The tradition of glorifying John the Baptist on the days of his birth and martyrdom developed in the first Christian communities. Since the 3rd century, the Feast of the Nativity of John the Baptist has already been widely celebrated by both Eastern and Western Christians - it was called a “bright celebration” and “Day of the Sun of Truth.” At the beginning of the 4th century, the holiday was introduced into the Christian calendar.
The Church classifies the Feast of the Nativity of John the Baptist into the category of great holidays: it is less significant than the Twelves, but is more revered among the people compared to the others.
This event is reflected in the first chapter of the Gospel of Luke, which tells how the priest Zechariah and his wife Elizabeth, who lived in Hebron, grew old, but, due to Elizabeth’s barrenness, had no children.
One day, during a service in the Temple of Zechariah in Jerusalem, the Archangel Gabriel appeared and predicted to the priest that he would soon have a son who would become the herald (forerunner) of the expected Messiah.
Zechariah, hearing the words of the Archangel Gabriel, doubted them and asked for a sign. To this, Archangel Gabriel replied: “You will remain silent and will not be able to speak until the day this comes true, because you did not believe my words, which will come true in due time” (Luke 1:20). And a sign was given to him, being at the same time a punishment for unbelief: Zechariah was struck dumb until the time the words of the Archangel were fulfilled.
Saint Elizabeth conceived, but hid her pregnancy for five months, until the Most Blessed Virgin Mary, who was her distant relative, visited her to share her and her joy. Elizabeth, filled with the Holy Spirit, greeted the Virgin Mary as the Mother of God. And Saint John, who was still in his mother’s womb, leaped joyfully in the womb (Luke 1:44).
The time came, and Saint Elizabeth gave birth to a son. On the eighth day, according to the law of Moses, his circumcision took place. When his mother named him John, all his relatives were surprised, since no one in their family bore this name. When Saint Zechariah was asked about the name chosen for his newborn son, he asked for a tablet and wrote on it: “His name is John.” As soon as Zechariah did this, the bonds that bound his speech according to the prediction of the Archangel were resolved, and Saint Zechariah, filled with the Holy Spirit, glorified God and uttered prophetic words about the Messiah who appeared in the world and about his son John, the Forerunner of the Lord.
After the Nativity of our Lord Jesus Christ and the worship of the shepherds and wise men, the wicked king Herod ordered the death of all babies. Hearing about this, Saint Elizabeth fled with her son into the desert and hid there in a cave. And Saint Zechariah, continuing his priestly service, was in the Jerusalem temple when Herod sent soldiers to him with orders to reveal the whereabouts of the baby John and his mother. Zechariah replied that he did not know it, and was killed right in the temple (Matthew 23:35). Righteous Elizabeth remained with her son in the desert and died there.
When John was thirteen years old, he left the desert, came to the Jordan Valley and began his preaching. “Repent,” said the prophet, “for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand!” (Matt. 3:2). The Prophet spoke about the Judgment of the world, and everything around John seemed to breathe a premonition of the proximity of great events. His words immediately found a wide response in the souls of the Jews. Crowds of people walked from the surrounding cities to the Jordan River, in which John baptized the people with water. John chose the rite of immersion in the waters of the Jordan as a symbol of entry into the Messianic faith. Just as water washes the body, so repentance cleanses the soul. John demanded that people re-evaluate their entire lives and sincere repentance. Before washing, people confessed their sins.
The holy prophet John the Baptist preached many other things, teaching the people who came to him (Matthew 3:1-12; Mark 1:1-18; Luke 3:1-18; John 1:15-28). And Jesus Christ himself received Baptism from John.
People call this day Ivan Kupala or Midsummer's Day - one of the important holidays of the Slavic calendar, celebrated on the day of the summer solstice, in the Christian tradition - a holiday in honor of the Nativity of St. John the Baptist, the Baptist of the Lord.
Today is an Orthodox church holiday:
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Cathedral of John the Baptist in connection with the feast of Epiphany, February 24 - the first and second finding of its head, May 25 - the third finding of its head, October 12 - the feast of its transference right hand from Malta to Gatchina.
The Prophet John the Baptist was the son of the priest Zechariah (from the family of Aaron) and the righteous Elizabeth (from the family of King David). His parents lived near Hebron (in the Highlands), south of Jerusalem. He was a relative of the Lord Jesus Christ on his mother's side and was born six months before the Lord. As Evangelist Luke narrates, the Archangel Gabriel, appearing to his father Zechariah in the temple, announced the birth of his son. And so the pious spouses, deprived of the consolation of having children until old age, finally have a son, whom they asked for in prayers.
By the grace of God, he escaped death among the thousands of murdered infants in and around Bethlehem. Hearing about the murders, Elizabeth took the boy and retired to the desert mountains. Seeing the approaching warriors, she prayed to God for salvation and then the mountain parted, accepted her along with her son and hid her from her pursuers. Not finding them, the warriors inquired about the Forerunner from Zechariah, who was eventually killed. Elizabeth died in the mountains forty days after the murder of her righteous husband, and Saint John was nourished by an angel until he came of age. He grew up in the wild desert, preparing himself for great service by a strict life of fasting and prayer. The Forerunner wore rough clothes secured with a leather belt and ate wild honey and locusts. He remained a desert dweller until the Lord called him at the age of thirty to preach to the Jewish people.
Sermon
Obeying this calling, the prophet John appeared on the banks of the Jordan to prepare the people to receive the expected Messiah (Christ). To the river before the festival of purification in large quantities people gathered for religious ablutions. Here John turned to them, preaching repentance and baptism for the remission of sins. The essence of his preaching was that before receiving external washing, people must be morally cleansed, and thus prepare themselves to receive the Gospel. Of course, John's baptism was not yet the grace-filled sacrament of Christian baptism. Its meaning was spiritual preparation for the future baptism of water and the Holy Spirit.
According to one church prayer, the prophet John was a bright morning star, which in its brilliance surpassed the radiance of all other stars and foreshadowed the morning of a blessed day, illuminated by the spiritual Sun of Christ (Mal. 4: 2). When the expectation of the Messiah reached its highest degree, the Savior of the world Himself, the Lord Jesus Christ, came to John to the Jordan to be baptized. The baptism of Christ was accompanied by miraculous phenomena - the descent of the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove and the voice of God the Father from heaven: “This is My beloved Son...”
Having received a revelation about Jesus Christ, the prophet John told the people about Him: “Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world.” Hearing this, two of John's disciples joined Jesus Christ. These were the apostles John the Theologian and Andrew the First-Called, brother of Simon Peter.
With the baptism of the Savior, the prophet John completed and, as it were, sealed his prophetic ministry. He fearlessly and strictly denounced vices as ordinary people, so powerful of the world this. For this he soon suffered.
Dungeon
Execution
Baptist of Christ, preacher of repentance, do not despise me who repents, but uniting with the heavenly ones, pray to the Master for me, unworthy, sad, weak and sad, in many ways the troubles of the one who has fallen, burdened by the stormy thoughts of my mind. Because I am a den of evil deeds, I have no end to sinful customs, because my mind is nailed down by earthly things. What will I do? We don't know. And to whom shall I resort, that my soul may be saved? Only to you, Saint John, give the same name of grace, for you are before the Lord according to the Mother of God, greater than all who were born, for you were deemed worthy to touch the top of King Christ, who takes away sins Ra, Lamb of God. Pray to him for my sinful soul, so that from now on, in the first ten hours, I will bear a good burden and accept recompense with the last. To her, the Baptist of Christ, the honest Forerunner, the extreme Prophet, the first martyr in grace, the teacher of fasters and hermits, the teacher of purity and the close friend of Christ! I pray to you, I come running to you: do not deny me from your intercession, but raise me up, cast down by many sins. Renew my soul with repentance, as with the second baptism, since you are the ruler of both: with baptism you wash away ancestral sin, and with repentance you cleanse every bad deed. Cleanse me, defiled by my sins, and force me to enter, even if nothing bad enters, into the Kingdom of Heaven. Amen.
John the Baptist is the last Old Testament prophet of Israel. He prepared the Israeli people for the coming of the Messiah - Christ. And he is the River Jordan. He is also called the Forerunner, since he came before Jesus Christ and foreshadowed His coming into the world.
John was born into the family of a priest. The birth of his son Zechariah was announced in the temple by the Archangel Gabriel. He ordered to name the child John. Zechariah doubted the truth of the prophecy, and for this he was temporarily speechless.
John began his prophetic ministry in the 15th year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius (28/29) in the vicinity of the Judean Desert and on the banks of the Jordan. He baptized people by immersing them in water and preached repentance. Evangelists give Special attention appearance John the Baptist. He wore “a robe of camel’s hair and a leather belt around his waist” and ate locusts and wild honey (see: Matthew 3:4; Mark 1:6). He is often compared with, who also lived in the Judean desert, wore a hair shirt and a leather belt.
During the Baptism of the Lord in the Jordan, John pointed out that Jesus Christ is the Messiah, the Savior of the world.
John the Baptist denounced the Jewish king Herod for having an illegal relationship with his brother's wife, Herodias. Herod did not like this, and he imprisoned the prophet. Herodias' hatred was even stronger, and she was looking for a reason to kill the righteous man. During one of the feasts, Solomiya, the daughter of Herodias, pleased the king with her dance. The king promised to give her whatever she wanted. At the instigation of her mother, she demanded the severed head of John the Baptist on a platter. The king fulfilled her wish, and Solomiya gave the head to her mother. The Orthodox Church remembers the martyrdom of the Prophet John in.
Herodias did not allow the head of John the Baptist to be buried along with his body and kept it in her palace. The head was secretly buried by the queen's maid, Saint Joan, on the Mount of Olives.
Many years after the martyrdom of John the Baptist, his honorable head was found by a certain rich Christian named Innocent, who built himself a house on the Mount of Olives. This is how the first discovery of the honest head of John the Baptist took place. Innocent kept the shrine with reverence, and before his death he buried it so that the pagans would not desecrate it. During the time of the emperor, the shrine was found again and was kept in a family of pious Christians, and then fell into the hands of the wicked priest Eustathius. Miracles were performed from the holy head, and Eustathius attributed them to himself. When this became known, the heretic fled and buried the shrine in the ground near the city of Emesa. Monks settled at this place, who in 452 made the second discovery of the head of John the Baptist. Both discoveries are celebrated on March 9th.
The third discovery of the venerable head of John the Baptist took place in 850 in Komani (on the territory of modern Abkhazia). In the 5th century, during unrest in Constantinople, the honest head was sent to the city of Emesa. In 810-820, the city was threatened by Muslim Arabs, and the shrine was hidden in the city of Comana. In those days, in Byzantium, by order of the iconoclast emperor, icons and shrines were destroyed, and the head of the prophet was buried in the ground. When the veneration of icons and relics was restored, John the Baptist himself appeared in a dream to the Patriarch of Constantinople, who showed him the location of the venerable head.
On January 20, the day after, the church established the Cathedral of John the Baptist - a particularly solemn, cathedral celebration of his memory.
In the chapel of the city of Moscow there is kept an ancient revered icon of John the Baptist, to the case of which a silver hoop is attached. The origin of this hoop is not known for certain; most likely, it was ordered to be made in memory of the miracle of getting rid of a head disease. Already in our time, several cases of miraculous healing through prayers in front of this icon have been documented.
Jesus Christ said that in Israel “there is not a single prophet greater than John the Baptist” (Luke VII, 28).
Some scholars suggest that he belonged to the Jewish community Essenes.
The Russian Orthodox Church now stands at the birthplace of John the Baptist.
Today, January 20, Ukraine celebrates an Orthodox holiday in honor of John the Baptist, or the Baptist, which is installed in the Cathedral of John the Baptist, the Cathedral of John the Baptist and Baptist of the Lord. The event immediately follows the feast of the Epiphany, or Epiphany, writes Know.
The Story of John the Baptist
Prophet John the Baptist is the most revered saint after the Virgin Mary. According to the Gospel, he was the son of the priest Zechariah (from the line of Aaron) and the righteous Elizabeth (from the line of King David)
His relatives lived near Hebron (in the Highlands), south of Jerusalem. The Prophet John was a relative of Jesus Christ on his mother's side and was born six months earlier than the Lord.
The story goes that he escaped death among the thousands of murdered infants in and around Bethlehem. Saint John grew up in the wild desert, preparing himself with fasting and prayer for great service. He wore rough clothes secured with a leather belt and ate wild honey and locusts. John remained a desert dweller until the Lord called him at the age of thirty to preach to the Jewish people.
Then he followed his calling and appeared on the banks of the Jordan to prepare the people to receive the expected Messiah (Christ). Before the holiday of purification, people gathered in large numbers to the river for religious ablutions. Then John preached repentance and baptism for the remission of sins.
The essence of his preaching was that before receiving external washing, people must be morally cleansed, and thus prepare themselves to receive the Gospel. Of course, John's baptism was not yet the grace-filled sacrament of Christian baptism. Its meaning was spiritual preparation for the future baptism of water and the Holy Spirit.
With the baptism of the Savior, the prophet John completed and sealed his prophetic ministry. He fearlessly and strictly denounced the vices of both ordinary people and the powerful of this world.
However, King Herod Antipas (the son of King Herod the Great) could not tolerate this and ordered the prophet John to be put in prison for accusing him of abandoning his lawful wife (the daughter of the Arabian king Aretha) and for illegally cohabiting with Herodias.
On his birthday, Herod held a feast, which was attended by many noble guests. Salome, the daughter of the wicked Herodias, with her immodest dancing pleased Herod and the guests reclining with him so much that the king promised with an oath to give her everything she asked, even up to half of his kingdom.
The dancer asked to give her the head of John the Baptist on a platter. Herod respected John as a prophet, so he was saddened by such a request. But he could not break the oath and sent a guard to the prison, who cut off John’s head and gave it to the girl, and she took the head to her mother. Herodias, having outraged the cut off holy head of the prophet, threw it into the mud.
Later, followers of John the Baptist buried his body in the Samaritan city of Sebastia.
For his crime, Herod received retribution in 38 AD. His troops were defeated by Arethas, who opposed him for dishonoring his daughter, whom he abandoned for Herodias, and in next year The Roman Emperor Caligula exiled Herod to prison.
A few years later, pious Joanna found the head of John the Baptist and placed it in a vessel on the Mount of Olives. Then one pious ascetic, while digging a ditch for the foundation of the temple, found this treasure and kept it with himself, and before his death, fearing the desecration of the shrine by unbelievers, he hid it in the ground in the same place where he found it.
During the reign of Constantine the Great, two monks came to Jerusalem to venerate the Holy Sepulcher, and John the Baptist appeared to one of them and pointed out where his head was buried. From that time on, Christians began to celebrate the First Finding of the Head of John the Baptist.
From that moment on, the Orthodox Church established the custom on the next day of the great feasts of the Lord and the Mother of God to venerate the saints who most closely served this sacred event in history.
Celebrating the Day of John the Baptist
First thing in the morning, believers went to church for services. Then people celebrated “dedication” - that is, they switched to the usual rhythm of work and celebrated the holiday of Ivan the Baptist.
The animals were fed leftovers from festive table and worked around the house. The housewives took out their repairs, which they hid out of harm's way before Christmas, “so that the dashing force of the threads would not get tangled.”
After the dedications one could visit taverns or taverns. Also, women were already allowed to fetch water, which they could not do on holidays.
After Jordan, a several-week meat-eating period began, during which a wedding could be celebrated and songs could be sung. After meat-eating, the strictest period of Lent begins.
January 19 Russian Orthodox Church celebrates the feast of the Epiphany, or as it is otherwise called - Epiphany. On this day, people will come to churches to pray to God and collect holy water. Many cities and villages will host religious processions to bodies of water so that the priests could consecrate the “nature of the waters.” And many more, according to the old Russian tradition, will plunge three times into homemade Jordans - and no frost will interfere with this.
Do we remember the very first Baptism - the Baptism of the Lord?
It happened in a hot country, in the waters of the Jordan River (hence, by the way, the name of the baptismal fonts), not far from Jericho. Strictly speaking, it was not exactly the first, because John the Baptist had already baptized people. And then one day the thirty-year-old Savior came to him. The Prophet John, who preached a lot about the imminent coming of the Messiah, saw Jesus and was very surprised and said: “I need to be baptized by You, and are You coming to me?” To this Christ replied that “we must fulfill all righteousness,” and received Baptism from John. During Epiphany The sky was opened, and the Holy Spirit descended on Him in bodily form, like a dove, and there was a voice from heaven, saying: You are My Beloved Son; My favor is in You!(OK. 3 , 21–22). So everyone understood that God was in front of them. A bright morning star, anticipating the onset of morning - this is approximately what the prophet John is called in one church prayer.
On January 20, the day after Epiphany, the Council of the Baptist and Baptist John is celebrated. What do we know about him?
Saint John the Baptist is the closest predecessor of Christ; he is also called the last prophet, the herald of the coming of the Messiah. On his mother's side, he was a relative of the Savior and was born six months earlier.
The prophet's parents were the priest Zechariah and the righteous Elizabeth - they for a long time could not have children, although they really wanted it. But one day, as the apostle and evangelist Luke narrates, Archangel Gabriel, appearing to Zechariah in the temple, announced the birth of his son. And so the pious spouses, deprived of the consolation of having children until old age, finally have a son, whom they asked for in prayers.
Some may ask: How did Zechariah and Elizabeth's baby survive among the thousands of murdered babies in and around Bethlehem? One of the apocrypha says that he and his mother took refuge in the desert. The Gospel of Luke, which tells more about the Baptist than the other Gospels, is silent about this obvious mercy of God.
From childhood, Saint John was strict and demanding of himself 
person. How could it be otherwise if your life, by the will of the Lord and according to your desire, passes in the wild desert? The Prophet prepared himself for great service by a strict life - fasting and prayer. He wore rough clothes made of camel's hair and ate very little. Wild honey and locusts, a type of locust, supported his flesh. At the age of thirty, the Lord called him to preach to the Jewish people.
Obeying the calling, the prophet John appeared on the banks of the Jordan to prepare the people to accept Christ. Before the holiday of purification, people gathered in large numbers to the river for religious ablutions. Here John turned to them, preaching repentance and baptism for the remission of sins. The essence of his preaching was that before receiving external purity, people must be morally cleansed, and thus prepare themselves to accept the Gospel. Of course, John's baptism was not yet the grace-filled sacrament of Christian Baptism. Its meaning was spiritual preparation for the future baptism of water and the Holy Spirit.
With the baptism of the Savior, the prophet John completed his prophetic ministry. He fearlessly and strictly denounced the vices of both ordinary people and the powerful of this world. For this he suffered.
King Herod Antipas, the son of King Herod the Great, ordered the prophet John to be put in prison. The saint denounced Antipas for abandoning his lawful wife and cohabiting with Herodias, his daughter-in-law (she was married to Herod’s brother, Philip). Herodias also really did not like the Forerunner and tried in every possible way to destroy him. And one day she succeeded.
On his birthday, Herod held a feast, which was attended by many noble guests. Salome, the daughter of Herodias, pleased both Herod and his friends so much with her dance that the king swore an oath to give her everything she asked. The dancer, taught by her mother, asked for the head of John the Baptist... The honorable head of the saint, cut off by the executioner, was presented to Herodias.
Our Lord Himself spoke of the righteous John the Baptist: “Among those born of women there has not arisen a greater (prophet) than John the Baptist.” And it is not for nothing that the Holy Forerunner is glorified by the Church as both an Angel and a “bright voice of the Word”; they address him like this: “the ultimate prophet, the first martyr, the teacher of fasters and hermits, the teacher of purity and the neighbor of Christ.”
Someone advises praying to St. John for headaches. But, probably, if you have a headache, it’s better to take some medicine and think about this. The image of the righteous Forerunner and Baptist can be considered as an image of the human conscience. Conscience, which does not allow us to live peacefully in sin, which torments and reproaches, brings us closer to repentance. Like Saint John himself, he is a close friend of Christ.
Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh about John the Baptist and his significance for all of us:
According to the testimony of the Lord, no one born on earth was as great as Saint John the Baptist. And when you think about the testimony of the Gospel about him, it really takes your breath away. But not only is it breathtaking - you see in it the image of a man who was able to be so infinitely, so unlimitedly devoted to his God and his earthly calling and who can serve as an example and image for each of us; because each of us, in some sense in relation to those around him, is so often the forerunner of the Lord, the one whom the Lord sent ahead of Himself to bring people a word and a way of life that would prepare them to understand Christ, to accept Christ. And when with our lives we disgrace our testimony, when, looking at us, people cease to believe both in our words and in the words of Christ, then we take on a terrible responsibility. We not only live in judgment and condemnation for ourselves, but we do not draw others with us to where we are called to lead them: to joy, to that joy for which the Lord has left us a deposit and which no one can take away, but which no one, except the Lord cannot give.<…>
And so, before each of us stands this image of the Baptist. Each of us is sent to each other, to each other, as a Forerunner, to say a word so pure, so free from ourselves, from selfishness, from vanity, from everything that makes our every word petty, empty, insignificant, rotten, - do we do this with a willingness to come to naught, if only this person would grow into a living person, the bride of eternal life? And when all this is done, am I ready to say with joy: “Yes, let the last thing be accomplished, let them not remember me, let the bride and groom meet, and I will go down into death, into oblivion, and return to nothingness.” Are we ready for this? If not, how weak is our love even for those we love! What can we say about those who are so often alien and indifferent to us?
Let us often, often look at this majestic but human image of the Baptist, and we will learn how a real, whole person lives, and we will try to live like this, at least in small ways, with all our might, even if there are few of them, but without a trace, to the last drop our living force.
From a sermon in the Church of John the Baptist on Presnya, 1968, Moscow
