Dom Guéranger: Nativity of St. John the Baptist

The Voice of one crying in the wilderness: “Prepare ye the way of the Lord; behold thy God!” Oh! in this world of ours grown now so cold, who can understand earth’s transports at hearing these glad tidings so long expected? The promised God was not yet manifested; but already have the heavens bowed down to make way for his passage. No longer was he “the One who is to come,” he for whom our fathers, the illustrious saints of the prophetic age ceaselessly called, in their indomitable hope. Still hidden, indeed, but already in our midst, he was resting beneath that virginal cloud compared with which, the heavenly purity of Thrones and Cherubim wax dim; yea, the united fires of burning Seraphim grow faint, in presence of the single love wherewith she alone encompasses him in her human heart, she that lowly daughter of Adam whom he had chosen for his mother. Our accursed earth, made suddenly more blessed far than yonder heaven so long inexorably closed to suppliant prayer, awaited only that the august mystery should be revealed; the hour was come for earth to join her canticles to that eternal and divine praise, which henceforth was ever rising from her depths, and which being itself no other than the Word Himself, would celebrate God condignly. But beneath the veil of humility where his divinity, even after as well as before his birth, must still continue to hide itself from men, who may discover the Emmanuel? who, having recognized him in his merciful abasements, may succeed in making him accepted by a world lost in pride? who may cry, pointing out the Carpenter’s Son, in the midst of the crowd: Behold Him whom your fathers have so wistfully awaited!

For such is the order decreed from on high, in the manifestation of the Messias. Conformably to the ways of men, the God-Man would not intrude himself into public life; he would await, for the inauguration of his divine ministry, some man who having preceded him in a similar career, would be hereby sufficiently accredited, to introduce him to the people.

Sublime part for a creature to play, to stand guarantee for his God, witness for the Word! The exalted dignity of him who was to fill such a position, had been notified, as had that of the Messias, long before his birth. In the solemn liturgy of the Age of types, the Levite choir, reminding the Most High of the meekness of David and of the promise made to him of a glorious heir, hailed from afar the mysterious lamp prepared by God for his Christ. Not that, to give light to his steps, Christ should stand in need of external help: he, the Splendor of the Father, had only to appear in these dark regions of ours, to fill them with the effulgence of the very heavens; but so many false glimmerings had deceived mankind, during the night of these ages of expectation, that had the true Light arisen on a sudden, it would not have been understood, or would have but blinded eyes now become well nigh powerless, by reason of protracted darkness, to endure its brilliancy. Eternal Wisdom therefore decreed that just as the rising sun is announced by the morning-star, and prepares his coming by the gently tempered brilliancy of aurora; so Christ, who is Light should be preceded here below by a star, his precursor; and his approach be signalized by the luminous rays which he himself (though still invisible) would shed around this faithful herald of his coming. When, in by-gone days, the Most High vouchsafed to light up, before the eyes of his prophets, the distant future, that radiant flash which for an instant shot across the heavens of the old covenant, melted away in the deep night, and ushered not in as yet the longed-for dawn. The “morning-star” of which the psalmist sings shall know naught of defeat: declaring unto night that all is now over with her, he will dim his own fires only in the triumphant splendor of the Sun of Justice. Even as aurora melts into day, so will he confound with Light Increated, his own radiance; being of himself, like every creature, nothingness and darkness, he will so reflect the brilliancy of the Messias Shining immediately upon him, that many will mistake him even for the very Christ.

The mysterious conformity of Christ and his Precursor, the incomparable proximity which unites one to the other, are to be found many times marked down in the sacred scriptures. If Christ is the Word, eternally uttered by the Father he is to be the Voice bearing this divine utterance whithersoever it is to reach; Isaias already hears the desert echoing with these accents, till now unknown; and the prince of prophets expresses his joy, with all the enthusiasm of a soul already beholding itself in the very presence of its Lord and God. The Christ is the Angel of the Covenant; but in the very same text wherein the Holy Ghost gives Him this title, for us so full of hope, there appears likewise bearing the same name of angel, the inseparable messenger, the faithful ambassador, to whom the earth is indebted for her coming to know the Spouse: Behold, I send my angel, and he shall prepare the way before my face. And presently the Lord whom ye seek, and the Angel of the testament whom you desire, shall come to his Temple; behold he cometh, saith the Lord of hosts. And putting an end to the prophetic ministry, of which he is the last representative, Malachias terminates his own oracles by the words which we have heard Gabriel addressing to Zachary, when he makes known to him the approaching birth of the Precursor.


Gabriel has retired, bearing away with him the divine secret which he has not been commissioned to reveal to the rest of the world. Neither will the most prudent Virgin herself tell it; even Joseph, her virginal Spouse, is to receive no communication of the mystery from her lips. Yet fear not; the woeful sterility beneath which earth has been so long groaning is not to be followed by an ignorance more sorrow-stricken still, now that it has yielded its fruit. There is one from whom Emmanuel will have no secret, nor reserve; it were fitting to reveal the marvel unto him. Scarce has the Spouse taken possession of the sanctuary all spotless wherein the nine months of his first abiding amongst men, must run their course, yea, scarce has the Word been made Flesh, than Our Lady, inwardly taught what is her Son’s desire, arising makes all haste to speed into the hill country of Judea. The voice of my Beloved! Behold he cometh, leaping upon the mountains, skipping over the hills. His first visit is to the “Friend of the Bridegroom,” the first out-pour of his graces is to John. A distinct feast will allow us to honor in a special manner the precious day on which the divine Child, sanctifying his Precursor, reveals himself to John by the voice of Mary; the day on which Our Lady, manifested by John, leaping within the womb of his mother, proclaims at last the wondrous things operated within her by the Almighty, according to the merciful promise which he spoke to our fathers, to Abraham and to his seed for ever.

But the time is come when the good tidings are to spread, from children and mothers, through all the adjacent country, until at length they reach the whole world. John is about to be born, and while still himself unable to speak, he is to loosen his father’s tongue. He is to put an end to that dumbness with which the aged priest, a type of the old law, had been struck by the angel; and Zachary, himself filled with the Holy Ghost, is about to publish in a new canticle, the blessed visit of the Lord God of Israel.


Another festival is yet to come, at the end of August, calling for our renewed homage to the son of Zachary and Elizabeth; the feast, that is to say, of his glorious martyrdom. But ”venerable” as it has every right to be in our eyes (so the Church expresses herself in the Collect on that day), its splendor is not to be compared with that of this present festival. The reason is because this day relates less to John himself than to Jesus, whom he is announcing; whereas the feast of the Decollation, though more personal to our Saint, has not in the divine plan that same importance which his Birth had, inasmuch as it preludes that of the Son of God.

There hath not risen among them that are born of women a greater than John the Baptist, are the words to be spoken by the Man-God of his Precursor; and already has Gabriel, when announcing both of them, declared the same thing of each, that he shall be great. But the greatness of Jesus is that He shall be called the Son of the Most High, and the greatness of John is that he shall go before Him. The name of John brought down from heaven, like that of his Master, proclaims the grace which Jesus, by saving mankind, is to bring to the world. Jesus who cometh front above in person, is above all it is He and He alone whom all mankind is expecting; John who is of earth, on the contrary, hath nothing but what he hath received; but he hath received to be the friend of the Bridegroom, his usher; so that the Bridegroom cometh not to the Bride, but by him.

Yea, the Bride even cannot come to know herself, nor to prepare herself for the sacred nuptials, but by him: his preaching awakens her, in the wilderness; he adorns her with the charms of penitence and all virtues; his hand, in the one baptism, at last unites her to Christ beneath the waters. Sublime moment! in which, raised far above all men and angels, John, in the midst of the Holy Trinity, as it were, in virtue of an authority that is his, invests the Second Person Incarnate with a new title; the Father and the Holy Ghost acting the while, in concert with him! But presently, coming down from those lofty heights, more than human, to which his mission had raised him, he is fain to disappear altogether: the Bride is become the Bridegroom’s own; the joy therefore of John is full, his work is done; he has now but to efface himself and to decrease. To Jesus here manifested, it henceforth alone belongs to appear and to increase. Thus too, the day-star, from the feast of John’s Nativity when he beams his rays upon us in all his splendor, will begin to decline from the heights of his solstice, towards the horizon; whereas Christmas will give him signal to return, to resume that upward movement which progressively restores all his fiery effulgence.

Verily, Jesus alone is Light, the Light without which earth would remain dead; and John is but the man sent from God, without whom the Light would have remained unknown. But Jesus being inseparable from John, even as day is from aurora, it is by no means astonishing that earth’s gladness at John’s birth should partake of something of that excited by the coming of our Redeemer. Up to the fifteenth century, the Latin Church, together with the Greeks who still continue the custom, celebrated, in the month of September, a feast called the conception of the Precursor; not that his conception was in itself holy, but because it announced the beginning of mysteries. Just in the same way, the Nativity of Saint John Baptist indeed made holy, is celebrated with so much pomp merely because it seems to enfold within itself the Nativity of Christ, our Redeemer. It is as it were Midsummer’s “Christmas Day.” From the very onset, God and his Church brought about, with most delicate care, many such parallel resemblances and dependences between these two solemnities. These we are now about to study.

God, who in his Providence seeks in all things the glorification of His Word made Flesh, estimates men and centuries by the measure of testimony they render to Christ; and this is why John is so great. For, Him whom the Prophets announced as about to come, whom the Apostles preached as already come, John, at once prophet and apostle, pointed out with his finger, exclaiming “Behold, this is He!” John, being then the witness by excellence, it is fitting that he should open that glorious period during which, for three centuries, the Church was to render to her Spouse that testimony of blood, whereby the Martyrs, after the Prophets and Apostles, whereon she is built up, hold the first claim to her gratitude. Just as Eternal Wisdom had decreed that the tenth and last great struggle of that epoch, should be forever linked with the Birthday of the Son of God whose triumph it secured, by the memory of the Martyrs of Nicomedia on the 25th of December, 303; so likewise does John’s birthday mark the beginning of the first of those giant contests. For the 24th of June in the Roman Martyrology is sacred likewise to the memory of those soldiers of Christ, who first entered upon the arena opened to them by pagan Rome in the year 64. After the proclamation of the Nativity of the Precursor, the Church’s record runs thus: “At Rome the memory of many holy Martyrs who under the Emperor Nero being calumniously accused of setting fire to the city, were at the command of the same, most cruelly put to death by divers torments; some of whom were sown up in beasts’ skins and so exposed to be torn by dogs; others crucified; others set on fire, so that at the decline of day they might serve as torches to light up the night. All these were disciples of the Apostles; and first fruits of the Martyrs offered to the Lord by the Roman Church, the fertile field of Martyrs, even before the death of the Apostles.”


In the divers states and degrees of the Christian life, his ever needful and beneficent influence makes itself felt. At the beginning of the fourth Gospel, in the most dogmatic passage of the New Testament, not by mere accident is John brought forward, even as heretofore at Jordan, as one closely united with the operations of the Adorable Trinity, in the universal economy of the Divine Incarnation: There was a man sent from God whose name was John, saith the Holy Ghost; he came for a witness, to give testimony of the light, that all might believe through him. “Precursor at his birth, Precursor at his death, St. John still continues,” says St. Ambrose, “to march in front, before the Lord. More perhaps than we are aware of, may his mysterious action be telling on this present life of ours. When we begin to believe in Christ, there comes forth virtue, as it were, from St. John, drawing us after him: he inclines the steps of the soul towards faith; he rectifies the crooked ways of life, making straight the road of our earthly pilgrimage, lest we stray into the rugged wilds of error; he contrives so, that all our valleys be filled with the fruits of virtue, and that every elevation be brought low before the Lord.”

But if the Precursor maintains his part in each progressive movement of faith which brings souls nearer to Christ, he intervenes still more markedly in each baptism conferred, whereby the Bride gains increase. The baptistry is especially consecrated to him. It is true, the baptism which he gave to the crowds pressing day by day, on Jordan’s banks, had never power such as Christian baptism possesses; but when he plunged the Man-God beneath the waters, they were endowed with a virtue of fecundity emanating directly from Christ, whereby they would be empowered until the end of time to complete, by the accession of new members, the Body of Holy Church united to Christ.

The faith of our fathers never ignored the great benefits for which both individuals and nations are indebted to Saint John. So many neophytes received his name in baptism, so efficacious was the aid afforded by him in conducting his clients to sanctity, that there is not a day in the Calendar on which there may not be honored the heavenly birthday of one or other so named. Amongst nations, the Lombards formerly claimed Saint John as Patron, and French Canada does the same nowadays. But whether in East or West, who could count the countries, towns, religious families, abbeys, and churches placed under this same powerful patronage: from the temple which, under Theodosius, replaced that of the ancient Serapis in Alexandria with its famous mysteries, to the sanctuary raised upon the ruins of the altar of Apollo, on the summit of Monte Cassino, by the Patriarch of monks; from the fifteen churches which Byzantium, the new Rome, consecrated within her walls in honor of the Precursor, to the august Basilica of Lateran, well worthy of its epithet, the golden Basilica, and which in the Capital of Christendom remains forever Mother and Mistress of all churches, not alone of the City, but of the whole world! Dedicated at first to our Savior, this latter Basilica added at an early date another title which seems inseparable from this sacred name, that of the Friend of the Bridegroom. Saint John the Evangelist, also a “friend of Jesus,” whose precious death is placed by one tradition on the Twenty-fourth day of June, has likewise had his name added to the other two borne by this Basilica; but all the same, it is nonetheless certain that common practice is in keeping with ancient documents, in referring, as it does, more especially to the Precursor, the title of Saint John Lateran, whereby the patriarchal Basilica of the Roman Pontiffs is always designated in these days.


On this day, therefore, let us too imitate Mother Church; let us avoid that obliviousness which bespeaks ingratitude; let us hail, with thanksgiving and heartfelt gladness, the arrival of him who promises our Savior unto us. Yea, already Christmas is announced. On the Lateran Piazza (or Square), the faithful Roman people will keep vigil tonight, awaiting the hour which will allow the eve’s strict fast and abstinence to be broken, when they may give themselves up to innocent enjoyment, the prelude of those rejoicings wherewith, six months hence, they will be greeting the Emmanuel.

Saint John’s Vigil is no longer of precept, in a great many Churches. Formerly, however, not one day’s fasting only, but an entire quarantine was observed at the approach of the Nativity of the Precursor, resembling in its length and severity that of the Advent of our Lord! The more severe had been the holy exactions of the preparation, the more prized and the better appreciated would be the festival. After seeing the penance of Saint John’s fast equaled to the austerity of that preceding Christmas, it is not surprising to behold the Church in her Liturgy making the two Nativities closely resemble one another, to a degree that would be apt to stagger the limping faith of many a one nowadays.

The Nativity of Saint John was celebrated by three Masses, just as is that of Him whom he made known to the Bride: the first, in the dead of night, commemorated his title of Precursor; the second, at daybreak, honored the Baptism he conferred; the third, at the hour of Tierce, hailed his sanctity. The preparation of the Bride, the consecration of the Bridegroom, his own peerless holiness; a threefold triumph, which at once linked the servant to the Master, and deserved the homage of a triple sacrifice to God the Thrice-Holy, manifested to John in the plurality of His Persons, and revealed by him to the Church. In like manner, as there were formerly two Matins on Christmas Night, so in many places was there a double office celebrated on the feast of Saint John, as Durandus of Mende, following Honorious of Autun, informs us. The first Office began at the decline of day; it was without Alleluia, in order to signify the time of the Law and the Prophets which lasted up to Saint John. The second office, begun in the middle of the night, terminated at dawn; this was sung with Alleluia, to denote the opening of the time of grace and of the kingdom of God.

Joy, which is the characteristic of this Feast, outstripped the limits of the sacred precincts and shed itself abroad, as far even as the infidel Mussulmans. Though at Christmas, the severity of the season necessarily confined to the domestic hearth all touching expansion of private piety, the lovely summer nights, at Saint John’s tide, gave free scope to popular display of lively faith among various nationalities. In this way, the people seemed to make up for what circumstances prevented in the way of demonstrations to the Infant God, by the glad honors they could render to the cradle of his Precursor. Scarce had the last rays of the setting sun died away, than all the world over, from the far East to the furthest West, immense columns of flame arose from every mountain top; and in an instant, every town and village and smallest hamlet was lighted up. “Saint John’s fires,” as they called them, were an authentic testimony, repeating over and over again the truth of the words of the Angel and of prophecy, whereby that universal gladness was announced which would hail the Birth day of Elizabeth’s son. Like to a burning and shining light, to use the expression of our Lord, he had appeared in the midst of endless night, and for a time, the Synagogue was willing to rejoice in his light; but disconcerted by his fidelity which prevented him from giving himself out as the Christ and the true Light, irritated at the sight of the Lamb that he pointed out as the salvation of the whole world, and not of Israel alone, the Synagogue had presently turned back again into night, and had drawn across her own eyes that fatal bandage which suffers her to remain, up to this day, in her sad darkness. Filled with gratitude to him who had neither wished to diminish nor to deceive the Bride, the gentile world, on her side, exalted him all the more for his having lowered himself; gathering together and applying to herself those sentiments which ought to have animated the repudiated Synagogue, she was fain to manifest by all means in her power, that without confounding the borrowed light of the Precursor with that of the Sun of Justice Himself, she nonetheless hailed with enthusiasm this light which had been to the entire human race a very aurora of nuptial gladness.


In some parts, the custom prevailed of rolling a “burning wheel;” this was a self-revolving red-hot disk that, rolling along the streets or down from the hill-tops, represented the movement of the sun, which attains the highest point in his orbit, to begin at once his descent; thus was the word of the Precursor brought to mind, when speaking of the Messias, he says: He must increase, and I must decrease. The symbolism was completed by the custom then in vogue, of burning old bones and rubbish on this day which proclaims the end of the Ancient Law, and the commencement of the New Covenant, according to the holy Scripture, where it is written: … And new store coming on, you shall cast away the old.


Antra deserti teneris sub annis,
Civium turmas fugiens, petisti,
Præbuit durum tegumen camelus
Artubus sacris, strophium bidentes;
Cui latex haustum, sociata pastum
Cæteri tantum cecinere vatum
Corde præsago jubar affuturum:
Tu quidem mundi scelus auuferentem
Non fuit vasti spatium per orbis
Sanctius quisquam genitus Johanne,
Qui nefas sæcli meruit lavantem
Sit decus Patri, genitæque Proli,
Et tibi, compar utriusque virtus
Spiritus semper, Deus unus, omni
O nimis felix, meritique celsi,
Nesciens labem nivei pudoris,
Præpotens martyr, nemorumque cultor,
Serta ter denis alios coronant
Aucta crementis, duplicata quosdam;
Trina te fructu cumulata centum
Nunc potens nostri meritis opimis
Pectoris duros lapides revelle,
Asperum planans iter, et reflexos
Ut pius mundi Sator et Redemptor,
Mentibus culpæ sine labe puris,
Rite dignetur veniens beatos
Laudibus cives celebrent superni
Te, Deus simplex pariterque trine,
Supplices et nos veniam precamur:





The Prayer is the Collect of the Mass.


Introit
The Lord hath called me by my name, from the womb of my mother: and he hath made my mouth like a sharp sword; in the shadow of his hand he hath protected me, and hath made me as a chosen arrow.

O God, who hast made this day glorious unto us on account of the Nativity of blessed John; grant to thy people the grace of spiritual joys; and direct the souls of all the Faithful into the way of eternal salvation. Through our Lord, &c.
Lesson of the Prophet Isaias. Ch. XLIX.
Give ear, ye islands, and hearken, ye people from afar. The Lord hath called me from the womb, from the bowels of my mother he hath been mindful of my name. And he hath made my mouth like a sharp sword: in the shadow of his hand he hath protected me, and hath made me as a chosen arrow: in his quiver he hath hidden me. And he said to me: Thou art my servant Israel, for in thee will I glory. And now saith the Lord, that formed me from the womb to be his servant, that I may bring back Jacob unto him, and Israel will not be gathered together: and I am glorified in the eyes of the Lord, and my God is made my strength. And he said: It is a small thing that thou shouldst be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob, and to convert the dregs of Israel. Behold, I have given thee to be the light of the Gentiles, that thou mayst be my salvation even to the farthest part of the earth. Thus saith the Lord the redeemer of Israel, his Holy One, to the soul that is despised, to the nation that is abhorred, to the servant of rulers: Kings shall see, and princes shall rise up, and adore for the Lord’ s sake, because he is faithful, and for the Holy One of Israel, who hath chosen thee.

Gradual
Before I formed thee in the bowels of thy mother, I knew thee: and before thou camest forth out of the womb, I sanctified thee.
℣. The Lord put forth his hand, and touched my mouth: and said to me.
Alleluia, alleluia.
Gospel
Elizabeth’s full time of being delivered was come, and she brought forth a son. And her neighbours and kinsfolks heard that the Lord had shewed his great mercy towards her, and they congratulated with her. And it came to pass, that on the eighth day they came to circumcise the child, and they called him by his father’s name Zachary. And his mother answering, said: Not so; but he shall be called John. And they said to her: There is none of thy kindred that is called by this name. And they made signs to his father, how he would have him called. And demanding a writing table, he wrote, saying: John is his name. And they all wondered. And immediately his mouth was opened, and his tongue loosed, and he spoke, blessing God. And fear came upon all their neighbours; and all these things were noised abroad over all the hill country of Judea. And all they that had heard them laid them up in their heart, saying: What an one, think ye, shall this child be? For the hand of the Lord was with him. And Zachary his father was filled with the Holy Ghost; and he prophesied, saying: Blessed be the Lord God of Israel; because he hath visited and wrought the redemption of his people.

Offertory

Secret

The Bridegroom is in possession of the Bride, and it is John the Baptist who hath prepared the way; thus sings our Communion Antiphon. The moment of the Sacred Mysteries is that in which he repeats every day: He that hath the Bride is the Bridegroom: but the friend of the Bridegroom, who standeth and heareth him, rejoiceth with joy because of the Bridegroom’s voice. This my joy therefore is fulfilled.

Communion

Sumat Ecclesia tua, Deus, beati Johannis Baptistæ generatione lætitiam: per quem su&aelig.; regenerationis cognovit auctorem, Dominum nostrum Jesum Christum Filium tuum: qui tecum. May thy Church, O God, put on gladness in the Nativity of blessed John Baptist: by whom she hath known the author of her regeneration, our Lord Jesus Christ thy Son, &c.