A Voice in the Wilderness
The Significance of June and St. John the Baptist
June is a month of high light. The sun climbs to its longest day, the year turns at its summit, and the world stands for a moment at the full. Men in every age have marked this turning. They have lit fires, gathered in fellowship, and paused to take account of the year before it begins its slow descent toward winter. The Craft, too, has long kept its place in this rhythm, for June carries a name dear to every Lodge. It is the season of St. John the Baptist.
Those who are not of our fraternity sometimes ask why a society devoted to building character should look to a saint at all, and why this saint in particular. It is a fair question, and the answer rewards the asking.
The Two Saints John
Our Lodges are dedicated to the Holy Saints John. There are two of them, and this surprises many who assume there is only one. The first is St. John the Baptist, whose feast falls on the 24th of June. The second is St. John the Evangelist, whose feast falls on the 27th of December. The two stand near the summer and the winter solstice, and between them they bracket the whole turning of the year. The Baptist greets the long light of summer. The Evangelist keeps watch through the deep of winter.
There is a quiet wisdom in honoring both. The Baptist was a man of fire, of zeal, of plain and uncompromising truth. The Evangelist was a man of love and reflection, the disciple who wrote that God is love and who counseled the brethren to love one another. The one calls us to courage and integrity. The other calls us to wisdom and affection. A balanced life, and a balanced Lodge, needs both. June is the month we turn our gaze to the first of these two great patrons.
The Man in the Wilderness
St. John the Baptist is among the most striking figures in all of Scripture. He lived apart in the desert, clothed in camel’s hair, eating locusts and wild honey, owning nothing and owing nothing to the comforts of the world. From that wilderness he raised a voice that shook a kingdom. “Prepare ye the way of the Lord,” he cried, “make his paths straight.” He called men to repentance, to honesty, to the setting right of their own lives before they presumed to set right anything else.
He was fearless. He rebuked a king to his face and paid for it with his head. He told the truth when the truth was dangerous, and he did not soften it to please the powerful. Yet for all his fire, he was a man of profound humility. When his own followers grew jealous that the crowds were drifting toward Jesus, John gave one of the noblest answers ever spoken by a leader. “He must increase,” he said, “but I must decrease.” He understood that his task was to point beyond himself, to prepare a way for something greater, and then to step aside.
Why the Craft Honors Him
Here we come to the heart of the matter, and to the reason this herald of the wilderness became a patron of our gentle Craft.
Freemasonry is, at its core, the labor of building character. It asks a man to square his actions, to walk uprightly, to speak plainly, and to subdue what is base in himself so that what is noble may rise. In St. John the Baptist, that whole program of self-improvement is shown in a single human life. He was frugal when the world was greedy. He was humble when he might have grasped at greatness. He was honest when honesty cost him everything. And above all, he was a man who prepared the way. He did not build the temple himself. He made straight the path so that the work might go forward.
That is an image any Mason can take to heart. We are not the finished work. We are the ones who prepare the ground, set the stones in order, and labor faithfully so that those who come after us may build higher than we did. The Baptist is the patron of the prepared man, the one who readies himself and readies the way.
June 24th, 1717
There is also a thread of our own history woven through this day. By long tradition, it was on St. John the Baptist’s Day, the 24th of June, in the year 1717, that four old London Lodges gathered at a tavern called the Goose and Gridiron, near St. Paul’s Cathedral, and united themselves into the first Grand Lodge in the world. They chose a brother named Anthony Sayer as their first Grand Master. From that small gathering grew the organized fraternity that now circles the globe.
It is fitting, and surely no accident, that the brethren of that age chose the feast of St. John the Baptist to begin the modern era of the Craft. They were doing exactly what their patron had done. They were preparing a way, and making straight a path, for generations they would never meet.
A Lesson For Every Reader
You need not be a Mason to find something true in all of this. The voice in the wilderness speaks to everyone.
It tells us that preparation comes before greatness, that the way must be made straight before anything good can travel down it. It tells us that humility is not weakness, and that the strongest thing a person can do is point beyond himself and let another increase. It tells us that truth is worth speaking even when it is costly, and that a life of simplicity and integrity has a power that no amount of wealth can purchase.
These are not the property of any one faith or fraternity. They belong to anyone willing to live by them. The Stoics of old taught that a man must master himself before he can be of use to the world. The sages of the East taught that the one who empties himself becomes useful, as a hollow vessel is useful for carrying water. The Baptist, in his own way, taught the same. Decrease the self, and you increase your usefulness to everything beyond it.
A Charge of the Month
So as June brings us its longest light, let us take up the example our patron set. Let us prepare the way, in our families, in our Lodge, and in our own hearts. Let us speak the truth plainly and live simply and well. Let us be willing to labor for a temple we may never see completed, content that we made the path a little straighter for those who follow.
That is the significance of June. It is the season of the herald, the voice in the wilderness, the man who prepared the way. May we go and do likewise.
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