Troparion:
Prophet and Forerunner of the coming of Christ, we honour you lovingly but cannot extol you worthily; for by your birth your mother’s barrenness and your father’s dumbness were unloosed; and the Incarnation of the Son of God is proclaimed to the world.
This week, our Holy Church commemorates the Nativity of the Friend of the Bridegroom
(see book by S. Bulgakov). St. John the Forerunner, a cousin of Jesus, but what is more important, he was, as Jesus himself said, “…among those born of women there has risen no one greater that John the Baptist” (Matt. 11, 11). There is the portrait of John the Baptist, which is presented in the Gospels. We learn that St. John was the answer to a prayer. His parents, Zachariah and Elizabeth were advanced in years. They prayed for a child. Like Sarah, the wife of Abraham, Elizabeth was beyond the time of bearing children. But, God had a plan of salvation and John the Baptist was to be His messenger (Is. 40, 3). God intervened so that His plan could be accomplished. Elizabeth and Zachariah became the parents of a child, who they were instructed to name John. In the first chapter of Luke, we read John was chosen to be the one to prepare the people of Israel for the Lord (Luke 1, 16). What was his message of preparation? This preparation was contained in one word, Repent! If we look at this word closely, John was not asking for sad eyed sorrow for what had been done. He was calling for change, a radical change of direction. Basic to John’s message were the admonitions to stop, think, examine and change. Change the way you live, the way you treat others, the attitudes in your heart and make a new beginning. This new beginning was and is preparation for the KINGDOM OF GOD. This kingdom will arrive with the Incarnation of Our Lord. God with Us, Emmanuel; this is the decisive moment in the history of the world and in our life. John was born to deliver a message, to bear witness to Christ, to be His friend and to disappear(John 3, 30). Do we still hear his message today?
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