Since this sermon too is ascribed to St. Maximus in the codex of St. Dalmatius, but is placed by the Maurist monks in the appendix of the sermons of St. Augustine, no. 197, we have judged that it should be ascribed rather to St. Maximus than to Augustine, as in the Roman Breviary on June 24. After that sacrosanct day of the Lord's nativity, we read that the nativity of no man is celebrated, save only of Christ's Baptist John. In the other saints and elect of God there is honored the day on which — after so great a completion of labors and the world overcome — this present life brings them forth into perpetual eternities. But in the others the accomplished merits of their last day are celebrated.
But in Christ's most holy Baptist John even the first day, and the very beginnings of the man himself, are celebrated; because through him the Lord willed His own coming to be attested, lest men should suddenly fail to recognize Him, unlooked-for. But John was a figure of the Old Testament, and bore in himself the form of the Law; and therefore John foretold the Savior, just as the Law ran before grace. But that, not yet born, he prophesied from the secret of the maternal womb, and — still without light — was already a witness of the truth, this was because, lying hidden under the veil of the letter, he both proclaimed in the spirit the Redeemer who had now come, and cried out to us our Lord as it were from a certain womb of the Law.
Therefore, because the Jews erred from the womb — that is, from the Law, which was pregnant with Christ — 'they erred from the womb, they have spoken false things' (Psalm 57). Therefore he came for a testimony, that he might bear witness of the light (John 1). But that John, being set as a penalty in prison, sends his disciples to Christ, the Law transmits the world to the Gospel — which Law indeed, according to the type of John, lay as it were shut up in the prison of ignorance, in obscurity and concealment, and, by Jewish blindness, the sense was held enclosed within the letter. Whence also the blessed Evangelist speaks thus concerning him, saying: 'He was a burning and shining lamp' (ibid.).
Kindled indeed by the fire of the Holy Spirit, that to a world occupied by the night of ignorance he might show the light of salvation, and, as it were amid the densest darkness of transgressions, might display by the ray of his own light the most splendid sun of justice. For he said of himself: 'I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness' (Luke 3). John cried indeed in the wilderness, that is, in a Gentile and unteachable people. For breasts empty of the fear of God, and lacking the Holy Spirit, are compared to the desert of a squalid wilderness. For this world was a desert, deprived of all cultivation of faith and fear of God, and, beset with the thorns of sins, it lay squalid like an untilled field, and brought forth utterly no pleasantness of good works, and had received no light of spiritual grace.
John therefore is sent, that by prophetic and apostolic preaching, announcing repentance, he might break up, make fertile, and cultivate the raw field, and prepare it for the ripe crop — that is, for the grace of regeneration. But now, of how great glory is this, that to Zechariah the aged priest, and to Elizabeth the barren woman, a son is promised by Gabriel; for by that same angel by whom the Lord's nativity is announced to the most blessed Mary, and as though a son similar in some way to the Lord, the barren woman's son is sent forth before the Virgin's Son, declaring I know not what greater miracle in his very nativity. Sterility is endowed with unhoped-for offspring, because virginity was to be enriched with a new childbearing.
Before Christ, John is promised, because the Old Testament is before the New, so that 'day unto day utters speech.' The lamp therefore is sent before the sun; the servant before the Lord; the friend before the bridegroom; the herald before the judge; the voice before the Word. And therefore blessed John says of himself: 'I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness.' For he says that he is the voice, because he was the announcer and preacher of the Word. For while yet in his mother's womb he was filled with the Holy Spirit, and by prophesying he anticipated His nativity. He was sanctified after the likeness of the Lord, exulting within the maternal inward parts before he was born, and attesting the Savior's coming by his mother's mouth.
Truly indeed he was a burning lamp, in whom so singular a grace of divine favor shone forth, that even now and instantly he might announce, by the voice of his holy Mother, that the Redeemer was at hand, and through her, as a certain [herald] of the truth, though not yet brought forth into the light, might show Christ present; a fit mediator indeed of the Old and New Testament, and a worthy pointer-out of the glorious Lamb, who merited at one and the same time to announce and to see his Lord. Therefore, brethren, celebrating the solemnities of this so great a day... (fifteen effaced lines are missing) ...by weeping over our sins, and redeeming the same by fastings and by many almsgivings. Here it ends.