St John the Forerunner and Baptist

Son of the priest Zacharias and the aged Elisabeth, kinsman of the Lord, John was born — as the Church sings on June 24, his Nativity — to 'prepare the way.' He lived in the wilderness in camel's hair, eating locusts and wild honey, and at the Jordan preached a baptism of repentance to crowds from all Judea, until the One he heralded came to be baptized by him, John protesting his own unworthiness. Christ called him the greatest born of women. His fearless rebuke of Herod Antipas' unlawful marriage brought imprisonment and the beheading demanded by Herodias through her dancing daughter — a death attested not only by the Gospels but by the historian Josephus. The Church surrounds no saint but the Theotokos with more feasts: his conception, nativity, beheading, synaxis, and the findings of his honorable head all mark the calendar.