Who was Saint John the Baptist?
A prophet who was the link between the Old Testament and the New Testament. A precursor, he who prepared the road for Jesus. An ascetic, a man clothed with animal skins, who ate grasshoppers and wild honey. A preacher, staff in hand, veins sticking out of his arms, skin dried and burned by the desert sun of Judea, a haranguer of the crowds, who cried out the truth. What an interesting figure! A man who questioned the customs and laws of his time. A man who cried, a man who assembled, who denounced injustices, a man who was not afraid of the truth. At the same time, John the Baptist was a man capable of seeing beyond appearances. Among the crowd of those who came to him, he recognized Jesus. He was a revolutionary, but not a revolutionary for nothing; a revolutionary able to open new avenues, and especially of denouncing evil and the works of Satan. Mrs. Gilberte Ct-Mercier was a representative of this famous patron, and especially, she walked in the footsteps of Saint John the Baptist.
The four Gospels, the Books of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, as found in the Bibles New Testament, all describe this man in almost exactly the same language. The Baptist, who was a cousin to Jesus Christ, is spoken of as A voice crying in the wilderness, whose purpose was to, Prepare the way of the Lord and make his paths straight. He must indeed have been an important man for all four Gospels to refer to him with exactly the same terminology, as this is extremely rare. In the Gospel of Luke, in fact, Jesus himself says of John, Among them that are born of women, there has not risen any greater than John the Baptist. High praise indeed. It becomes more clear why we as Masons should hold him in such esteem. John the Baptist called the Baptist because as he preached he baptized believers in the River Jordan lived a simple, yet powerful and devout life. He preached single-minded righteous living and change of character. His message was that one must live in a holy manner and that deviatio
