The Conception and Nativity

The Church keeps two feasts at the beginning of the Forerunner’s life: the Conception of John the Baptist (September 23) and his Nativity (June 24). Both are grounded in the first chapter of Luke — the conception that took away Elizabeth’s reproach (Luke 1:24–25), and the birth, the dispute over the name, the loosing of Zacharias’s tongue, and the Benedictus, “Blessed be the Lord God of Israel” (Luke 1:57–79). This file follows the Gospel of the birth and the two feasts the Church builds upon it, and the placing of John’s Nativity six months before Christ’s as the lesser light before the greater.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (Forerunner)

The Feast of the Conception (September 23)

The earlier of the two feasts commemorates the conception of the Forerunner, kept on September 23. Its sole Gospel ground is Luke’s brief notice that follows the annunciation in the Temple: “After these days his wife Elizabeth conceived, and for five months she hid herself, saying, ‘Thus the Lord has done to me in the days when he looked on me, to take away my reproach among men’” (Luke 1:24–25). The Church reads this conception, like the births of the holy barren before it, as the work of God answering prayer and reversing nature’s failure (cf. Luke 1:7, 13). The placing of the feast on September 23 establishes the whole chronological frame of the infancy narrative: counting forward, the Nativity of the Forerunner falls nine months later, on June 24, and the Annunciation to the Theotokos — in Elizabeth’s sixth month (Luke 1:26, 36) — and the Nativity of Christ fall at their own places six months further on. The hymnography of September 23 names Elizabeth’s conceiving as the loosing of barrenness and the dawn before the Day, the morning star that announces the Sun (The Festal Menaion, trans. Mother Mary and Kallistos Ware, the service of September 23).

The Nativity (June 24)

“Now the time came for Elizabeth to be delivered, and she gave birth to a son” (Luke 1:57). The Nativity of the honorable and glorious Prophet, Forerunner, and Baptist John is kept on June 24, and stands among the very few birthdays the Church celebrates — the Nativity of Christ, the Nativity of the Theotokos, and the Nativity of the Forerunner — a measure of his rank, second only to the Mother of God. The Gospel marks the birth with the joy the angel had foretold (Luke 1:14): “And her neighbors and kinsfolk heard that the Lord had shown great mercy to her, and they rejoiced with her” (Luke 1:58). The many who rejoice at his birth (Luke 1:14, 58) begin already to fulfill the angel’s promise that “he will turn many of the sons of Israel to the Lord their God” (Luke 1:16).

The Naming and the Loosing of Zacharias’s Tongue

The drama of the eighth day is the naming. “And on the eighth day they came to circumcise the child; and they would have named him Zacharias after his father, but his mother said, ‘Not so; he shall be called John’” (Luke 1:59–60). The relatives object that “none of your kindred is called by this name” (Luke 1:61), and turn to the still-mute father, making signs to ask what he would have the child called. Zacharias “asked for a writing tablet, and wrote, saying, ‘His name is John.’ And they all marveled” (Luke 1:63). The name had been given by the angel before the conception — “you shall call his name John” (Luke 1:13) — and in obeying it the father confesses at last the word he had doubted. John (Hebrew Yohanan) means “the Lord is gracious,” and the name itself proclaims the grace that has reversed Elizabeth’s barrenness and is dawning upon Israel.

The confession of the name unbinds the tongue that doubt had bound. “And immediately his mouth was opened and his tongue loosed, and he spoke, blessing God” (Luke 1:64). The silence imposed at the altar (Luke 1:20) lasts exactly to the moment of obedient confession, so that the loosing is itself a sign. “And fear came on all their neighbors. And all these things were talked about through all the hill country of Judea; and all who heard them laid them up in their hearts, saying, ‘What then will this child be?’ For the hand of the Lord was with him” (Luke 1:65–66). The question of the neighbors — “What then will this child be?” — is the question the whole collection answers.

The Benedictus: The Song of Zacharias

The first words of the loosed tongue are prophecy. “And his father Zacharias was filled with the Holy Spirit, and prophesied, saying, ‘Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, for he has visited and redeemed his people’” (Luke 1:67–68). The canticle that follows — called the Benedictus from its opening Latin word, and sung at the Lauds of the Western office and woven through the Church’s hymnography — falls into two movements. The first blesses God for raising up “a horn of salvation for us in the house of his servant David” (Luke 1:69), fulfilling the oath to Abraham and the word of the holy prophets (Luke 1:70–75); this part looks wholly to the Messiah, the “horn of salvation,” not yet born but already conceived. Ambrose, in his commentary on Luke, reads the whole song as the prophecy of a father who, having recovered his voice, recovers it to proclaim the redemption of his people and the office of his son within it (Ambrose of Milan, Exposition of the Gospel according to Luke 2.33–34).

The second movement turns directly to the newborn child and names his vocation. “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 in the forgiveness of their sins” (Luke 1:76–77). The verse gathers the angel’s words (cf. Luke 1:15–17) into the father’s blessing: John is the prophet who goes before, who prepares the way (cf. Isa. 40:3; Mal. 3:1), and whose whole work is to point past himself to the salvation he announces. The song closes on the coming of the Dawn: “through the tender mercy of our God, when the day shall dawn upon us from on high, to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace” (Luke 1:78–79). The Dayspring from on high (Greek anatolē) is Christ, and John is the morning that runs before Him.

The Lesser Light Before the Greater

The whole of Luke’s chronology — the conception in Elizabeth’s old age, the sixth month, the Annunciation, the Visitation (Luke 1:24–26, 36) — sets the Forerunner’s Nativity six months before the Nativity of Christ. The Church has made this interval a theology. The Nativity of the Forerunner falls on June 24, near the summer solstice, when the daylight has reached its height and begins to wane; the Nativity of Christ falls on December 25, near the winter solstice, when the light is least and begins to grow. The pattern is read as a figure of the Forerunner’s own confession: “He must increase, but I must decrease” (John 3:30). John is the lamp (cf. John 5:35), the morning star, the lesser light that heralds and then yields to the Sun of Righteousness; the very turning of the year preaches that he diminishes as Christ increases. Augustine sets out exactly this reading of the two solstices and the Dayspring, joining it to John’s own word, “He must increase” (Augustine, Sermon 287, on the Nativity of John the Baptist). The hymnography of June 24 likewise hails John as the bright morning star going before the Sun, the voice before the Word, the lamp before the Light (The Festal Menaion, the service of June 24; cf. the menaion of the Nativity of the Forerunner).

Thus the two feasts at the head of the Forerunner’s life already contain his whole vocation. He is conceived to take away a reproach and announce a grace (Luke 1:25); he is born amid rejoicing as the prophet who will go before (Luke 1:76); his very name, given by the angel and confessed by his father, means that the Lord is gracious; and the calendar that keeps his Nativity teaches, by the waning light, that his greatness lies in pointing beyond himself to the One who must increase.

References

The Gospel According to Luke 1:24–79. Revised Standard Version. (The conception and the taking away of reproach, 1:24–25; the sixth-month synchronism, 1:26, 36; the birth and the neighbors’ joy, 1:57–58; the naming dispute and the loosing of Zacharias’s tongue, 1:59–66; the Benedictus, 1:67–79, with the verse on the child, 1:76–77.)
The Gospel According to John 3:30; 5:35. Revised Standard Version. (“He must increase, but I must decrease”; John as the burning and shining lamp — the texts the Church joins to the symbolism of the Nativity.)
Isaiah 40:3; Malachi 3:1. Revised Standard Version (the prophetic ground of “to prepare his ways”).
Ambrose of Milan. Exposition of the Gospel according to Luke (Expositio Evangelii secundum Lucam), Book 2. Trans. Íde M. Ní Riain, Commentary of Saint Ambrose on the Gospel according to Saint Luke. Dublin: Halcyon Press, 2001. (The Benedictus as the prophecy of the father whose voice is restored to proclaim the redemption and his son’s office.)
Augustine of Hippo. Sermon 287 (on the Nativity of John the Baptist). Trans. Edmund Hill, Sermons, vol. III/8, The Works of Saint Augustine. Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 1994. (The two solstices, the Dayspring, and “He must increase, but I must decrease” as the meaning of John’s birth six months before Christ’s.)
The Festal Menaion. Trans. Mother Mary and Kallistos Ware. London: Faber & Faber, 1969. (The services of the Conception of the Forerunner, September 23, and the Nativity of the Forerunner, June 24; the morning-star and lamp-before-the-Light imagery.)