St.Justin Popovic
Today is a little Great Friday,
a second Great Friday. For today the greatest man among those born of women,
John, the Holy Forerunner and Baptiser of the Lord, is murdered. On Great
Friday, people murdered God, crucified God. On today’s holy great feast,
people murdered the greatest of all men. It is not I who chose to use the
expression “the greatest.” What are my praises of the great and glorious
Forerunner of the Lord, whom the Lord praised more than anyone among men, more
than any of the apostles, the Angels, the Prophets, the Righteous Ones, the
Sages? For the Lord declared of him: “Among them that are born of women there
hath not risen a greater than John the Baptist…” (Мatthew 11: 11). In
all Creation, there exists no greater praise.
This is why
today is a little Great Friday. Consider: senseless people murder the greatest
of the righteous. Is he getting in their way? Yes, he gets between the
perverse King Herod and the dissolute Herodias. God’s Truth, God’s immutable
Truth gets in the way of the lawless, gets in the way of poor sinners, gets in
the way of everyone stupefied by the various passions. Consider: do not
Christ’s opponents even today still shout “Crucify Him, Crucify Him!?”
Even today, do not those who oppose Christ still demand the head of Jesus of
Nazareth? They call for His head, not to mention calling for the head of
John the Baptist.
What is this?
Could it be that this world has become a madhouse? People do not want God, they
do not want the greatest Righteous One in the whole world. Whom do you
want? Whom would you prefer? Whom would you set in Christ’s stead? With whom
would you replace St. John the Baptist? With yourselves?! О moth! О,
tiny mortal insects! Yes, when people become maddened by pride, when out of
egotistical pride they lose their reason, they have no need of God, they have no
need of God’s Truth. They declare themselves to be gods. They present their
petty, shallow, false likeness of truth as the great and salvific Truth. They
declare their shallow, earthly, perishable images of truth to be the greatest of
truths: they posit that we do not need Christ’s Truth, that we do not want
God’s Truth. Yes, people blind in intellect and spirit do not see, and do not
want to see, that man, true man, cannot manage without God. Why? Because this
world is full of Herods, full of Pharisees. Herods demand the head of John the
Baptist, Herods demand the heads of all of the righteous of the world, and
Pharisees, the lying scribes, lying sophists of this world, demand the death of
Christ, the Incarnate God.
Yes, today’s
Feast is a second Great Friday. Why? Because there is no greater
transgression than that committed on Great Friday and that committed now, when
Herod destroys the greatest among those born of women. Why did the Savior exalt
the great Saint John the Baptist, as He did no one else? Why? Because, brethren,
the Holy Forerunner encompassed within himself, within his person, all of the
virtues of Heaven, all of the virtues in all of the Prophets, all of the
Apostles, all of the Martyrs, all of the Angels of Heaven, all of the
Confessors. Regard: today we glorify the destruction, the beheading of the
first Apostle among the Holy Apostles, for the Forerunner of the Lord was the
first sent by God to see and to herald to the world the Savior of the world.
Long before the Apostle Peter, before the Apostle Nathaniel, before anyone else,
he bore witness to and announced God to the world, God Incarnate in the Person
of the Lord Jesus Christ. The first Apostle to see the Holy Spirit descending
from Heaven onto the Lord Jesus, when he baptized Him in the Jordan, announces
Him to be the Son of God, the Savior of the world. [John] is also the first
Evangelist among the Evangelists. He first announced to the world, and
pointed out, the Lord Jesus Christ, the Bearer of all Good News for mankind.
The Lord Jesus
Christ Himself is the Good News of Heaven and earth, God’s Gospel for men in
this world. “Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the
world.” In those few words, the Holy Forerunner expressed the fullness of the
Gospels.
Looking
toward the East, he said to the entire human race, from Adam to our days,
“Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.” The Kingdom of Heaven?
Here it is: the Lord Jesus [come] from Heaven. In Him is the Kingdom of Heaven.
Looking toward the West, and seeing people drowning in sins and death, he called
to them as well, “Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.” He looked
to the North and to the South [and saw] – the same people, all slaves to sin,
slaves to death, slaves to the devil. To all he announced the glorious,
holy and salvific Gospel, “People, repent for the Kingdom of Heaven is at
hand.” He was such an Evangelist, someone possessed of great power!
When the Lord
set out to preach His Gospel, to preach with power, He took those words as the
beginning and end of His Gospel. From that moment, Jesus began to preach
and to declare, “Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand (Matthew 4:17).
This is why the Holy Forerunner is the first Evangelist among Christ’s
Evangelists.
Today, people
have come into contact with an Angel in the flesh, an earthly Angel, and a
Heavenly person, St. John the Baptist. It was not only the Old Testament prophet
who called the Forerunner the Angel of the Lord, but the Lord Himself said this
was an Angel sent to go before Him to prepare the way for Him. (Isaiah 40: 3;
Matthew 11: 10). Not only a prophet, said the Lord regarding the Baptist, but
greater than a prophet – the Angel of the Lord. And people do not want him,
and people drive him from this world! Thus, the Holy Forerunner is truly
the first Angel in the flesh, the first among those who became the multitude of
Angels in the flesh, lamps bringing God’s Light, who lived on earth like
Angels of Heaven, and were Angels on earth, and in Heaven remained God’s
people, holy people.
Today we
glorify the great feast of the first among the Prophets of the New Testament. He
announced to men that the Lord Jesus Christ had appeared to the world not only
as the Savior, but as the Enlightener and as the Judge of the world. In
his hands were both the hatchet and the spade: on the day of the Dread Judgement,
the Lord would clean off the earth’s threshing-floor, and would separate
the wheat from the chaff, the righteous from the sinners. All of this the great
and glorious Prophet, Forerunner and Baptizer of the Lord had foreseen.
Therefore, today we also praise him as the holy New Testament Prophet, killed by
the impious, criminal, King Herod.
The Holy
Forerunner also received the Lord’s witness to the fact that he was the
greatest of those born of woman, because he had become the first of all of the
Holy Martyrs of the New Testament. See how he suffered for God’s truth in this
world! He suffered joyously! In today’s principal hymn and prayer to him it is
said that he went to his death rejoicing, and that he suffered rejoicing. Thus,
he became the first example and inspiration to all of the Holy Martyrs of the
New Testament, beginning with St. Stephen the Protomartyr and through today.
All of the Holy Martyrs go to their death rejoicing in the Lord Jesus Christ, go
to their deaths, knowing that death cannot hold them in its bonds, knowing that
death is merely a gate, an open gate through which their holy souls enter into
the Kingdom of Heaven. How else, brothers and sisters, can we explain the joy of
Holy Great Martyr George’s joy while having his body broken: his bones were
being broken on the wheel, and he shouted with joy in the Lord, for he could see
Him, could see the Angels of God, standing around Him, and the Angels stopping
the wheel. See what joy [he experienced] during those awful tortures!
And the Holy Great Martyr stands up whole and unharmed before the godless
Emperor Diocletian. The first one to reveal that holy joy of martyrdom had
been St. John, the Holy Forerunner and Baptizer of the Lord.
Today we also
specifically glorify the first Evangelist and Christian Confessor, the first to
Confess God in this New Testament world. Consider how fearlessly, openly
and directly he confessed God's Truth: O King, it is not right for you to have
your brother’s wife, your living brother’s wife. You have taken your
brother’s wife away from him. All of the laws of Heaven and earth are against
you, and I, I recite these laws of Heaven and earth to you, for it was to do so
that I was sent. O King, you cannot have your brother’s wife. Fearless and
uncowable, like an immortal lion, like one of the Cherubim in the flesh, he was
the first Confessor of Christ’s Faith, and he has been followed by multitudes
of faces – the world’s glorious Confessors of Christ’s Faith, Confessors
who bear witness and confess before the entire world, before East and West,
before North and South, that the Lord Christ is the Sole True God in Heaven and
on earth. And this they, countless multitudes of fearless and uncowable
all-conquerors, beginning with the Holy Forerunner and continuing through the
present day, do despite all of the persecution, despite all of the lies of those
who strive to rise up against Christ in this world, despite all the heresies,
all of the theomachists, and all of the persecutors of Christ. They bear witness
to, and announce to all the world, this Truth: Christ is before all and above
all! He is the Sole True God. You, false gods, masks, vile and repulsive
masks of false gods, begone! True God is essential to the human soul in this
earthly realm. Who are you self-proclaimed ones? Who? In the graves, in
thousands of nets you cast yourselves, and you want to supplant the Lord Christ?
How lowly, how impoverished you are! Alas, all of Hell laughs at nothing more
than it laughs at you. The demons laugh out loud at you, and you do not hear
them; yet we Christians – we hear them.
Yes, the
Holy Baptist, was the first Christian Confessor, and there streamed after him,
following as after a helmsman, thousands and thousands of glorious Confessors of
Christ in this world.
My brethren, a
great Mystery is taking place through this Feast, a Mystery like unto threads
stretching through and making up a piece of cloth. In today’s Gospel reading,
you heard the disciples announce to the Savior that the Forerunner has been
beheaded. The mouth that announced You to the world has fallen silent, O Lord!
What now? Who are we in comparison to Your great Baptist? The Savior is silent.
Then something unusual happens. He calls His disciples together, and with them,
He goes out to a place in the desert. What is this? Can it be that the Lord is
running away, can it be that he is fleeing from Herod? Consider: He, the
All-merciful Miracle Worker, looks upon the unfortunate widowed mother, and
resurrects her son, someone unknown to anyone but the mother and Himself.
Yet here, Lord, Your Forerunner lies dead, destroyed. Why don’t You
resurrect him? You resurrected the daughter of Jairus, head of the
synagogue. Yet here is the one whom You called the greatest among those born of
women, beheaded by the malefactor- king. Lord, guard Your Truth, defend Your
first Apostle, Your first Martyr, Your first Evangelist, Your first Angel in the
flesh, Your first Prophet, Your first Confessor. Resurrect him! Yet
the Savior remains silent, and retreats to a desert place to pray to God.
Why, O Lord?
Because the Holy Forerunner must also become the
first Apostle to Hades, to death’s kingdom - to which had departed the souls
of all people from Adam to the time of the coming of the Savior into this world.
In that kingdom of death called Hades, i.e. the impenetrable place, where no one
can see anything, in that kingdom was to be found everyone: the righteous and
the sinners, all of the people of the Old Testament, up to the coming of the
Lord Jesus Christ. Sin had brought death into the earthly realm, into the world
of men, and the kingdom of death became the sole abode for human souls in this
world. The Forerunner had to become the Forerunner in Hades as well, in
death’s kingdom, so that he might preach there as well to the souls of all
human beings: Lo, the One whom you have been awaiting, Whom all you Righteous
Ones: Moses, Abraham, David, all of the Holy Prophets and Righteous Ones, have
been thirsting to see, has come to earth. Lo, He has come to earth as a man, as
the Savior, and he is working such signs and wonders as you, all of you taken
together, have never seen. His glance heals people of all diseases, His
word resurrects everyone from death, His voice drives demons out of those
possessed. Truly the Savior of the world, our Lord Jesus Christ has come to
earth. And lo, I go before Him to preach to you as well this best of news:
He will come down here to us as well. In a little while He will come down, and
you will see Him. You will be able to see what kind of human soul He has,
One filled with God and shining with infinite light.
The Holy
Forerunner appeared death’s kingdom as the first Evangelist, in order to
preach the Good News of Christ to all of the souls in the kingdom of death.
He appeared as well to all of them as the first Martyr, to show that people will
joyously go to their deaths for True God, the Lord Jesus Christ, Savior of the
world, until death is defeated and destroyed. They will not fear death,
for they will be more powerful than death. Through his bodily
Resurrection, the Lord grants the body victory over death. The glorious
Forerunner also entered into the kingdom of death as the Forerunner of all of
the true Confessors of Christ in the world, all of the true Prophets in the
world, to announce to all of the souls in the kingdom of death: Lo, death is
defeated, the demons destroyed, the kingdom of death will be destroyed when, in
a little while, the Lord appears here, and you will be led out of this horror
and into heavenly joy, into the Kingdom On High.
This was why
the Lord remained silent, why he did not resurrect the greatest man among those
born of women, for that man was to complete his apostolic, evangelistic,
martyric, confessor’s spiritual struggle in Hades, in the kingdom of death.
And so,
today for us Christians is like unto Great Friday. Just as, for the
Savior, after Great Friday, the Resurrection approaches, so the Forerunner
joyously dies and enters into death, for he sees the victory over death and
knows that the Lord has prepared for him as well eternal life and resurrection
from the dead on the day of the Great Judgment.
When the
Lord was crucified, He descended into the nether regions, into Hades, into
the kingdom of death, with His human Soul. His Body lay in the tomb, but
His Soul, the fullness of his Divinity, descended into death’s kingdom. And
how astonished must have been all of the human souls in Hades, on seeing God in
a human soul, shining with ineffable light, light impossible for a human being
to imagine. Who would not come to believe in Him? Who? When He appears in the
kingdom of death so filled with Eternal Truth, Eternal Life, Eternal Justice.
He appears as conqueror over death. And as death’s kingdom could not hold God,
Who was in Jesus’ soul, could not hold God in its hands, it fell apart
because of Christ’s Divinity, because of His Most-holy Soul, in which was the
fullness of God. And the Lord led out of death’s kingdom all those who
had earlier come to believe the Forerunner, and those who had come to believe in
Him, the Lord Jesus Christ, to believe that in truth, He was True God in Heaven
and on earth.
The Lord led
them out, and led them into the Kingdom of Heaven. This is why the Lord Jesus
Christ did not resurrect St. John the Forerunner and Baptizer of Jesus.
Today, in
glorifying that great and glorious first Apostle, first Martyr, first
Evangelist, Precursor to all true Christians of all time, we bow down before his
joyous suffering for Christ’s Truth and His Holy Gospel, before him as Apostle
and Martyr. Consider, already for 2,000 years, the One who allowed the
lawless king to behead him, has been working countless miracles in the earthly
realm, living in it alongside the Lord Jesus Christ. For 2000 years, he has been
ceaselessly working miracles for all those who turn to him in prayer.
Brothers
and sisters, whenever you are in great sorrow, turn to that first Apostle of
Christ, and he will help you with all of your burdens. And should some
kind of misfortune happen, turn to that first Evangelist. No matter what
bitterness might fill your soul, he will sweeten it with Christ’s grace, which
he will mystically send down to your tortured soul from the World on High. And
when you find yourself in temptations and horrors of this earthly life, run to
him, to the Holy Confessor; tell him what is in your heart, pour out your
sorrows and spiritual needs and rest assured that in a mystical, divine manner,
he will come down into your soul and will save you, and will deliver you from
all temptations and woes. But should need to suffer for the Lord Jesus Christ in
this world: should others attack you on all sides, should atheists and those who
oppose Christ want to swallow you up, to destroy you for belonging to Christ,
want to silence your voice, to stop it from speaking of Christ, then remember
that first Martyr, and call out to him: O Holy Martyr, first Martyr of Christ in
the Gospels, hurry to my aid! Grant that may I die for the Lord Jesus Christ,
leave my body like temporary clothing, and by the path of the Holy Martyrs move
to Christ’s Kingdom! He will enteat the Lord that you might also join the host
of Luminaries. Thus, today’s little Great Friday becomes for us the great joy
of the Resurrection. Friday is small, but Sunday, the Resurrection, is
great – resurrection for all Christians of all time. And for us today: for me,
for you, for every Christian living today, today’s Great Friday is at the same
time the Resurrection, for today we glorify the St. John the Baptist who is
eternally alive in the Heavens; [we glorify] his victory over the death
appointed to him by Herod, his soaring up into the Heavenly Realm, to be the
first after the Mother of God, to stand beside the Lord Jesus Christ. You
have seen the icon known as the “Deisis” i.e. “Prayer” Icon. In
it, the Lord sits on the Throne of Glory, as King of Heaven. On His right
is the Most-holy Mother of God, and on His left, the Holy Forerunner. They
pray to Him for the human race.
Оh, may
his holy prayers be raised up today and tomorrow, and always, and may they be
raised up for us Christians-Serbs, and for all the people on this earth, that
the Lord lead all to repentance, that He have mercy upon all, that He save all,
that all people, brought [to Him] by the glorious Forerunner, might forever
glorify the One True God in Heaven and on earth, the Lord Jesus Christ, to Whom
is due all honor and glory, now and ever, and unto ages of ages. Amen.
