You're listening to a podcast on Catholic Saints.

This podcast is produced by the Augustine Institute, an apostolate helping Catholics understand, live, and share their faith.

Hello, everyone, and welcome to Catholic Saints. I'm Taylor Kemp, the director of formed, and with me is the illustrious, Dr. John Seahorn. Would you agree with that adjective? I'll take it. Nice, illustrious. Okay, so this is Dr. John Seahorn. Dr. Sehorn, what do you do here at the graduate school? Well, nothing illustrious. I'm illustrious for other reasons. Of course. Here at the graduate school, well, I've just been blessed to be a member of the faculty here for almost eight years. Wow. And I also serve as the academic dean. Very nice. How is your dean? Deanhood. It's not illustrious, but it seems to be adequate. Going along, I hope.

That is very good.

So today we are talking about St. John the Baptist, and more specifically the nativity

of St. John the Baptist, which we celebrate on June 24th.

It is an unusual thing to celebrate a birthday.

Why would we do this?

It is. Yeah. No, it's funny, Taylor,

you and I were talking before the camera started about the fact that only three people in the Bible are said to celebrate their birthdays. Yes. And they're not good people, right? In the Old

Testament, Pharaoh celebrates his birthday in the book of Genesis.

In the New Testament, Herod, Antipus actually celebrates his birthday, and that's the occasion

when he's going to put John the Baptist to death. And then also in the Old Testament, Antiochus

Epiphanes, the one who desecrated the temple and led to the Maccabees uprising.

He celebrated his birthday every month.

Oh, how about that?

Interesting.

That doesn't make any sense at all.

But this is not the question you asked me.

You asked me why we celebrate John's birthday.

Yeah, John is really special.

Jesus, when he's asked about John, says that he's the greatest to be born of woman. Yeah, that's a big deal. Right. And that he's a

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