The Orthodox Church and believers today mark the First and Second Finding of the Head of Saint John the Baptist.
John the Baptist was beheaded at the wish and urging of the malicious Herodias, the wife of Emperor Herod, who ruled at that time, as written in old records,
When his head was cut off, Herodias ordered that his head should not be buried together with the body, because she feared that the terrible prophet might somehow rise again. Therefore she took his head and buried it in some hidden and dishonorable place, deep in the ground. Her maidservant, the pious Joanna, the wife of Herod’s court official Chuza, could not live knowing that the head of God’s man remained in a dishonorable place, so she secretly dug it up, took it to Jerusalem and buried it on the Mount of Olives.
Knowing nothing about all of this, Emperor Herod, when he heard about Jesus Christ and the great miracles he performed, became frightened and said: It is John whom I beheaded, he has risen from the dead.
After some time, a certain nobleman, believing in Christ, left his position and vanity and became a monk, and as a monk, with the name Innocent, he settled on the Mount of Olives, precisely at the place where the head of the Baptist had been buried.
He began to build himself a cell, dug deep and found an earthen vessel and in it the head, for which it was revealed to him that it was the Baptist’s. He kissed it and buried it in that same place.
Faith and customs
By God’s providence, that miraculous head later passed from hand to hand, sank into the darkness of oblivion and was revealed again, until finally in the time of the pious Empress Theodora, the mother of Michael and the wife of Theophilus, and in the time of Patriarch Ignatius, it was transferred to Constantinople.
Many miraculous healings occurred from the head of John the Baptist, and it is also important and interesting that while he was alive, “John performed no miracle, yet his relics were given the gracious miraculous power.”
Customs dictate that every Krstovdan during the year should be observed with fasting for the good health of the family. Krstovdan is the day when the whole world prays and calls for repentance, in order to cleanse themselves from sins and be worthy of Jesus Christ.
Today you must not do any heavy work. It is especially widespread belief that on this holiday knives and other sharp objects should not be touched so that the wounds of the innocently suffering saint would not be injured.
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Source: Novosti; Foto: Novosti printscreen