Patrick Comerford
The week began with the First Sunday after Trinity (Trinity I, 22 June 2025), and today is Feast of the Birth of Saint John the Baptist. The Birth of Saint John Baptist (24 June) is one of the few birthdays of a saint commemorated in the Church Calendar.
I was ordained priest 24 years ago today, on the Feast of the Birth of Saint John the Baptist [24 June 2001], and deacon 25 years ago tomorrow, on 25 June 2000. I am hoping to mark those anniversaries later today by being present at the mid-day Eucharist and Evening Prayer in Lichfield Cathedral and visiting the chapel in Saint John’s Hospital, Lichfield. During the day, I may go for some walks around Lichfield, along Cross in Hand Lane, and I may even get to see Comberford.
Before today begins, however, I am taking some quiet time this morning to give thanks, to reflect, to pray and to read in these ways:
1, reading today’s Gospel reading;
2, a short reflection;
3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary;
4, the Collects and Post-Communion prayer of the day.
Luke 1: 57-66, 80 (NRSVA):
57 Now the time came for Elizabeth to give birth, and she bore a son. 58 Her neighbours and relatives heard that the Lord had shown his great mercy to her, and they rejoiced with her.
59 On the eighth day they came to circumcise the child, and they were going to name him Zechariah after his father. 60 But his mother said, ‘No; he is to be called John.’ 61 They said to her, ‘None of your relatives has this name.’ 62 Then they began motioning to his father to find out what name he wanted to give him. 63 He asked for a writing-tablet and wrote, ‘His name is John.’ And all of them were amazed. 64 Immediately his mouth was opened and his tongue freed, and he began to speak, praising God. 65 Fear came over all their neighbours, and all these things were talked about throughout the entire hill country of Judea. 66 All who heard them pondered them and said, ‘What then will this child become?’ For, indeed, the hand of the Lord was with him.
80 The child grew and became strong in spirit, and he was in the wilderness until the day he appeared publicly to Israel.
Today’s Reflection:
Saint Matthew’s Gospel introduces Christ’s ministry by first telling the story of Saint John the Baptist. Saint Mark begins his Gospel with the appearance of Saint John the Baptist. And the first person we meet in Saint John’s Gospel is Saint the Baptist. But Saint Luke alone tells the story of Saint Elizabeth’s pregnancy and the birth of Saint John the Baptist.
This birthday celebration is at pivotal moment in the calendar: half-way between one Christmas Eve and the next: yes, sorry to startle you, but Christmas Eve is just six months away from today. But it is also a pivotal moment in the calendar, because it coincides with that time when the days start to get shorter and the nights start to get longer.
In Ireland, in Greece, and in many other places across Europe, a bonfire was kindled as darkness fell on Saint John’s Eve. The bonfire was a protest at what the poet Dylan Thomas called ‘the dying of the light.’
The child’s mother, Elizabeth, even though she is, as some might say, a little on in years, knows her pregnancy is a blessing, and her neighbours and relatives rejoice with her when she gives birth (Luke 1: 58).
The child’s father, Zechariah, is, literally, dumb-struck, by the prospect of becoming the father of a son. When he recovers his speech – a sign of his obedience to God in all this chaos – his first words give us the long song of praise or canticle we know as Benedictus.
This is the part that is missing from the Gospel reading provided for today. But here Zechariah hails his son as the prophet of God the most high. And he is a prophet because he brings from the very beginning, at his birth the good news of the fulfilment of God’s promise.
Zechariah tells those who are gathered that God has responded to the cries of people, and in his mercy is going to ‘rescue’ then ‘from the hands of our enemies,’ so that they may live without fear’:
‘By the tender mercy of our God,
the dawn from on high will break upon us,
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).
But I sometimes wonder whether Zechariah and Elizabeth would have been so quick to rejoice, so quick to celebrate, if they had known what was going to happen to their son?
Could they had foreseen that a cruel capricious ruler, who would slaughter the first-born, would then lock up their son and – to meet the demands of his wayward daughter – would agree to behead him?
We all know in some way the sadness of people who wait longingly, through many years of marriage, for the birth of a child.
But we all know too that the greatest sadness and grief any parent can suffer is to be alive when their child dies, no matter how old the parents are by then, no matter how young or old the child is, an infant or an adult.
Would any of us who are parents have our children if we knew they were going to suffer cruelly? But my question is asked in vain. The answer, of course, is yes. And that answer is so because it is rooted in love.
While I think of Zechariah and Elizabeth, how they longed for a child, how that child escaped Herod’s slaughter of children in his age group (see Matthew 2: 16-18), only to become the victim of the victim of cruelty that was whimsical and decided on the spur of the moment, I cannot avoid thinking of the plight of children who have been forcibly separated from their parents in the United States, and who are now being held – despite what President Trump says – inhumane conditions, separated from their parents, not knowing where they are going, or when.
It seems like only yesterday since I was invited to speak outside the US Embassy in Dublin in 2018 at a protest about Trump holding children in cages. There I asked if anyone asks how ordinary, decent people remained silent while children were being sent on trains to Auschwitz and Belsen in the 1930s and 1940s, they need only ask how ordinary, decent people remain silent today given what we now know is happening in America.
If children here in a school, creche or pre-school group were held in conditions like that, the police or the gardai would be called in immediately, and there would be outrage if judges did not jail the culprits. I reminded the protest outside the embassy how we would not allow cattle to be transported like this, or animals to be caged like this. Why then are children being held like this?
I hope I would not have been silent in the 1930s or the 1940s. But I can blame myself if I am silent today. This is not about politics, this is about morality.
This is not about what I think or do not think about Donald Trump or JD Vance or about Elon Musk, about ICE or Homeland Security, about the deployment of troops on the streets of US cities against the will of elected politicians or of the people in the cities; this is about what I think about as mall children being pulled forcibly from their mothers, or parents being shot dead on their doorstep because they are Democrat politicians, elected politician.
This not about whether I think Donald Trump is like Herod, but about whether I fear countless children living in the US today could end up like Anne Frank, like the children whose stories I heard in Krakow and Auschwitz.
Sometimes evil is so great that crying out is our only prayer, but remaining silent becomes our condemnation.
Zechariah was dumb-struck, indeed, but the end of his silence is a sign of his obedience to God’s hopes for the future.
And I know that the pregnant Elizabeth took comfort against any foreboding she may have had instinctively for her son when the words she heard from her cousin Mary, just a few verses before this morning’s reading, words in the Canticle Magnificat:
‘He has shown strength with his arm;
he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.
He has brought down the powerful from their thrones,
and lifted up the lowly;
he has filled the hungry with good things,
and sent the rich away empty’ (Luke 1: 51-53).
Today’s Prayers (Tuesday 24 June 2025, the Birth of Saint John the Baptist):
‘Windrush Day’ is the theme this week (22-28 June) in Pray with the World Church, the prayer diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel). This theme was introduced on Sunday with reflections by Rachael Anderson, former Senior Communications and Engagement Manager, USPG.
The USPG prayer diary today (Tuesday 24 June 2025, the Birth of Saint John the Baptist) invites us to pray:
Lord God, who promised Zechariah a son filled with the spirit and power of Elijah, to prepare a people fit for the Lord: we pray for reconciliation between all people. (Church of England).
The Collect:
Almighty God,
by whose providence your servant John the Baptist
was wonderfully born,
and sent to prepare the way of your Son our Saviour
by the preaching of repentance:
lead us to repent according to his preaching
and, after his example,
constantly to speak the truth, boldly to rebuke vice,
and patiently to suffer for the truth’s sake;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
Post Communion:
Merciful Lord,
whose prophet John the Baptist
proclaimed your Son as the Lamb of God
who takes away the sin of the world:
grant that we who in this sacrament
have known your forgiveness and your life-giving love
may ever tell of your mercy and your peace;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Yesterday’s reflections
Continued tomorrow
Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version, Updated Edition copyright © 2021, National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.
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