Saint John Forerunner

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John the Baptist was a disciple of Jesus Christ and the son of the priests Zacharias and Elizabeth. Until the age of thirty, he lived an ascetic life in the Judean desert, devoted entirely to prayer, study, and spiritual and moral perfection. His clothes were made of camel hair, he had a leather belt around his waist and his food consisted of locusts and wild honey. He had all the qualifications of a great and imposing preacher of the Divine Word. He met the Son of God, who asked him to baptize him, in the waters of the Jordan River. The words of the Forerunner annoyed the Pharisees, as well as the four-headed ruler of Galilee and Perea, Herod Antipas, when he checked him for his illegal cohabitation with the wife of his living brother, Herodias. That is why he was imprisoned. On one of his birthday parties, Herod asked Salome's daughter to dance with him and promised to give her whatever she asked. Herodias, her mother, who was jealous of John, then took the opportunity and urged her daughter to ask for the head of the prophet John in a plate. This is how the beheading followed. Two of the many celebrations of the Saint are his Synaxis on January 7 and the Sharpening of his Holy Head on August 29.
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