John the Baptist is the greatest of the Christian saints, who was second in importance to Christ after the Theotokos.
The story of John’s birth is described in detail by Luke the Evangelist. The righteous Zechariah and Elizabeth were childless until old age, which, in the view of the Jews, was tantamount to a curse. The Lord answered their prayers, and the Archangel Gabriel appeared to Zechariah, who was performing his functions as a priest in the Temple, with the promise that his son “will be great in the sight of the Lord” (Luke 1:15). The elder doubted what he had heard and was rendered speechless until the time of the baby’s birth. According to tradition, the boy should have been named after his father, but remembering the words of the Archangel Gabriel, Zechariah wrote on the tablet “His name is John” and recovered his ability to speak.
As a child, John went to the desert and, as Luke reports, “the child grew and became strong in spirit, and was in the deserts till the day of his manifestation to Israel” (Luke 1:80).
According to the Hebrew laws, a man could not serve as a priest until he reached the age of thirty: it was believed that until that time he was not ready to be responsible for serious matters. All those years John lived as a recluse in the desert, eating locusts (a kind of grasshopper) and wild honey and praying, and then he began to preach. The Israelites came to the Jordan River to perform religious ablutions; there the prophet began to address them, talking about repentance and the imminent arrival of the Messiah.
The baptism of John, which was not yet a sacrament or the acquisition of the Holy Spirit, cleansed a person from sins and prepared them for a meeting with the Lord. Following the Old Testament law, Jesus was also baptized in the Jordan. John said of him,
The story of John’s birth is described in detail by Luke the Evangelist. The righteous Zechariah and Elizabeth were childless until old age, which, in the view of the Jews, was tantamount to a curse. The Lord answered their prayers, and the Archangel Gabriel appeared to Zechariah, who was performing his functions as a priest in the Temple, with the promise that his son “will be great in the sight of the Lord” (Luke 1:15). The elder doubted what he had heard and was rendered speechless until the time of the baby’s birth. According to tradition, the boy should have been named after his father, but remembering the words of the Archangel Gabriel, Zechariah wrote on the tablet “His name is John” and recovered his ability to speak.
As a child, John went to the desert and, as Luke reports, “the child grew and became strong in spirit, and was in the deserts till the day of his manifestation to Israel” (Luke 1:80).
According to the Hebrew laws, a man could not serve as a priest until he reached the age of thirty: it was believed that until that time he was not ready to be responsible for serious matters. All those years John lived as a recluse in the desert, eating locusts (a kind of grasshopper) and wild honey and praying, and then he began to preach. The Israelites came to the Jordan River to perform religious ablutions; there the prophet began to address them, talking about repentance and the imminent arrival of the Messiah.
The baptism of John, which was not yet a sacrament or the acquisition of the Holy Spirit, cleansed a person from sins and prepared them for a meeting with the Lord. Following the Old Testament law, Jesus was also baptized in the Jordan. John said of him,
