December 19

here are certain testimonies proclaimed by the Holy Spirit through the mouths of Isaiah and Jeremiah which, though properly referring to the person of our Lord and Savior, are also by the Church's divinely given authority and the consensus of the faithful fittingly applied to the forerunner. But even more clearly has the Holy Spirit borne witness to John. The gospel tells us how John was filled with the Holy Spirit while still in his mother's womb and leapt for joy in the presence of the mother of his Lord, moved by no natural impulse but by the stirring of divine grace. Later John bore witness to Christ the Lord in the words: Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world! and Christ in his own preaching gave testimony to John, saying: Among the sons of women there has never arisen a greater than John the Baptist. Calling him the greatest among those born of women, he drew attention to John's constancy and austere manner of life and declared him to be a prophet and more than a prophet. By his own divine power Christ endowed John with privileges and graces in excess of all others, describing him, through the lips of the prophet Malachi, as the messenger who was to go before him to prepare the path of his salvation.

From John E. Rotelle, O.S.A., Tradition Day by Day: Readings from Church Writers. Augustinian Press. Villanova, PA, 1994.

HTML text prepared by David P. Steelman