John the Baptist

The son of Zechariah and Elizabeth, John was born to an elderly mother believed barren; his father, having doubted the angel, remained mute until the birth. At the Visitation the child leapt in his mother's womb as Mary drew near. Withdrawn to the desert of Judea, clothed in camel hair and living on locusts and wild honey, he called for repentance and baptised in the Jordan those who came to him. When Jesus presented himself, John pointed to him as the Lamb of God and at first refused to baptise him. Two of his own disciples, Andrew among them, left him to follow Christ, who said of him: "Among those born of women there has arisen no one greater." Having publicly reproached Herod Antipas for his union with Herodias, his brother's wife, he was shut in the fortress of Machaerus and beheaded: Salome, having danced before the tetrarch, demanded his head on a platter at her mother's prompting. The Church celebrates his nativity on 24 June — with Mary he is the only saint whose birth is kept as a feast — and his beheading on 29 August.