Sermon preached by the Rev Dr Hugh Houghton on Sunday 24th June 2007:
The fact that the Feast of the Birth of John the Baptist falls today, 24th June, is often seen to be symbolic. In exactly six months’ time, we will be celebrating another feast, Christmas Eve – and it is no coincidence that these festivals take place at the same time as the summer and winter solstices. A rather nice explanation is offered by St Augustine of Hippo, with whom I’ve been spending far too much time recently. Writing in the days when the solstice still fell on 24th June, before Pope Gregory put the calendar out of synch, he suggested that these feast days were a direct application of John 3:30, when John the Baptist says of Jesus: “He must increase, but I must decrease”. Augustine, of course, saw John’s decreasing as the days getting shorter, whereas after Christmas the days get longer as Jesus, the Light of the World, increases.
click link for full text: sermon24jun07
