Saint John the Baptist

We find our third type of devotion to the Infant Jesus in Saint John the Baptist. As to Joseph, so also to John, Jesus came through Mary as He comes to us. In the sweet sound of Mary's voice came the secret power of the Infant Redeemer's absolving grace. John worshipped behind the veil Him Who also from behind His veil had absolved him from his original sin, had broken his fetters, fulfilled him with eminent holiness, and anointed him to be His own immediate Precursor. He too, like Joseph, was simply to be an instrument. He too was to prepare the way for the Child of Bethlehem. His light was to fade as the light of Jesus grew fuller on the sight of men. He too, strange tenant of the wilderness, in grotesque apparel, companion of angels and of wild beasts, a feeder on savage food - he too was to be hidden from the gaze of men during the long first years of his life, as Joseph had been, and as his own forerunner Elias was to be through the long, revolving centuries of his closing life up to the very scenes which should herald the coming Doom. Like Joseph, the Baptist was withdrawn from Calvary, and stood on the borders of the Gospel light, only half emerging from the shadows of the Old Testament, Like Joseph, he was bidden to be Our Lord's superior, but with humility unlike that of Joseph, and yet a veritable humility, he argued against his own elevation, and bowed only to the gentle command of Him Who sought baptism at his hands, and gave for others a cleansing sacramental power to the water that could but simulate ablution to His spotless Soul. His too was a hermit spirit, like Joseph's; but his was calmly cradled in the solitudes of the desert, not chafed evermore by the crowding of uncongenial men. He was a light that burned as well as shone, and of him it was that the Incarnate Word declared that none born of woman had yet been so great as he. He also belongs, like Joseph, to the Sacred Infancy, handing over his followers to Jesus, ending where his Lord began, like the moon setting as the sun rises, and, like the Holy Innocents, worshipping his Saviour with his blood.

The Baptist was Our Lord's first convert. His redemption was, so to speak, the first sacrament which Jesus administered. Through Mary's voice the gift of original justice was miraculously given him, the complete use of reason conferred upon him, and the immense graces communicated to him, which were implied in his extraordinary office and Our Lord's marvellous words about him. When we consider all these things - Our Lord's quickening His Mother's steps to go and work this stupendous conversion, the grandeur of the mission to which Elizabeth's unborn child was destined, his exulting use of the reason supernaturally anticipated in his soul, his redemption as the first work of Our Lord's love of souls in person, and possibly the next step in the scale, of graces to the Immaculate Conception, and his reception of all these things through the sweet mouth and salutation of Mary - we may form some idea of the characteristics of his devotion to the Babe of Bethlehem. Christian art has loved to depict them as children together. Yet the thought is most overwhelming when we come to meditate upon it. Art can never express Our Lord's Divinity, and so all devotional pictures fall short of the visions of our prayers.

With what haste - as if Mary's haste to him were passed into his spirit and had become the law and habit of his life - would not Saint John press into the presence of Jesus, his soul bounding with the exultation of his sinless sanctity, his heart overflowing with the exuberance of speechless gratitude, feasting his eyes on the beauty of that Face, while the Mother's accent in the Child's voice thrilled through his whole being like the keen, tremulous piercings of an ecstasy! Yet how, while he ran forward with all this in his soul, would it not be arrested all at once, and changed to something unspeakably higher, as he passed within the circle of Our Lord's Divinity! How his thanksgiving, which thought to be so eloquent, would be offered in a song-like silence to the Incarnate God, while sacred fear would turn his spellbound gladness to mutest adoration, and his gratitude become speechless before the majesty of the Eternal, thus transparently veiled in human flesh! He would tremble with delighted awe while he felt the streams of grace, ever flowing, ever new, flooding his glorious soul from the nearness of the Divine Child. Exultation, gratitude, generosity with God, a magnificent incapacity of consorting with earthly things - these were obviously the characteristics of his devotion to the Babe of Bethlehem. Happy they who catch his spirit! Happy they on whom God bestows an especial attraction to this resplendent saint!

Attraction to Saint John the Baptist is one of the ways to Jesus, and a way of His own appointment, and upon which, therefore, a peculiar blessing rests. He was chosen to prepare men's hearts to be the thrones of their Lord. It was even he who laid the foundations of the college of the Apostles in Peter and Andrew and John, who were his disciples. Attractiveness was hung around the Baptist like a spell. In what did it consist? Doubtless in gifts of nature as well as grace, for such is God's way. Yet it is difficult to see in what it resided. As the world counts things, he was an uncouth man. The savage air of the wilderness affected his rugged sweetness. His austerity, we might have imagined, had not the lives of the saints in all ages taught us differently, would have driven men away from him, either as an example or a teacher. His teaching was ungrateful to corrupt nature. It was reforming, unsparing, and dealt mainly in condemnations. Its manner was vehement, abrupt, and singularly without respect of persons. Yet all men gathered near him, even while he taught that his teaching was not final, that his mission was but a preparation, and that he was not the deliverer whom they sought. All classes, trades, ranks, and professors fluttered around him like moths round the candle, sure to be scorched by his severity, yet, whether they would or not, attracted to his light.

What could his attraction be but the sweet spirit of Bethlehem, the spirit of exultation, of generosity, of unearthliness, of the freshness of abounding grace? The whole being of that austere man, most awe-inspiring as he was of all anchorets that ever were, was overflowed with gladness. He had drunk the wine of the Precious Blood, when it was at its newest, and he was blessedly intoxicated to the last. It was said of him before he was born that at his birth men should rejoice, and yet there seemed no obvious reason that it should be so. When he heard the sound of Mary's voice, he leaped with exultation in his mother's womb. It was the gladness of grace. It was the triumph of redeeming love. It was the first and freshest victory of the little Conqueror of Bethlehem. When his ears were first opened with the new gift of reason, the sounds that smote them were from Mary singing her "Magnificat." How could a life ever know sadness that had so joyous, so musical a beginning?

In very childhood he went away into the wilderness, lest the world should break the charm that was around his soul. He who did no miracles was himself a miracle. His life was a portent. As Elias is hidden now on some bare, cloud-capped mountain or in the shades of unknown groves, wearing out in placid ecstasies his patient, expectant age, so John, who was both successor and forerunner of Elias, was hidden in the wilderness, with the beautiful spirit of Bethlehem within his soul, alluring angels to the desert spot, soothing the fierce natures of the beasts, making him insensible to the wayward tyranny of the elements, and nurturing his soul in spiritual grandeur. Innocent as he was, he would do penance as if he were a sinner, partly because he would not be outdone in generosity by God, and partly because the spirit of Bethlehem led him, like the Holy Child, to love hardship and to espouse poverty. Such was the child of the Precious Blood, whose unborn soul had been steeped in the beauty of the "Magnificat." Such was the first conquest of the Babe of Bethlehem, the fair creation of grace which the Infant Creator in one instance made through the sound of His Mother's voice. Happy they who, by a special devotion to him, make themselves the companions of him who was the companion of the Infant Jesus!

- text taken from the book Bethlehem, by Father Frederick William Faber