Memhir Esuendale:
#Feasts of #Yekatit_30
✞✞✞On this day we commemorate the annual feast of the Great Prophet and Martyr Saint John the Baptist✞✞✞
✞✞✞In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, one God. Amen!✞✞✞
✞✞✞Saint John the Baptist✞✞✞
=>It is difficult to say that there is someone whose honor was mentioned as much as the family of Zacharias in the Gospel, except our Lady. St. Luke started his Gospel with this family and the Holy Spirit inspired him to write the following. “And they were both righteous before God, walking in all the commandments and ordinances of the Lord blameless.”(Luke 1:6)
✞ Let us leave ‘before mankind’, but how transcendent is it to live blameless before God? And to this, awe is appropriate!
✞These holy husband and wife, because they were barren, most of their days/ages were spent without bearing a child. And according to the Tradition of the Church, the age of Elisabeth was 90 and Zacharias had reached 100.
✞However, the Lord who saw their patience, sent the angel of annunciation, St. Gabriel, to give them [annunciate the birth of] a great prophet, who was greater than men and about whom a prophecy was foretold (Isa. 40:3/ Mal. 3:1).
✞St. Zacharias, because he was a human and argued from joy, was made dumb. But Saint Elisabeth conceived the great man on Meskerem 26 (October 6) and concealed herself for 6 months. And on the sixth month, when the Lord of all creation was conceived (assumed flesh [human nature]), the Queen of Heaven, our Lady the Virgin Saint Mary, came to Elisabeth through the hill country. The two Saints were daughters of sisters (cousins).
✞And when the Theotokos (Mother of God) reached and saluted them, the Holy Spirit descended upon the mother and child; hence Elisabeth praised and John, while in the womb, leaped (prostrated) with joy. Then, he was born on Sene 30 (July 7) and Zacharias, his father, was able to speak when he named him “John.”
✞When St. John was 2 years and 6 months old, because the wise men came, Herod the ‘Great’ slaughtered the children that were found in Israel. Later, the Jews told Herod about St. John. They said, “Because there is a child who had shut his father’s mouth [before he was conceived] and opened it when he was born [miraculously]. Kill him as well.”
✞Thence, when St. Elisabeth, his mother, took him and fled, soldiers killed the priest Zacharias in the middle of the Temple. And the old woman, Elisabeth, raised the child and stayed in the Desert of Zifata for 3 (5) years. And when St. John was 5(7) years old, his mother passed away in the desert. Thus, Zacharias and Simeon descended from heaven and buried her.
✞And when the child John cried, the Virgin Mary heard him from far away as she was also in exile. She then went with the Lord upon a cloud and comforted him. Thereafter, she asked the Lord, “Shall we take him?” To which our Lord answered, “Until I call him for ministry, let him stay here.” After that she blessed, consoled St. John and they departed.
✞Afterwards, St. John, in that desert, lived in asceticism wearing a raiment of camel's hair and a leathern girdle about his loins. And for 25 (23) years, while living in purity, he did not see anyone except beasts of the field and heavenly hosts. He as well did not know the tang of this rebellious world.
✞Then, when he became 30, God spoke to him from heaven. And because the prophets had prophesized about it, He said to him, “Go! Pave the way for My Son” (Isa. 40:3/Mal. 3:1). Also Zacharias, his father, had said, “And thou, child, shalt be called the prophet of the Highest: for thou shalt go before the face of the Lord to prepare his ways” about his forerunning (Luke 1:76).
✞Hence, at that time, St. John, filled with the Power of the Holy Spirit, came hurriedly to Judea from the desert. And all those that saw him feared and respected him.
