The Nativity of Saint John Baptist, kept on the twenty-fourth of June, is one of only three birthdays celebrated in the traditional liturgical calendar — the other two being the Nativity of our Lord and the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary. The date is calculated from the six months that separated Gabriel's announcement to Zechariah from the Annunciation to Mary, and it falls on the summer solstice, when the days begin to shorten — a providential sign that John himself acknowledged: He must increase, but I must decrease.

John's birth was itself a miracle. His parents Zechariah and Elizabeth were aged and Elizabeth was barren; the promise of a son came to Zechariah while he ministered at the altar of incense in the Temple. When Mary came to visit Elizabeth, the unborn John leapt in the womb at the sound of Mary's greeting, filled with the Holy Ghost before his birth. On the day of his circumcision and naming — recounted in the appointed Gospel from Luke 1 — his father's tongue was loosed and he sang the Benedictus, the great canticle of fulfilment that has been sung at Morning Prayer throughout the Church's life.

The Collect asks that we may follow John's doctrine and holy life: truly repenting, constantly speaking the truth, boldly rebuking vice, and patiently suffering for the truth's sake. These are prophetic virtues — the virtues of one who speaks for God in a world that does not always wish to hear. The feast calls the Church to remember that its vocation includes that same prophetic witness, offered not in its own name but as a voice crying in the wilderness to prepare the Lord's way.