says that Saint John was entirely in the midst of the Trinity. Not only are the names of the three divine persons, hidden from the world for four thousand years, discovered and entirely unveiled to him; but the adorable persons themselves are manifested to him. He touches the Son with his own hands; he sees with his eyes the Holy Spirit descend from heaven; he hears with his ears the voice of the Father recognizing and proclaiming Jesus as His Son. Is this not the place to exclaim with the Psalmist: "Who is the man, Lord, to whom you have deigned to reveal yourself? — Who is he, so that we may give him praise?" Never was a similar favor granted to any mortal. In effect, the heavenly Father, says Bossuet, appeared on the mountain where Jesus Christ was transfigured; but the Holy Spirit did not show Himself there; the Holy Spirit appeared in that where He descended in the form of a tongue; but one did not see the Father there: everywhere else the Son appears, but alone. At the baptism of Jesus Christ, which gives birth to ours, where the Trinity must be invoked, the Father appears in the voice, the Son in His flesh, the Holy Spirit like a dove.

Saint John the Baptist was not only the witness of all the wonders by which God wished to glorify His Son on the Jordan; but he was also admitted to the role of actor in this scene so capable of astonishing heaven and ravishing the earth. For it was the Precursor who initiated, so to speak, the God Savior into His divine priesthood. There were there, says an ancient liturgy, three witnesses: John, who imposed hands on Christ, the Spirit of holiness, who descended upon Him, and the Father, who made His voice heard from the height of the heavens. The son of Zechariah, the most illustrious of the children of Aaron, the most worthy representative of the ancient priesthood, he whom a divine mouth proclaimed the greatest of mortals, was therefore the blessed and predestined priest of God, the minister charged by the Most High to give consecration to the Pontiff of the new law.

Saint John expressed to Jesus Christ the desire to receive His baptism. Did he receive this favor?

"There are some," says Tillemont, "who believe that Saint John, after having baptized Jesus Christ, was also baptized by Him. One cites, for that, the word of Saint Gregory of Nazianzus, that Jesus Christ said to him: 'Let it be so for this hour,' because He knew well that He would baptize in a short time Him by whom He wished to be baptized. But Elias of Crete says that Saint Gregory understands, by this baptism, the new purity that Saint John received by touching the sacred head of the Savior, when he baptized Him; and, by the descent of the Holy Spirit upon Jesus Christ, Saint Gregory himself gives us occasion to explain it of the martyrdom of Saint John, of which he had spoken a little before, and by giving him the name of baptism."

"One cites still, to prove that Jesus Christ baptized Saint John, Saint Jerome and Saint Chrysostom, who say that He baptized him with His Spirit, in Spiritu. But this expression can serve only to make one believe that He did not give him the baptism of water. Saint Jerome adds that in saying to him: 'Let it be so for the moment,' sine modo, He was promising him the baptism of martyrdom, and that he would still receive His baptism on the day of judgment: Scito in die judicii meo te esse baptismate baptizandum; which he does not explain. The author of the imperfect work on Saint Matthew cites apocrypha that said clearly that Saint John had been baptized by Jesus Christ, which he seems to understand simply of the baptism of water. He adds nevertheless immediately that John gave to Jesus the baptism of water, and that Jesus gave to John that of the Spirit. But he can understand, by that, that of Jesus Christ, who through water gives the Holy Spirit."

"One cites still Theophylact and Euthymius. The first says well that Saint John had need to be purified by Jesus Christ, because, being descended from Adam, he had drawn from him, like the others, the defilement of disobedience, which produced in him some sins, although slight. But he does not say that it was by the baptism of water that he was to be purified of them. And, explaining sine modo, he makes Jesus Christ say: 'Let me now humble myself; there will come a time when I will enjoy the glory that is due to me, and when you will see me,' says Saint Chrysostom, 'in the state in which you would wish to see me from now on.'"

"Saint Augustine appears more formal; for after having shown, against the Pelagians, that one could not say that Saint John had been without sin, since he was born by the ordinary way, and not from a virgin, like Jesus Christ, he proves it still like Theophylact, because he says to Jesus Christ: Ego a te debeo baptizari; after which he adds: 'This favor was granted to him in this very place: for the Lord having had Himself baptized in water, could John be dispensed from it?' And hoc ibi praestitum est; quando enim Dominus in aquam, non ille praeter aquam. — However, in the books to Rene, where he maintains most the necessity of the baptism of Jesus Christ, he does not say that John received it. Thus he may well have wished to mark simply in the other place some particular sanctification that Jesus Christ had given him then, and which, having been done in water, took, in some sort, the place of baptism for him. When he says in a sermon: Plus hic de baptismo dico, a Joanne baptizatus est Christus, etc., it is visible, it seems to me, that he did not believe that Saint John had also been baptized by Jesus Christ."

"One remarks, with some reason, that the disciples of Saint John would not have testified to him their surprise that Jesus Christ was baptizing, if Saint John himself had been baptized by Him; or else one would have to say that Saint John asked to be baptized by Jesus only following the conversation that he had on this subject with his disciples, in order to engage them to attach themselves to the Son of God and to follow Him."

However, Saint Evodius, successor of Saint Peter in the chair of Antioch, attests that John the Baptist was baptized by Jesus as well as the holy Virgin, and the apostles Peter, James, and John, whom He seemed always to honor with more favor and affection. The authority of this author is certainly of very great weight and should suffice, it seems, to give certainty to the point that occupies us; for could he have issued this affirmation without having acquired the certainty of it from the very mouth of Saint Peter, of whom he had been the disciple?

It pleased the Holy Spirit to veil from our knowledge the conversation that Jesus did not fail to have with Saint John, following his baptism. It is not given to our curiosity to penetrate the secrets that the Bridegroom took pleasure in discovering to His friend of predilection in this divine colloquy.

However, the disciples of Saint John the Baptist, and perhaps also all the crowd of the people, had been witnesses of what had happened without understanding all the mystery of it. They had listened with an attentive ear; they had heard if not the heavenly voice, at least the words of John to Jesus. When the Savior had moved away, the disciples approached the Precursor, and questioned him on the subject of the wonders at which they had assisted seized with astonishment. Then John bore witness to Jesus, and pronounced with a solemn voice: "It is this very one of whom I was saying to you: He who is to come after me has been preferred to me, because He was before me. We have all received from His fullness and grace for grace. For the law was given by Moses, but the truth was brought by Jesus Christ. No man has ever seen God; it is the only Son who is in the bosom of the Father who has discovered Him." We do not need to bring out the importance of this new testimony in favor of the Messiah, and the character of solemnity that it had in the mouth of the Precursor, at this moment especially when one was still under the impression of the mysterious vision.

However, the noise of the preachings of Saint John the Baptist increased more and more each day. Everyone asked himself if this extraordinary man was not the Christ. The general opinion finally constrained the chiefs of the people and the princes of the priests to turn their attention publicly to the Precursor.

The Synagogue, or the Judaic Church, represented especially by the great council or Sanhedrin, was the natural judge of doctrine in Israel. It is to it that the deposit was found entrusted. It is under its authority and surveillance that the ministry of preaching was exercised. It had the right to judge kings, to control the doctrine of the Prophets themselves, to examine the legitimacy of their mission, and to authorize or forbid their ministry. The Scribes and the Pharisees, who were part of this council, for being personally infected with errors against the faith, were no less the natural judges and guardians. They sat in the chair of Moses, and, according to the report of Jesus Christ Himself, they had the right to obedience on the part of the others.

The eminent holiness of the Precursor, his science and his entirely prophetic eloquence, and above all his popularity and his ascendancy over the crowd, put him under cover and protected him perhaps against any act of violence on the part of the Pharisees of the Judaic senate, to whom he cast a shadow. One could not from then on dispense with acting with the greatest deference and the greatest honor with regard to him.

The deputies departed from Jerusalem, having arrived toward the Precursor, therefore began to question him touching his person, his quality, and his function. They did not have the intention of informing themselves of his name and his origin, for they did not ignore it. This is what the terms of the response of John show. They do not ask him directly if he is the Christ; they ask him only this question: "Who are you?"

The Evangelist, in order to put more in relief the response of the Precursor, uses a circumlocution and a pleonasm well worthy of remark: "He confessed," he says, "and he did not deny it; and he confessed that he was not the Christ." This declaration, which puts so well in light the veracity and the humility of the son of Zechariah, is recounted in a manner to strike the mind, in order to make the reader attentive, to excite his admiration, and to lead him until the imitation of this virtue dazzling with clarity.

The first question addressed to the Precursor had not obtained the result that the envoys expected from it; it was soon followed by a second: "What then," they said to him, "are you Elias?" John the Baptist answered: "No, I am not." However, the angel Gabriel had announced to Zechariah that his son would precede "the Lord in the spirit and the virtue of Elias," and Jesus Christ declared that "Elias had already come, and that John was himself Elias."

Can he who called himself the voice of the Lord therefore be in disagreement with the Lord Himself? Is the herald of Truth not contradicted here by the Truth itself? The Jews took John the Baptist for Elias himself in person; such was the bottom of their thought and the sense of their question. In declaring that he was not Elias, John the Baptist remained in the truth, and said nothing that was not worthy of the approval of Christ. He was truly Elias, but in a mystical and figurative sense, according to the thought of the angel and the word of the Savior; and he was not Elias in the proper and coarse sense that the Jews had in mind.

The Pharisees continued still to question him: "Are you a prophet?" they pursued; and he answered: "I am not."

The Greek doctors observe that, in the Greek, the word prophet is preceded by the article. This is why they think that the priests and the Levites were asking John the Baptist, not if he was any prophet whatsoever and ordinary, but indeed if he was that famous prophet whom Moses had announced in these terms: "The Lord your God will raise up from your nation and from the midst of your brothers a prophet like me."

Nevertheless, Denis the Carthusian does not want one to understand this interrogation of the Jews in a sense different from that which ordinary usage attributes to it. Consequently, it would not be a question of this extraordinary prophet predicted by Moses, but indeed rather of some prophet inferior to Elias; for the questions went according to a descending gradation. It is not moreover the custom neither of the old nor of the new Testament, to understand the word prophet otherwise than in the common and ordinary sense, unless it is accompanied by an epithet that authorizes a special interpretation. It is therefore better to admit, says this commentator, that the deputies of the great council wanted to speak only of an ordinary prophet, and according to the acceptation commonly used in the old Testament. And John can answer that he is not a prophet, because he does not come to announce things to come, but to show Christ and to indicate His presence by saying: "Behold the Lamb of God."

The deputies addressed themselves finally to the Precursor, saying to him: "Who are you, so that we may answer those who sent us? What do you say of yourself?" John answered them by these solemn and mysterious words: "I am the voice of Him who cries in the desert: prepare the way of the Lord, as the prophet Isaiah has said."

In the account that he gives us of this famous embassy, Saint John the Evangelist interrupts all of a sudden the dialogue to make observe that "the deputies were Pharisees"; then he continues his narration by adding: "And they questioned him and said to him: Why do you baptize then, if you are neither the Christ, nor Elias, nor a Prophet?"

The wickedness of the Pharisees, says Saint Gregory, is not capable of altering the sweetness and the charity of Saint John; he gives a response of life to a word of envy. Whether one praises him, whether one blames him, in irons as in liberty, he has only one thing in view, it is to fulfill his mission, to bear witness to the Messiah, to glorify Him, and to lower himself. He does not therefore put himself in pain to justify his mission and his baptism in the eyes of his enemies; he does not occupy himself with saying by what authority and for what reason he baptizes; but he seizes promptly the occasion to render to Christ a striking and solemn testimony. A commentator makes still observe that this testimony is reported by Saint John the Evangelist, as the most famous, because it was public; and, moreover, it was addressed to the pontiffs and to the magistrates: it had been asked juridically and accepted as such by the envoys.

Saint John, lowering himself and teaching his listeners to make little case of his baptism, strives to raise that of Christ. "As for me," he says, "I baptize in water; but there is one who has appeared in your midst, whom you do not know, it is He who must baptize in the Holy Spirit and in fire."

The Evangelist Saint John, whose every word deserves to be noted, has taken care to mark the place where these things happened; and a learned chronologist, Tornielli, fixes the day to February 16, while Jesus Christ was still retired in the desert. "This was happening therefore in Bethany, on the bank of the Jordan where John was baptizing."

After having fasted forty days and forty nights and having submitted himself to the trials of the rudest penance, Jesus Christ had permitted the tempter to come to set traps for Him and to seek to excite in His humanity the desires and the appetites of the triple concupiscence. But a word of the Word of God had sufficed to confound the enemy of all good. He had wished, by humility, to be tempted like us, "in all ways, but without receiving any attack of sin." Having thus prepared Himself for His divine mission, He descended from the mountain where the demon had left Him, left the desert and the solitude, went to spend some weeks in Nazareth, and returned toward Saint John the Baptist to see him and hear him, but above all to furnish him the occasion to repeat and to confirm, in His presence and in the face of all the Jews, the testimony that he had just rendered to Him in His absence.

"Another day," says the evangelical text, "John saw Jesus who was coming to him, and he said: Behold the Lamb of God, behold Him who takes away the sin of the world. It is He of whom I said: There comes after me a man who has been preferred to me, because He was before me."

This word so short of the herald of Truth: "Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world," expresses admirably well that there is in Jesus Christ a single person and two substances or natures, that of God and that of man; it shows that the human nature is passible, and that the divine nature is not subject to suffering. In effect, because He is man, He could be carried like "a lamb full of sweetness to be immolated. He delivered," says Isaiah, "His body to those who struck Him, He presented His cheeks to those who maltreated Him"; He wished to satiate us with His flesh, and to clothe us with His wool; He was attached to the cross and pierced with a lance, in order that we might mark our foreheads with His blood, like the Israelites their doors with the blood of the lamb. — But because He is God, He could take away the sin of the world by rising to ravish His prey and by roaring among the dead, like a young lion, after having struck down the ravisher, conquered the tyrant of death, and triumphed over the passing. Seated at the right of the Father, He remits sins to those who believe firmly in Him.

After having reported this striking testimony that we have tried to bring out, the Gospel of the beloved disciple teaches us that the very day after this memorable circumstance, John the Baptist, like an attentive and vigilant sentinel, was standing with two of his disciples. He had the happiness to see and to contemplate still "Jesus who was walking." In the transport of his joy, he exclaimed again in showing Him to his disciples: "Behold the Lamb of God." On the word of their master, the disciples set themselves immediately in march to rejoin Jesus. The Savior having turned toward them, and seeing that they were coming in His following, perhaps without daring to address the word to Him, spoke to them Himself the first, and asked them what they were seeking. The disciples of John answered by giving to Jesus a name of excellence that one attributed ordinarily only to those who had been judged worthy of it by the Sanhedrin: "Rabbi," they said to Him, "we desire to know the place where you dwell." And the Savior, welcoming them with great kindness, conducted them Himself. Now, one of them was Andrew; he became since then a disciple and apostle of Jesus Christ. One does not know in an absolutely certain manner who was the other disciple. Saint John Chrysostom teaches us that, according to some authors, it was Saint John the Evangelist. Theophylact affirms it positively. According to Saint Epiphanius, it could be only him or else James, his brother, that is to say one of the sons of Zebedee. But the silence of the Gospel, on this subject, authorizes sufficiently to believe that this disciple was none other than the one who gave us the account of it. It is, in effect, at the school of Saint John the Baptist that Saint John the Evangelist seems to have learned to name Jesus the Lamb of God. It is in the following of this worthy master that he penetrated himself so well of the purity, of the virginity, and of the holiness that rendered him so dear to Jesus Christ. This great abstinence, the virginity and the purity of life that shone in the holy evangelist passed, it seems, from John the Baptist into him, according to the expression of a modern interpreter.

We see, by this circumstance, with what care and what eagerness the Precursor seized all the occasions to attach to Jesus Christ the disciples that he had made for himself. He worked thus to decrease himself in order to make his Lord grow. He sent therefore to Jesus, already sketched and prepared, the stones that were to serve Him to seat the foundations of His Church.

The Evangelist teaches us that it was on the word of Andrew that Simon, his elder brother, went also to find Jesus Christ. We cannot doubt that he was counted himself among the disciples of John the Baptist. The sacred text does not tell us it formally, but it insinuates it sufficiently.

These disciples did not attach themselves yet definitively to Jesus; for we know that it was later only that they left their nets to follow Him. They wanted first to know Him personally, to bind with Him some familiarity in order to make themselves, later, definitively His disciples if they found that His society was advantageous to them. They returned to their first master. Saint John could from then on speak to them in a clearer and more precise manner touching the principal object of his mission.

The son of Zechariah continued always to administer his baptism and to bear witness to the Savior, even after Jesus had begun His evangelical preachings. However, we are going to begin to see him diminish, just as he had predicted. The events that we have recounted until here seem to have happened for the most part on the Jordan, opposite Jericho; for tradition recounts that Christ was baptized at the very place where Israel crossed the river on dry foot, and where the pious pilgrims of the Holy Land go still to ask of its sacred waves a new communication of the purifying and sanctifying virtue with which they were impregnated, and by them all the waters of the earth, at the moment when the Savior of the world plunged Himself into them to institute the sacrament of regeneration.

The Gospel, which provides us so few geographical details, makes us remark that the place where the scene that we are going to recount happened was Ennon, near Salim or Salem, formerly the residence of Melchizedek, whose palace one still saw in ruins in the time of Saint Jerome. This city, situated on a small river that goes to throw itself into the Jordan not far from there, belonged to the province of Samaria. It is there that John was baptizing, because there was much water, says the Gospel. However, we must not imagine that it was the need to go to seek water that engaged the Precursor to leave the Jordan: for we know still, by the Gospel, that Jesus was giving His baptism there, but in the province of Judea.

We have therefore thus the occasion to observe that to share with a greater extent of country the happy news of which he was the herald, and to better fulfill thus his mission, the Precursor went by preference into the places that Jesus Christ had not yet illustrated with His presence, in order to announce Him, to make Him known in advance, and to prepare the way for Him. For he had begun to preach in the desert of Judea; he had set himself to baptize in the Jordan, not far from its mouth in the dead sea; it is there that all Jerusalem went to him. Now we see him go back up this river until Ennon, to from there make his voice resound until the shores of the sea of Tiberias and awaken the province of Samaria to the noise of his powerful clamors, as he had already done for Judea. He continued therefore to baptize; for his baptism was not abolished as soon as that of Jesus Christ appeared. But the disciples of John the Baptist, observing that their master was no longer the object of a competition as numerous and as eager as formerly, conceived spite and jealousy against the one whom they knew to be the occasion or the cause of it. The ill-intentioned Jews, and especially the Pharisees, sworn enemies of Jesus as well as of Saint John, knew how to find the means to goad still the disciples of the Precursor, and to excite their envy, in order to lead them to have the testimonies that their master had rendered to Christ invalidated or revoked. They joined themselves even sometimes to the Pharisees whom they knew to be declared enemies of the Savior. This is what Saint Matthew teaches us in these terms:

"The disciples of John approached Jesus and said to Him: Why do the Pharisees and we practice frequent fasts, while your disciples do not fast at all?" Their intention was to have their master revoke the testimony that he had rendered touching Christ: their words insinuate it with enough evidence: "Master," they say, "He who was with you beyond the Jordan, and to whom you have borne witness, behold that He has set Himself to baptize, and everyone goes toward Him." These words, which are without doubt only the summary abridgment of what they said to Saint John, reveal, in their brevity, a rare skill, the most subtle ruse and the most capable of seducing any other than the one of whom Truth itself said that he was not a reed shaken by the wind. It required of the Precursor all his firmness and his prudence not to deviate from the truth in this circumstance.

The wickedness and the jealousy of the Pharisees against the Savior and against the Precursor furnished again to the latter the occasion to render to Jesus a public and solemn homage, the most beautiful and the most striking of all the testimonies; it is the last that is reported to us in the Gospel, but it is also the most striking; it is the supreme song of the Swan that so many times had rejoiced all Israel to the accents of his voice more than prophetic. Let us listen to what he is going to say to his disciples and to the Jews, eager to hear his response.

"Man can receive nothing, if it has not been given to him from heaven." That is to say: Why do you call me Rabbi with so much emphasis, O insidious and importunate men? Why do you attribute to me a name that I do not deserve at all? This name, I declare to you, is suitable only to That One alone who lacks nothing, who alone possesses science and teaches it to men.

"Is it only from today, moreover, that I declare to you that far from being a God, I am only a man? But you yourselves, you bear witness to me that I have said to you: I am not the Christ, but I have been sent before Him. When were sent to me, from Jerusalem, priests and Levites to ask me: 'Who are you?' I confessed it, and I did not hide it, and I 'declared that I am not the Christ,' and I added: 'He who is to come after me, has been put before me, and I am not worthy to untie the straps of His shoes. You are witnesses yourselves that I have held this language, since you say to me: Master, he who beyond the Jordan was with you, and to whom you have borne witness.' It is therefore not for the first time that I declare to be only a man; for you know, and you bear witness to me now that I have said: 'I am not the Christ.' If I had arrogated to myself this quality, I would certainly have pretended to be more than a man; for the Christ is not man only.

If you want to know what I am, I am going to teach it to you by a well-known comparison: "The bridegroom is he to whom the bride belongs; but the friend of the bridegroom is he who stands and listens to him; he is ravished with joy in hearing the voice of the bridegroom. It is therefore there my joy which is now at its height." Now you know, you who have celebrated weddings, or who only have taken part in them, what distance there is between the bridegroom and his friend.

But, one could ask, how does Saint John not hesitate to declare himself here the paranymph of Christ, His most intimate friend? Why does he attribute to himself, to the exclusion of any other, the singular and unique favor of being admitted even into the nuptial apartment, while, in other circumstances, he barely permitted himself to pass for the servant of the Son of God, and repeated that he was not worthy to render Him the most humble of services, such as carrying His shoe and untying its straps?

He wanted to show that he did not resemble the slaves who have, with regard to their master, envy rather than affection. Friends, on the contrary, cooperate in the happiness of their friends, work to procure it, rejoice in it themselves, and congratulate themselves on it. John the Baptist said formerly that he was unworthy to untie the straps of the Son of God, because one took him himself for the Christ; he showed his humility, because one was preparing for him a temptation of pride. Now he announces himself as the intimate friend of the Son of God, because one wants to make him pose as a rival; he shows his love and his charity, because one wants to excite in him the gall of envy.

The disciples of Saint John had complained that Christ was baptizing and that everyone was coming to Him. John made them understand that it could not be otherwise, because He is the Bridegroom of the Church; but he also had to show them the necessity for himself to decrease as Jesus Christ increased.

Saint John the Baptist, says Saint Ambrose, was the figure of the Law and the prophecies, which were diminished by their abolition; Christ represented the new Law and the Gospel, which must grow until the end of time; it was necessary for the Law to cease and for the Jewish nation to disappear as the Gospel spread its light and the Christian people developed.

However, the career of Saint John was drawing to a close. The hour was arriving when the Son of God would finally begin the public course of His preaching: for until then, it had had only a limited impact and had been accompanied only by miracles performed, so to speak, in the shadows. The glory of having been persecuted by the Jews, just like all the ancient Prophets, was not to be lacking for the Forerunner; for Jesus Christ Himself said on this subject: "They treated him as they pleased; and it is reserved for the Son of Man to suffer the same persecutions from them." Most authors agree, in fact, in attributing to the Pharisees the plan and execution of the arrest of Saint John, and even his death; these sectarians had the cunning to suggest to Herod the fear of a revolution, which the Forerunner's influence on the minds of the people, the gathering of the multitudes eager to follow him, and above all, suspicion and jealousy, made easily believable to a cowardly and effeminate tyrant.

At that time, there reigned over the province of Galilee and the country beyond the Jordan a prince to whom the Romans had preserved a semblance of royalty under the title of Tetrarch. This was Herod, the son of the murderer of the Innocents, a vicious and corrupt man, whom Saint Luke characterizes in these terms: "Having been rebuked by Saint John regarding Herodias, his brother's wife, and all the wicked things he had done, Herod added to all his crimes that of putting John in prison." The holy Forerunner had therefore already rebuked him and warned him to send away the woman he had taken from his brother Philip, and whom he had not feared to marry publicly, to the great scandal of everyone. He had not feared to reproach the soldiers for their extortions, the greedy Publicans for their harshness, the proud Pharisees for their hypocrisy, and all the Jews for their hardening and depravity. It remained for him to teach a severe lesson to the monarch. He did so with generous freedom, and with as little fear as if he had been speaking to a child, says Saint Chrysostom. He was not unaware of what was reserved for him by an angry queen; he knew what his zeal would expose him to by attempting to bring down from the throne and drive from her palace a proud and all-powerful woman. But the zeal for the house of God consumed him; and, in the presence of a duty to be fulfilled, he counted as nothing the threats and persecutions of which he might be the object.

"Meanwhile, the daughter of the King of the Arabs, the offended legitimate wife, had fled to her father. From this, a war had arisen; and Herod Antipas, marching against the King of the Arabs, was then with his army at the southern tip of Perea. Driven by his wife and furious at the just rep roaches of Joh Hérode Antipas Tetrarch of Galilee and Perea, presented as responsible for the imprisonment of John the Baptist. n the Baptist, and worried besides by the discontent of the people, who had been irritated by both this adulterous union and the unjust war that had followed, this wretched prince could no longer contain himself. Attributing to the Forerunner the troubles and murmurs of the people, instead of blaming himself, he had attempted a violent blow; and having the courageous preacher delivered to him by Pilate, he had him locked in the fortress of Machaerus, located on the extreme limit of his states. The Rabbis called it the Black Fort or the Furnace, because of the black asphalt earth and the hot springs found in that region. It was located beyond the Dead Sea, in the vicinity of Mount Nebo. It was the best-fortified place after Jerusalem. King Herod had had it built to serve as a stronghold against the Arabs. The latter had later seized it, but it had probably been reconquered in the current war. Nature had provided it with ditches one hundred cubits deep; at its feet was built the lower city, but it was high up, its rocks protruding above the abyss and surrounded by walls. At the corners were placed towers sixty cubits high; and it was in one of these towers that John the Baptist was imprisoned. On the square, in the middle of the citadel, stood a magnificent castle: it was there that the tetrarch stayed with his staff while the war forced him to remain in these regions. In this palace was an old rue plant of such height that Josephus felt he had to mention it. At the bottom of the valley grew a magical root called Baaras, of which marvelous effects were told. Such was this fortress of Machaerus, which rose itself like a dungeon of hell in this valley, sixty stadia long, and from which one could see the Dead Sea at a distance of three and a half leagues."

It must have been in the plans of the deceitful and cunning monarch to make people gradually forget the Prophet who had stirred and attracted all of Israel to himself. For this, two means naturally presented themselves: close and prolonged detention, and the discrediting of his person by means of skillfully concocted calumnies.

It was in execution of the first means that John was taken far from the places where he had played such a great role, and that he was transported and detained in a fortress sheltered from any attempt at rescue by his disciples, and with no possibility of attempting an escape. It was also for this reason that Herod was in no hurry to put him on trial; for the irreproachable justice and holiness of the Forerunner, recognized by his enemies themselves, could not have turned a judgment to the glory of his accusers. It was therefore safer and more clever to lock him up as secretly as possible, and to avoid giving this measure any kind of publicity.

To discredit the person and virtue of the Forerunner, they formulated against him baseless accusations, which they skillfully spread among the people. They made him out to be a factionalist who sought to alarm the multitude; they represented that he had deserved and made necessary his imprisonment by exposing the Jews to the belief that they wanted to revolt against Roman authority. They did not fail, above all, to accuse him of having insulted the royal majesty, in the person of Herod, by the reproaches he had addressed to him and by the blame with which he had covered him in the very presence of the people. They could not forget to revive all the grievances that the Pharisees had against him from the beginning of his preaching, for having publicly humiliated them by reproaching them for their vices and calling them a brood of vipers. We know, in fact, from the very mouth of Christ, that they wanted to pass off His Forerunner as one possessed by a demon.

The disciples of the holy Forerunner always kept their affection for this worthy master; their fidelity did not falter even in persecution; they wanted to continue to be exclusively attached to him, although Saint John had often tried to make them understand that they should henceforth follow Him of whom he had called himself the humble forerunner. The spirit of jealousy and rivalry that had animated them since Jesus began to give Baptism reawakened in their hearts when they saw His reputation growing every day, while there was no more talk of their master. Every day, in fact, they heard tell of the miracles that Christ scattered in His path; perhaps they had themselves been witnesses of some of these wonders. They conceived spite and envy from this; some of them even let themselves be led by the Pharisees to the point of joining their side to set traps for Him. Following the resurrection of the widow of Nain's son, as they still had the faculty of seeing their master in his prison, they came to tell him of this wonder and some other earlier miracles; they undoubtedly let glimpse the spite they felt from it. Then, Saint John chose two of them and charged them with a mission that could not be subject to any suspicion, and the result of which would be to teach them, by the very force of things, what difference there is between Christ and His Forerunner. Consequently, instead of addressing an instruction to his disciples, as he had already done in a similar circumstance, he sends by preference, no doubt, those who had the most difficulty believing, and charges them to go in his name to ask the Savior this question: "Are You the One who is to come, or should we wait for another?"

The words that the Forerunner's disciples addressed on his behalf to Jesus Christ amounted to these: "I know that You are the Messiah: this is what I have proven by my testimony; but the people are still ignorant of it. Why then do You delay in making Yourself known, and do You not declare what You are? Finally, render a clear and evident testimony in the eyes of everyone; show, by Your works, that You are the Christ, and that one must not wait for any other."

The envoys of the holy Forerunner having arrived toward Jesus, addressed to Him, on behalf of their master, the questions with which they were charged. "The Savior," says Saint Cyril, "did not hasten to answer that He was the One who was to come; but He showed it by the number and greatness of the miracles, for He took pleasure in performing, in the presence of John's disciples, many more wonders than He had done until then." Saint Luke recounts, in fact, that "Jesus, at that very hour, delivered a great number of people from the diseases and wounds with which they were afflicted and from the evil spirits that possessed them, and He gave sight to many blind people." He thus accomplished by design what the Prophets had predicted that the Christ would one day do.

After having accomplished many miracles in the presence of Saint John's disciples, Jesus finally spoke: "Go," He said to the disciples of the holy Forerunner, "report to John what you have seen and heard. The blind see, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, the poor have the Gospel preached to them. And blessed is he who will not be scandalized on My account." The Savior, by pointing out that the Gospel was announced to the poor, wanted, according to the interpreters, to notify the fulfillment of the Prophecy of Isaiah on this subject. It was, consequently, answering the thought of Saint John. If Jesus Christ had answered in a formal and evident manner, instead of giving the floor to the works, would the disciples of Saint John not have been offended and would they not have replied to Him, like the Jews: "It is You Yourself who bear witness to Yourself?"

However, Christ took care to say enough so that John's disciples could return perfectly instructed, and even convinced and persuaded; for immediately after the death of their worthy master, they went with eagerness to Jesus. The miracles of which they had been witnesses were, in fact, well capable of enlightening them and removing any pretext for doubt.

The multitude who had attended the reception of Saint John's disciples and heard the questions proposed to the Savior did not know the true motive that had inspired them in the Forerunner. That is why the numerous witnesses of this scene imagined a thousand absurd things on this subject.

But Jesus Christ hastens to forestall these suspicions and to prevent minds from thinking ill of His friend of predilection.

To give more force to His reasoning, and not to say at first what He thinks of His Forerunner, He invokes the testimony of His listeners themselves. He is not content to rely on their words; He shows that their very actions testify to the firmness and constancy of Saint John. That is why He says to the Jews: "What did you go out into the desert to see? — Did you go to see a reed shaken by the wind?" — "But what did you go out to see?" He continues, "is it a man dressed in soft clothing? Those who are dressed in such a way are found in the palaces of kings."

After having made known the customs of Saint John by his dwelling, his clothing, and the veneration of which he was the object on the part of the people, Christ continues by asking the Jews if they did not go to see a Prophet. "What did you go out to see? A Prophet? Yes, I tell you, and more than a Prophet; for it is of him that it is written: Behold, I send My angel before your face, and he will prepare the way before you."

Eternal Wisdom has prescribed to man to praise no one before his death. However, this same incarnate Wisdom, to whom belongs by divine right the judgment of men, wanted not only to derogate once from this maxim in favor of His Forerunner, but also to support it with a sort of complacency by praising the one who did not fear to call himself His friend, even before this adorable Savior had let escape from His divine mouth this word so sweet, in addressing His disciples: "I have called you friends." Christ, in fact, continuing His discourse in a more solemn tone, declares with a sort of oath that "among all those born of women there is none greater than John the Baptist," and that far from any of the Prophets surpassing him, he is himself greater than them, since he is more than a Prophet.

While Jesus was transfigured on Tabor, John was dying in his prison after three months of captivity. After having prepared the ways for the Messiah, he gloriously finished his career by martyrdom, and himself received the baptism of blood. Herodias had long been looking for the opportunity to have him killed: she finally found it. Herod was celebrating the anniversary of his birth, and had invited to his table all the great men of his court, the chiefs of his army, and the principal personages of Galilee. Salome, daughter of Herodias, then appeared before Herod, playing the lute and dancing to embellish the feast. In the time of Augustus, the custom, long in use among the Greeks, of ending state banquets with mimic dances and scenes taken from dramatic poets, had been introduced to the courts of the great throughout the Roman Empire.

Salome therefore appeared before all of Herod's court as queen of the feast and as a dancer at the same time. The education of girls at this time, throughout the Roman Empire, had as its goal, as Horace teaches us, to train them early in dance and coquetry. But on this occasion, this game had a very tragic end; for it pleased Herod so much that he swore by his Salomé Daughter of Herodias associated with the request for the beheading of John the Baptist. head, according to the custom of the Jews, probably excited by the fumes of wine, to grant Salome the favor she would ask of him, even if it were half his kingdom. "To give half a kingdom" was a formula used very often in antiquity to affirm something.

But she went out and said to her mother: "What should I ask for?" The latter replied: "The head of John the Baptist." She immediately returned to find the king. Saint Matthew and Saint Mark give Herod in this place the title of king, although he was only tetrarch, indicating to us by this how the great men of his court then flattered him with the hope of attaining royalty. It was, moreover, the sole desire of the ambitious Herodias, and this desire was the cause of her ruin and that of Herod. The evangelist seems to insinuate to us that he had long harbored the thought of taking the title of Basileus, like his brother Archelaus, although he had only attempted to execute this design twelve years later. And this is what Josephus confirms for us, when in his work on the Jewish War, at the beginning of the second book, he tells us that Antipas, immediately after the death of his father, separated from his brother Archelaus and disputed the royal dignity with him.

Herod therefore let the fatal promise escape. It is probable that his brother, the tetrarch Philip, was attending this feast, and that Salome had already seduced him. He was at least represented there by envoys charged with asking for her hand; for we find him already married to her a short time later. The promise that Herod made to her therefore seemed to relate to Salome's dowry. The latter had received her name in memory and honor of the sister of Herod the Great, who, in the will of this king, had received a considerable estate. The nobility of Galilee, the army chiefs, and the officers had heard the fatal oath. "The king was very sorry; nevertheless, because of the oath he had made and his guests, he did not want to refuse her, but he sent one of his guards with orders to bring the head of John." It was the custom in antiquity for kings to always have with them an archer or an executioner, as a sign of their judicial and sovereign power. "The latter, having gone to cut off John's head in the prison, brought it on a platter, and gave it to the princess; but she carried it to her mother."

The new Jezebel had finally obtained what she had been asking of her husband for so long. We read in history that Mark Antony also had the heads of the proscribed brought to him during meals, and that Fulvia, his wife, took the head of Cicero on her knees and pierced his tongue with needles. Dio Cassius tells us the same thing about Agrippina, after she had caused Paulina Lollia to perish. This type of cruelty was, moreover, quite in the customs of the era, and by having the heads of those one wanted to strike presented, one ensured by that the execution of the orders one had given. We should not, therefore, be surprised if historical tradition, after Saint Jerome and Nicephorus, recounts that Herodias pierced the tongue of the Forerunner with needles, as if she still feared his reproaches; that she buried his head in a secret place wrapped in rags, and had the trunk thrown away without taking the trouble to bury it. But John, at the moment he was finishing his course, was still saying: "I am not the one you think; I am only the Forerunner of the One whose sandals I am not worthy to untie." Thus, the generous Forerunner, on the very threshold of the other life, still confessed in a striking way the Messiah and the kingdom He had come to found.

"It was on the 10th of the month called by the Jews Ab, or Lous, that John was put to death. It was a day of misfortune for this people. It was on this day, in fact, that God, irritated against the children of Israel, had announced to them that none of those who had come out of Egypt would enter the promised land. It was on this day that the first temple had been destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar; and it is on this day again that, later, the second temple was destroyed by Titus. It was on this day that the city of Bethar, the center of the revolt under Bar Kokhba, had been annihilated; and it is on this day that the victor drove the plow over the place where Jerusalem had been."

By adopting the data of Dr. Sepp, John the Baptist would have begun his evangelical career at the age of thirty-one years and three months, in the year of Rome 778, and he would have been put in prison in the year 780, in the month of May. He would therefore have preached for the last four months of the year 778, all of the year 779, and the first five months of 780. After a detention of about three months, he would have fallen under the homicidal sword on the 10th of the month called Ab by the Jews, and corresponding to our months of July and August. Thus, Saint John the Baptist would have died at the age of about thirty-three years and three months. According to these calculations, Jesus Christ would have lived thirty-four years, three months, and twenty-one days.

It is judged, says Baillet, that his death occurred toward the end of the second year of Jesus Christ's ministry, or at the latest in the beginnings of the third, toward the month of February. It is always certain that it was some time before Easter.

As soon as the disciples of Saint John the Baptist had rendered to the mortal remains of their worthy master the duties of burial, they hastened to go to find Jesus to inform Him of this sad event, and no doubt also to draw some relief for their sorrow by placing themselves henceforth in His following. The mission that the Forerunner had recently entrusted to two of them had not failed to dispel the feelings of jealousy they had had at first against the One they regarded as the emulator and rival of their master. What proves this is their eagerness to go to the Savior immediately after the death of Saint John.

Jesus Christ certainly knew that John the Baptist was to die and what kind of death he would have to undergo. This event was not unknown to Him for an instant; but He wanted, in this circumstance, to conceive and let appear His sorrow only in the manner of men, that is to say, when He had been informed of the death of the one He justly cherished more than all other men.

At this announcement, says Nicephorus, Jesus was affected by a deep sorrow. Metaphrastes reports that, in the affliction He felt from it, He could not remain any longer in the country; but, as if to console Himself for His sadness, He boarded a boat with His Apostles and crossed the Sea of Tiberias to withdraw into the desert.

God did not want to leave unpunished, even in this world, the unjust death of the holy Forerunner; for Herod, then at war with Aretas, King of Arabia, had the pain and shame of seeing his army defeated and annihilated by his enemy. According to Josephus, and according to the opinion accredited among the Jews, it was a punishment that God inflicted on him to avenge the murder of Saint John. But this first misfortune was only the prelude to those that the justice of God reserved for him. He died miserably, deprived of all his states; Herodias and her daughter Salome did not have a better fate.

The characteristic attribute of Saint John the Baptist in the arts is the lamb, because it is under this title that the Forerunner designated the Savior to the crowd. — The Middle Ages placed this lamb in one of the hands of Saint John the Baptist. Today, one prefers a banner, on which is written this sentence: *Ecce Agnus Dei*, behold the Lamb of God; we admit that the manner of the Middle Ages is much more energetic, that it speaks much more eloquently to the eyes; now, it is to this latter result that one must especially aim in painting and sculpture. We could add as an accessory detail that the Forerunner is dressed in a simple animal skin, which lets his bare legs be seen, which skin is tightened at the waist by a leather belt. — That is, we repeat, the principal attribute of Saint John in popular art. If one wants to represent the Forerunner exercising the function that earned him his popular name of *Baptist*, one must always show him giving baptism by immersion, and be careful not to put in his hand a shell, which can only designate baptism by effusion. — His captivity is easily recognized by a grilled door, and his beheading by a head on a platter. — Finally, in the scenes of the Last Judgment, the Blessed Virgin is on her knees to the right of the Savior, and the Forerunner to His left; below are the Apostles, etc. The painter Andrea del Sarto gave in eleven esteemed plates the sequence of the life of Saint John the Baptist.

Saint John the Baptist is the patron of a great number of cities and countries that it would be too long to name. He is particularly invoked by cutlers and furbishers, because of the *cutlass* that served to sever his head; — by belt-makers, because of the leather belt that the evangelist Saint Mark makes him wear; — by bird-catchers in Liège, because no doubt John had lived free and far from cities, like the bird of the fields, before his imprisonment; — by skinners and tailors ; — for lam décollation Liturgical term designating the death of John the Baptist by decapitation. bs, that is understandable; — against epilepsy, convulsions, spasms, and hail. We cannot explain these latter patronages, except by this general reason, that the credit of Saint John was no doubt reputed to be universal.

[APPENDIX: CULT AND RELICS.]

The disciples of the holy Forerunner, having succeeded in taking possession of their master's body, wished to shield it from the insults of his enemies by carrying it to Seba ste, th Sébaste City in Armenia where the martyrdom took place. e ancient Samaria, which was no longer under the jurisdiction of Herod Antipas.

God did not delay in making known the glory of Saint John the Baptist. After the Savior's tomb, none, without contradiction, was more glorious and attracted more flowing and eager crowds than the tomb of the son of Zechariah; a multitude of miracles took place there.

But paganism, at bay, sought to take revenge even upon the remains of the dead for the isolation and ignominy in which its antiquated gods, decrepit altars, and silent oracles found themselves. Hadrian, to prevent Christians from flocking from all sides to the Savior's tomb, had it profaned by erecting a temple and a statue to the most impure of pagan divinities there. Julian the Apostate wished to follow his example regarding the tomb of Saint John the Baptist. By his orders, his sacred bones were discovered, profaned, and dispersed. But the sacrilegious profaners soon realized the futility of their shameful attempt, and miracles did not cease to occur, no longer in a single place, as before, but continued to highlight more and more the impotence of the idols and the uselessness of the cult preached to them. Excited by a redoubling of fury, the infidels gathered the Saint's bones and sought to annihilate them by burning them and casting the ashes to the wind.

But pious monks had disguised themselves to mingle with these impious men; they managed to steal a considerable portion; they even collected the ashes from the pyre. This profanation of the remains of Saint John the Baptist caused him to be surnamed twice a martyr by some authors. There are those who have attributed to the vengeance that heaven wished to exact for this outrage the tragic death of Julian, which occurred shortly thereafter.

It is said that the vindictive Herodias had the head of the holy Forerunner carried with her to Jerusalem, and that she would not entrust its keeping to anyone. Alone and far from any human gaze, she entrusted this head to the earth, in an unknown place within the palace that Herod possessed in the city of David.

It is there, at least, that later the august head of the most illustrious of the Prophets was found in a marvelous way among the ruins of the palace once inhabited by Herod.

It would take an entire book to give the account of the various inventions of the head of Saint John the Baptist: we shall write only a few words on this subject.

Under Valens, the Arian emperor, the head of Saint John the Baptist was found by religious in Jerusalem. Mardouins, chief of the eunuchs of the imperial palace, having heard of this happy discovery, notified the emperor, his master, who gave orders to transport this rich treasure to his imperial city. But, as his heroism made him unworthy to possess it, when they reached a small town called Pontichion, fifteen miles from Chalcedon, it was impossible to make the mules that pulled the chariot move, and they were forced to unload the relic at the village of Couilaon, nearby, of which the same Mardouins was lord. It remained there until the time of the great Theodosius; it was then brought to Constantinople. This pious emperor, having gone to meet it, took this sacred deposit himself, and having wrapped it in his imperial purple, he carried it in his arms into the city. This translation, which took place on August 29, was so solemn that the Roman Church has commemorated it in the same feast as that of the Beheading. Later, Theodosius had a magnificent church built in the Hebdomon quarter, where he had it deposited. This place was seven miles from Constantinople, and it was not enclosed within its walls until the reign of Heraclius, in the year of Our Lord 626. Moreover, the piety of Theodosius was abundantly rewarded: for Sozomen reports that this prince, having retired to the church he had built in honor of Saint John to pray and take him as his protector before undertaking the war against the tyrant Eugenius, obtained so many blessings from heaven that on the day of the battle, which he won entirely, an infernal spirit came out of this church, which, throwing out frightful cries and howls against the Saint, insulted him with these words: "Is this how you triumph over me... over me who had your head cut off?" Those who heard them noted the hour, and it was verified that it was at the moment when Theodosius was routing the troops of Eugenius.

Devotion to Saint John the Baptist has always been so great that several churches have eagerly sought the means and occasions to possess some part of his body. That of Saint Sylvester, in Rome, claims to have the best part of his head. The cathedral of Amiens prides itself on having a considerable portion, which includes the upper lip, the nose, the eyes, and a part of the forehead. This relic was tak en fro Amiens French church that preserves an important relic tradition of John the Baptist. m the church of Saint George, in the arsenal of Constantinople, when the French took it, and brought to Amiens in the year 1206 by a priest named Walon de Sarton, son of Miles, knight, lord of Sarton, a village near Douiens, six leagues from Amiens. This treasure was received there with all the solemnity imaginable by Richard de Gerberay, bishop of that city, on December 17. This precious relic was saved during the French Revolution; it is still possessed today.

Baldwin II, emperor of Constantinople, among several relics specified in his golden bull of the year 1317, made a gift to Saint Louis, king of France, of the upper part of the same head, which was enclosed in a beautiful gilded silver reliquary and deposited in the Sainte-Chapelle in Paris. The abbey of Tyron, in the county of Perche, possessed the brain; and, as a great number of miracles occurred there, Robert de Joigny, bishop of Chartres, who lived in the year 1515, had it taken from the wall where it was, to place it in a precious head supported by two angels. The chapel of the castle of Saint-Chaumont, in Lyonnais, preserves a notable part of his jaws, which was brought there from the Orient in a gold reliquary. The cities of Turin, Aosta, and Venice in Italy; and Lyon and Nemours in France, also possess some parts of these precious relics. Saint Paulinus, bishop of Nola, placed some in his church. Saint Gaudentius, bishop of Brescia, did the same in his. The finger with which he pointed to Jesus Christ, to make him known to the Jews, is kept on the island of Malta, where the grand master of the Order of the Knights who fought under the name and auspices of this great Saint resided. There is a little of his ashes in the city of Genoa, in a chapel of the cathedral church, where they are much honored; when they are presented to the agitated sea, they have the virtue of calming it and stopping its storms.

Saint Gregory of Tours, in the book of the Glory of the Martyrs, reports several miracles that were performed by the sacred bones of this holy Forerunner. So many have occurred in the city of Amiens that one cannot doubt the truth of the one it possesses. One may see Baronius on this matter, in the year 660, in the ninth volume of his Annals, and the famous Du Cange, treasurer of France and general of finances in the province of Picardy, who gave to the public a historical treatise on the head of Saint John the Baptist. It is a very curious work, sought after for its accuracy, as are all those that have come from the hands of this learned man.

The basilica of Saint John Lateran, the first church of Rome and the Catholic world, the one where the bishop of Rome goes to take solemn possession of the universal primacy, and which is regarded as the metropolis of catholicity, was dedicated to the Savior and placed under the invocation of Saint John the Baptist.

The cult of Saint John the Baptist has always been exceptional in the Church, as much for its antiquity and universality as for the solemnity invested in it and the number of feasts established in his honor.

Saint Augustine observes that the feast of the Nativity of Saint John was already very ancient in his time, and that the faithful had received it, by tradition, from the ancients, to transmit it to posterity.

Thus the custom of celebrating the birth of the Forerunner with a solemn feast is as ancient as the solemnity of the Nativity of the Savior himself, while the day when the holy Virgin appeared to the world was not honored with a particular cult until the 8th or 9th century. The very existence of this feast, according to M. Pascal, provoked the institution of the one we have just spoken of.

The Church, following the remark of Saint Bernard, celebrates the death of other Saints because their life and death were holy. This day is ordinarily called the natal day, *natalis dies*. It is that their death is nothing other than birth to the true life. One cannot admire enough this language, so eminently Christian, and especially so diametrically opposed to that of paganism, which deified life. This name alone places the Christian religion in a sphere infinitely higher than the beliefs that limit the destiny of man to the feast of life, and ignore the sublime virtue of hope, one of the characteristics of the true religion.

But, by a very remarkable exception, the Church reveres the temporal birth of Saint John the Baptist, because this very birth was holy and the source of a holy joy. It is a privilege that distinguishes him from all others, because their birth did not have the same grace as his. Those who are troubled to know why we celebrate this birth rather than that of any other apostle, martyr, prophet, or patriarch, must remember, says Saint Augustine, that the birth of the latter had nothing but the natural, that they only received the grace of the Holy Spirit later in their age; in a word, that they were not born prophets, nor martyrs, or witnesses of Jesus Christ, like Saint John.

The Nativity of the holy Forerunner has always been celebrated uniformly on June 24, as well in the East as in the West. One does not see any church that has not conformed to this usage, if it is not perhaps that of Ethiopia, where it seems it is held on the second day of September, which is also the second day of the year for that country.

There was none more solemn, after that of the principal mysteries of our redemption. The Council of Agde, held in the year 306, counts it as the first after that of Easter, Christmas, Epiphany, Ascension, and Pentecost.

Although less remarked than formerly, especially in France, where it has ceased to be obligatory since the concordat of 1802, the Nativity of Saint John the Baptist is nevertheless still very solemn among religious populations. The city of Chaumont-en-Bassigny, which honors Saint John with an altogether exceptional cult, joins the privilege of a jubilee, called the great pardon, every time this feast falls on a Sunday.

Among various singularities that served to distinguish this great feast from all others, we will note that, in certain provinces, priests were required to come to celebrate it in the cathedral with the bishop. Elsewhere, it was the custom to offer the holy sacrifice of the mass three times, as is still the case today on the feast of Christmas. "One wished by this," says Alcuin, "to highlight three signal privileges of the glory of Saint John the Baptist. He had come into the world to prepare the way of the Lord by the example of his life; that was the object of the mystery of the vigil. His Baptism raised him above all; this is what the second mass recalls. Finally, he remained a Nazarene and preserved his virginity; this grace is celebrated in the feast of the day." The custom of celebrating the holy mass three times on Saint John's Day was in force until the 19th century.

Here is another explanation, which is from Guillaume Durand. In certain churches, a mass was celebrated early in the morning, because this nativity was a dawn; at the hour of Terce, there was another mass, and it was the most solemn: this other mass was that of a martyr. The fast of the eve was observed in memory of the penitent life of Saint John in the desert. On this feast, one did not sing *alleluia* frequently, as on that of the Apostles. The reason is that this birth took place before the resurrection of Jesus Christ and before the time of joy.

The institution of the vigil of the Nativity of Saint John the Baptist is hardly less ancient than that of the feast itself; it is much the same for the fast. The Council of Seligenstadt (year 1022) had even established that it would be preceded by a sort of Lent that lasted fourteen days.

The archangel Gabriel, in announcing a son to Zechariah, had predicted that his birth would be a subject of joy for a great number.

Indeed, however far back one may go in consulting the monuments of Christian antiquity, one finds that the feast of the Nativity of Saint John has always been a subject of joy not only among Christians, but even among the infidels themselves, and especially among the Arabs who, moreover, have preserved a religious respect for the ancient patriarchs. Extraordinary demonstrations were made everywhere on this occasion.

It is known that it was the custom to anticipate the feast of Saint John by lighting, from the eve, great bonfires of rejoicing. This custom dates back to the highest antiquity, and Saint Augustine speaks of it as a universal and immemorial thing. A multitude of different reasons have been given for it. The one that seems most plausible to us is that, this solemnity coinciding with the summer solstice, the time of the year when pagans celebrated, with bonfires, the entry of the sun into the sign of Leo, the Church wished to Christianize this ancient custom, which no doubt it could not succeed in abolishing. It was made the expression of the joy that, according to the oracle of Scripture, the birth of John the Baptist must have caused to the world, by announcing the coming birth of the Word made flesh.

However, this practice did not fail to become, in some countries, exclusively profane. Elsewhere it degenerated into a completely strange and ridiculous superstition.

"In certain places," says Guillaume Durand, "they burn the bones of animals; it is in memory of the fact that the bones of Saint John the Baptist were burned by the Gentiles in the city of Sebaste... They carry torches into the fields, and they make fires, to signify that Saint John was the light, the lighted torch, the Forerunner of the true light, which enlightens every man coming into this world... They roll a wheel or other objects, to signify that as the sun, when it has reached the highest point of its course, cannot rise further, but descends in its circle, so also the fame of Saint John, who is regarded as the Christ, diminished when the latter had appeared, according to what he said himself: 'He must increase, and I must decrease...'"

The custom of lighting bonfires on the eve of Saint John's Day has not yet disappeared everywhere; for in certain cities, even very considerable ones, the first magistrates do not disdain to proceed with it with pomp and solemnity.

Besides the feast of the birth of the Forerunner, they have also celebrated, in various places, that of his conception; not that it was judged holy, like that of Jesus Christ or the holy Virgin, but because it had been announced by order of God, and because it formed the beginning of the mysteries. It is marked on September 24 in the ancient martyrologies, which bear the name of Saint Jerome; in those of Wandalbert, Raban, Ado, Usuard, and Notker.

The Greeks, in agreement with the Latins to celebrate this feast as well, have not strayed from this same time, since it is found marked sometimes on the 23rd, sometimes on the 22nd of the same month in their calendars and menologies, as if they had wished to celebrate the annunciation made to Zechariah in the temple rather than the very conception of Saint John.

This choice shows clearly enough that the whole Church believed that this conception had occurred shortly after the autumn equinox. It still persists in the same opinion, despite the trouble that some scholars have taken to show us that the time of the service of the priest Zechariah in the temple was from July 16 to July 18. Some Greeks have maintained that this conception could only have occurred in the month of October or November; but they did not have the credit to make the feast changed in favor of their sentiment.

One does not see that any office is now performed for it in their Church, if it is not perhaps in Syria and neighboring countries, where this conception, qualified by the name of Annunciation of Zechariah, is celebrated on the third of the eight Sundays that precede the feast of Christmas, that is to say, after the middle of the month of November.

If the Church has derogated in favor of Saint John the Baptist by celebrating with a special and exceptional cult the day when this brilliant torch appeared in the world; if it has believed it could recall to the memory and veneration of the universe the very conception of this child of miracle, it could not forget to solemnize the day of his death; for it has awarded him the honors of martyrdom just as to Saint Stephen and the Apostles of the Savior, although Saint Augustine seems to say that he was denied the consolation of dying for the name of Jesus Christ, whom he had announced. Indeed, has he not been, just as well as them, the martyr or witness of Jesus Christ, since he died for justice, which is inseparable from truth? Saint John Chrysostom does not fear to qualify him as the first of the martyrs.

Before the 7th century of the Church, this feast was named the Passion of Saint John, as one sees in the ancient sacramentaries of Rome under Pope Gelasius, and of France, under the first race of our kings. It is qualified as the natal day or the heavenly birth of Saint John in the ancient martyrologies of the name of Saint Jerome. But, since the time of Saint Gregory the Great, it has retained in the Latin Church the name of Beheading, which has also been introduced among the Greeks in equivalent terms. They have placed it in the rank of feasts where it is ordered to interrupt the exercises of the bar and the works of the hands.

This is what has also been introduced in several churches of the West; and in the sacramentary of Saint Gregory, one sees, for his office, a beautiful preface, and blessings as on the principal solemnities of the Roman Church.

The feast of the Beheading has, however, always been less solemn than that of the Nativity, because it seems that it does not regard Jesus Christ as closely from the side of his incarnation. But it appears that it has been nowhere more solemn than in Russia, where it is preceded by a vigil and a fast, which is not practiced for any other saint in that country.

One can judge the celebrity of the cult that the Greeks have had for the Beheading of Saint John the Baptist by the multitude of churches consecrated under this title; one has counted up to fifteen in the city of Constantinople alone.

However, one has not been in agreement everywhere to celebrate it on the same day. There has been much divergence on this point, especially among the Orientals. Thus in Syria it was celebrated on January 7, the day after Epiphany, following the usage of joining to the feast of the mysteries those of the persons who were the ministers of them, or who took part in them. It is believed, in fact, that it is on the very day of the Epiphany that Jesus Christ was baptized by Saint John.

Elsewhere, and especially in Africa, the Beheading was celebrated on December 27, after that of Saint Stephen, to bring closer to Jesus Christ those who had suffered closest to him. This feast is still found marked on April 19 in some martyrologies, and on March 25 in others. It has been believed that this last day is the one on which Saint John suffered martyrdom, and that the feast of which we speak was fixed on August 29 because one would have made, on that day, the invention or the translation of the venerable head of the holy Forerunner.

We have drawn this biography from the work of M. the Abbé Barret, priest of the diocese of Langres, entitled: The Forerunner, reasoned history of the life, mission, and preachings of Saint John the Baptist.