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| Picture: TED ALJIBE/AFP |
St. John the Baptist is honored with festivals, parades, and high mass on his birth anniversary celebrated by the Catholic Church. The Feast Day of St. John the Baptist takes a tradition for annual ceremony in The Philippines with a notion that commemorating the way their patron saint disguised himself when he baptized Jesus will lead to blessings for a bountiful farming harvest. The Taong Putik people dress in mud and dried banana leaves to replicate, elsewhere pig roasts (dressed in costumes for parade) are an iconic part of the day. Feasts are marked with the traditional dousing of water, more akin to actual water fights and fun, to reminisce the baptism by John the Baptist performed in the Jordan River.
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Picture: JAY DIRECTO/AFP
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| The Cathedral of St. John the Baptist, Charleston, SC |
Pope Francis spoke words at mass in the chapel of his residence, Vatican’s Saint Martha guesthouse, this morning praising John the Baptist as an important man that many “people sought him out and followed him,” and encouraged the way John the Baptist stepped aside to Jesus once he lead others to him. This was emphasized throughout his homily for the Feast of John the Baptist’s birth, “A Christian does not announce himself; he announces another, prepares the way for another: the Lord,” said Pope Francis this morning, June 24, 2014.
St. John the Baptist is one of two saints, Blessed Mary being the other, the birth is observed by the Church versus the normal feast being marked by the day of the saint’s death, when they made entrance to heaven.
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| Bartolome Esteban Murillo, St. John the Baptist as a Child c. 1665 |
