This was John’s greatness, in virtue of which he reached such heights of greatness among the great that he crowned his great and countless virtues, in which he was second to no mortal man, with the greatest of all the virtues: humility. Reckoned as he was the highest of all, he freely and with the greatest devotion preferred to himself the Most Lowly One—and he put him before himself to such an extent as to declare himself unworthy to take off his shoes.
Let others wonder that he was foretold by prophets, that he was promised by an angel and the same angel as Christ, that he came of so holy and noble parents, that he was given to aged and sterile parents…by a gift of grace, that he was holy before he was born, a prophet before he prophesied, that he was more than a prophet because he was an angel, with an angel’s function and living an angelic life on earth, in the flesh and yet transcending the flesh, and although wholly innocent yet exhibiting a pattern of penance more by his example than by his word, that he preceded the coming of the Redeemer in the spirit and power of Elijah and prepared his way in the desert, that he converted the hearts of fathers to their sons and of sons to their fathers, that he merited to baptize the Son, to hear the Father, and to see the Holy Spirit, finally that he strove for the truth even to death and, so that he might go before Christ also to the lower regions, was Christ’s martyr before Christ’s Passion.
Blessed Guerric of Igny
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