8. Prayer to St John the Baptist

St John:

you are that John who baptized God;

you were praised by an archangel

before you were begotten by your father;

you were full of God

before you were born of your mother;

you knew God before you knew the world;

you showed your mother the mother bearing God

before the mother who bore you within her

showed you the day.

It was of you that God said:

‘Among them that are born of women

there has not risen a greater’.

To you, sir, who are so great, holy and blessed,

comes a guilty, creeping thing,

a wretched little man

whose senses are almost dead with grief,

and, what grieves him even more, a sinner with a dead soul.

To you, so great a friend of God,

he comes, very fearful, doubtful of his salvation,

because he is sure of the greatness of his guilt,

but hoping in your greater grace;

for your grace, sir, is greater than my guilt;

what you are able to do before God

will more than blot out all my wickedness.

To you, then, sir,

whom grace has made such a friend of God,

to you, in my distress, I flee.

I, the accused of God through manifold iniquities,

worth nothing because of so much misery,

come to you whom grace has filled with blessedness.

Truly, sir, I admit this:

my sins have made me what I am,

but you have not made yourself what you are,

but the grace of God with you.

So remember, sir,

that as the grace of God made you so high,

so your mercy can raise him up

who is laid so low by his guilt.

Alas, what have I made of myself?

What was I, O God, as you had made me –

and how have I made myself again!

In sin I was conceived and born,

but you washed me and sanctified me;

and I have defiled myself still more.

Then I was born in sin of necessity,

but now I wallow in it of my own free will.

In sin I was conceived in ignorance,

but these sins I commit willingly, readily, and openly.

From them in mercy I was led forth by you;

to these miseries I have led myself.

I was redeemed from them by goodness,

and I have broken with that redemption by wickedness.

You healed, good God, a soul wounded in its first parents;

I, wicked man, have killed what was healed.

You set aside, merciful Lord, the old rags of original sin,

and clothed me in the garments of innocence,

promising me incorruptibility in the future;

and casting off what you had given me,

I busied myself with sordid sins;

despising what you had promised,

I chose rather the sorrows of eternal misery.

You had made the son of your wrath

into the son of your grace,

and I, contemptuous of that,

made myself the son of your hatred.

You refashioned your gracious image in me,

and I superimposed upon it the image that is hateful.

Alas, alas, how could I?

How could I, miserable and crazy little man that I am,

how could I superimpose that image

upon the image of God?

O why did I not blush to do that which I dread to speak of?

O why did I not loathe to imitate him

at whose name I shudder?

He fell because it was his lot to do so;

I chose to become vile.

Before him none had been punished for sin,

and he fell through pride;

but I, who had seen his punishment,

was contemptuous of it,

and rushed into sin.

He was created in innocence; I was restored to it.

He sinned against his maker;

I against him who made me, and re-made me.

He deserted God, and God let him go;

I fled from God, and God came with me.

He persisted in evil, cast off by God;

I ran headlong into the same evil,

when God was calling me back.

He hardened his heart when he was punished;

I hardened mine when I was kindly treated.

So we are both set against God:

he against him who does not want him;

I against him who died for me.

O wretched man that I am –

if indeed my humanity has not gone from me

where such huge malice closes in.

See – I shuddered at the horror of his appearance;

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and I see myself in many ways more horrible than he.

Flee, flee,

you who are of I know not what horrible substance;

flee from yourself; be terribly afraid of yourself.

But, alas, you cannot flee from yourself,

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nor can you look at yourself, because you cannot bear it.

For if you could bear it, without a horror of grief,

you would find your toleration intolerable.

Insofar as you can tolerate yourself

you are like the first sinner,

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and thereby you are less tolerable to God,

for to tolerate yourself is not courage,

but the blunt edge of death;

it is not health, it is hardened sin;

it comes not from consolation but from damnation.

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I cannot bear the interior horror of my face

without a huge groan in my heart.

So then, I cannot fly from myself,

nor can I look at myself, for I cannot bear myself.

But see, it is worse still if I do not look at myself;

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for then I am deceived about myself.

O too heavy weight of anguish.

If I look within myself, I cannot bear myself;

if I do not look within myself, I do not know myself.

If I consider myself, what I see terrifies me;

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if I do not consider myself, I fall to my damnation.

If I look at myself, it is an intolerable horror;

if I do not look at myself, death is unavoidable.

Evil here, worse there, ill on every side;

but there is too much evil here,

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too much that is worse there,

too much ill on every side.

For he is very wretched whom his conscience torments,

when he cannot flee from it;

and even more wretched is he

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who looks into his own damnation,

when he is not able to avoid it;

very unhappy is he who is horrible in his own eyes;

and more unhappy still will he be

when he undergoes eternal death.

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Very wretched is he who is continually afraid

of the filthy horror of himself;

but more wretched still will he be

whom anguish will torture eternally because of his sins.

Evil here, and evil there;

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too much here, and too much there.

To sin – how evil and bitter that is.

Sins – how easy to commit, how hard to give up.

Sinners – so misled by sins – are caught by their fetters.

Understand, O understand how evil and bitter it is

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to have lost the Lord.

Sinner, turn back; refuse in your will to sin.

Refuse, I say, refuse.

It is evil and bitter – refuse.

Truly it is evil and bitter;

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I am expert, in this I am expert indeed.

For either the sorrows of continual repentance

torture my life,

or eternal torments will vex my soul to punish it.

Both are evil, both are bitter,

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and surely justly is the accused of God distressed

between evil and worse,

so much evil, among too, too much evil.

It is done justly, it is done rightly, my just judge;

but at least you are yourself

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God, and Lord, and my Creator.

Take away, then, Creator,

take away so much evil from your creature;

if he is to give thanks that you made him;

Lord, snatch your servant away from so much evil,

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if he is to rejoice to have you as his Lord.

Spare, God, spare your sinner,

if he is not to despair of your goodness.

For even if I have sinned more than the first sinner

I do not hate you as he does, nor detest your goodness.

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Then, by the great merit of your Baptizer,

renew in me the grace of your baptizing.

Go before me with your grace; follow me with your mercy.

Give me back through the sorrow of penitence

what you had given through the sacrament of baptism.

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Give to me who asks,

what you gave to him who knew you not.

Refashion the face that I have spoiled,

restore the innocence that I have violated.

You, Lord, were not involved in that sin

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which you were born to bear.

Lord, take away the sin that I have contracted in living.

Take away, you who take away the sin of the world,

these which are sins of the world,

which I carry from living in the world.

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Take away, you who take away the sin of the world,

by the merits of him who with that same word of witness

pointed you out to the world,

take away the sins that I have contracted in the world;

take from me whatever is not from you,

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for I hate whatever is from me; and still I hope in you.

And you, St John,

who showed to the world

him who takes away the sin of the world,

by the grace given to you

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gain for me that mercy to take away my sins.

You, God, take away the sin of the world,

and you, his friend, say,

‘Here is he who takes away the sin of the world.

Behold, before you,

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him who is burdened with the sin of the world.’

You bear the sin – and you proclaim that he bears it.

Behold me, whose sin you bear as John proclaims.

Behold, healer, and the healer’s witness, here am I –

behold, the sick servant of the healer and his work

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petitions here the healer and his witness.

True healer, I pray you heal me;

true witness, I beg you to pray for me.

Reconcile me to myself,

you by your action, you by your words.

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Let me prove what I hear, let me experience what I believe.

Jesus, good Lord,

if you perform the work that he testifies of you,

John, revealer of God, if you witness to what he performs,

be it to me according to your word.

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Lord, from whom comes healing, heal me.

Do this for me, Lord, since you are able to do it,

you are the great Lord,

and you, John, are ‘great in the sight of the Lord’.

You can do all things by your own nature;

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you are very powerful before him.

You are the high and good God,

and you are the very good friend

of him who is in eternity the merciful and blessed God.

Amen.

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