Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. Francis Beckham
The Nativity of Saint John the Baptist, June 25, 2024
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“May the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be acceptable to you O God, my helper and my comforter. Amen.”
Of all the things that amaze me about God, I think it’s how God uses the least likely people, objects, and events to grab my attention in meaningful ways that never ceases to astonish me. Take, for example, the fictitious Daisy Buchanan – a wealthy, shallow, self-absorbed socialite in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s definitive jazz-age novel, The Great Gatsby. Daisy is frivolous, as ridiculous and one-dimensional as she is boring (to be fair, the same can be said of pretty much all the wealthy people in the novel, save, perhaps for its titular character, Jay Gatsby himself). Insulated from the everyday worries and realities of most people by her cocoon of wealth, status, privilege, and never-ending parties, she is a waster of things: time, money, space, affections, and, in one extreme case, human life. Daisy isn’t exactly somebody I’d expect to learn anything important from, yet, in one nearly memorable line, she does in fact succeed, quite by accident, in making a surprisingly insightful observation about human nature. While lazily taking tea on the grounds of her Long Island mansion on a hot June afternoon, she asks her companions, “Do you always watch for the longest day of the year and then miss it? I always watch for the longest day of the year and then miss it.” Regardless of anything else we can say about Daisy, this statement about our human propensity to miss precisely the thing that one is – or, at least, should be – looking for is important.
Every Christmas Eve, for example, I find myself thinking or saying, “Wow, I really missed Advent this year.” Similarly, it never fails to dawn on me each Palm Sunday that, “Gosh, Lent really flew by again.” Shocked that Christmas and Easter could somehow sneak in through the back door without having the common courtesy of at least warning me with anything more than just two entire preparatory liturgical seasons, I enter into the two principal feasts of the year feeling caught off-guard and inadequately prepared. In this way, I’m no better than Daisy Buchanan. Distracted, I often end up missing the points of things – my own ‘longest days of the year.’
And this brings me to today’s main event: the Nativity of Saint John the Baptist (transferred). While not technically the longest day of the year, astronomically speaking, Saint John’s Day always falls within a stone’s throw of it, the summer solstice. In fact, for centuries, it was reckoned as the longest day of the year. And since the first of May, or May Day, was traditionally considered the start of summer, Saint John’s Day continues to be known in many places as Midsummer. Particularly in Scandinavia and the British Isles, bone-, or bon-, fires were lit to ward off dragons that were believed to be active in the land, poisoning wells and springs. In Germany, herbs with known medicinal properties were harvested and brought into churches to be blessed on Saint John’s Day. Children dressed in costumes and raised a ruckus to banish evil spirits, and a general atmosphere of merriment and feasting prevailed. On Saint John’s Eve, the shortest night of the year, people were as far away from winter as they could be, making Midsummer – Saint John’s Day – the feast of Summer.
Today, in our post-industrial society, the Nativity of Saint John is often little noticed outside of church circles. But to our agrarian forebears, its timing in mid-June – three months past the Annunciation, six months out from Christmas Day, and always at least a few weeks past Whitsunday, or Pentecost – Saint John’s Day came to be closely associated with the growing season, a time of fertility and increase when the planting was over, and the harvest anticipated. It was a feast on par with Christmas and Easter. It was eagerly watched for, and never missed.
The Church has kept the Nativity of Saint John in various locations since at least 506, making it one of the oldest feasts of the Church, and one of only a very few marking the birth, rather than the death, of a saint. And, like that other great nativity, Christmas, it has traditionally been celebrated with not one, nor even two, but three masses: a vigil, a mass at dawn, and a mass during the day.
That’s because – traditional folk and pagan elements of Midsummer aside – the Nativity of Saint John the Baptist, like its very namesake, calls us to something much bigger than the feast itself, to the beginning, the birth of something new. Indeed, Saint John’s Day is meant to point us to the very thing humanity looks and longs for more than anything: the love of God, very real and imminently present in our world, as revealed through the healing and reconciling ministry of Jesus.
“Get you up to a high mountain, O Zion, herald of good tidings; lift up your voice with
strength, O Jerusalem, herald of good tidings, lift it up, do not fear; say to the cities of
Judah, ‘Here is your God!’”
In these words, from Isaiah, proclaimed in our first reading, we hear that longing expressed from ages upon ages; the deep, visceral desire of the people of Israel to hear the good news that God is entering into their midst. This, they watched for, and they would not be disappointed in their hope.
But, of course, as Daisy Buchanan reminds us, it’s easy to become distracted by things that don’t matter, so that we miss the things that do. Or, worse still, we can forget that those things even exist at all. And our conscious longing and looking for God is no exception. Especially for us in this time and place, smack in the middle of summer, outside of the ‘program year’, when things like Sunday school classes, weekly bible study meetings, mid-week Eucharists, and choir practices tend to go on hiatus, replaced by hectic summer travel plans, crowded and noisy airports, and bored kids stuck at home complaining that there’s ‘nothing to do’. Add to that our general disconnectedness from the land and its cycles of growth and rest nowadays, and there’s often very little in summer that’s trying to remind us of the good news of Jesus, or of our great commission to be proclaimers of that good news.
And that’s exactly why I think Saint John’s nativity is so important. It shakes us out of our doldrums and distractions to remind us that we each have a job to do. The changes and chances of this life are inevitable, but they aren’t the point. In our reading from Saint Luke’s Gospel, Zechariah, the father of John the Baptist, proclaims from out of his joy a profound thanksgiving to God for fulfilling the promise of the ages. This passage of praise, known as the Canticle of Zechariah, or the Benedictus, is included almost universally in the morning prayer offices of Western churches, monasteries, and religious orders, including our own here at Holy Cross Monastery. It serves as a daily reminder – right at the beginning of the day – for us to notice and not forget the wonder of God’s work within ourselves and in the world around us. And, of course, to proclaim it to others:
“Blessed be the Lord God of Israel,
for he has looked favorably on his people and redeemed them.
He has raised up a mighty savior for us
in the house of his servant David.”
Zechariah’s words seem to want to grab us by the shoulders, shake us, and shout, “Wake up! This isn’t going to be just any ordinary day! This is the day the Lord has made! Rejoice and be glad in it!”
But he doesn’t leave it there. Zechariah, caught up in the joy of being a first-time parent who suddenly finds himself in crazy, overwhelming love with his newly born child, begins addressing John, telling him of the amazing things he will do to bring Israel – and, indeed, everyone – closer to God, into the very reign of God, by preparing them to hear and know the Gospel of Jesus.
“And you, child, will be called the prophet of the Most High;
for you will go before the Lord to prepare his ways,
to give knowledge of salvation to his people
by the forgiveness of their sins.”
Zechariah's proclamation is addressed to each of us every bit as much as it is to John. This canticle was probably first introduced into the morning prayer office by none other than Saint Benedict himself because, like Zechariah, Benedict wants to make sure his monks understand what living into the reign of God entails, which is nothing short of being prophets of the Most High and giving knowledge of salvation to God’s people by being healers of the breaches of sin and death.
So, on this feast of the Nativity of Saint John, during this wonderful Midsummer season of growth and increase, I pray we will all join with John the Baptist in showing forth the presence and love of God in all we do – whether lazing-about our Long Island estates, chasing away dragons, or patiently biding our time in airport security lines – living our lives in such a way that the good and saving news of God as proclaimed by Jesus may be readily perceived and embraced by all in whose presence we are blessed to find ourselves.
May peace and all that is good be with each of us, and those whom we love, now and always. Amen.
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