Saints Zechariah and Elizabeth

Saints Zechariah and Elizabeth were the parents of Saint John the Baptist, the Forerunner of the Lord. Everything known about them is told in the first chapter of the Gospel according to Saint Luke; the dates of their lives are unknown. The Roman Martyrology commemorates them on September 23.

In the days of Herod, king of Judea, there lived a priest named Zechariah, of the priestly division of Abijah, and his wife Elizabeth was descended from Aaron. Both were righteous before God and lived blamelessly according to all the commandments. Yet they had no children, because Elizabeth was barren, and both were already advanced in years.

While Zechariah was serving as priest, the lot fell to him to offer incense in the sanctuary of the Lord. Then an angel appeared to him and announced that Elizabeth would bear a son, whom they were to name John. Zechariah asked how he could know this, since they were both old. The angel replied that he was Gabriel, who stands before God, and that Zechariah would be unable to speak until these words were fulfilled, because he had not believed them. Soon Elizabeth conceived, and for five months she kept herself in seclusion, saying that the Lord had taken away her disgrace among people.

In the sixth month the same angel, announcing to Mary the birth of Jesus, told her that her relative Elizabeth had conceived a son in her old age. Mary set out in haste to a town in the hill country of Judah and greeted Elizabeth in the house of Zechariah. At Mary’s voice the infant leaped in Elizabeth’s womb, and Elizabeth, filled with the Holy Spirit, cried out: “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb.” She called Mary the mother of her Lord, and blessed because she had believed. Mary stayed with her about three months.

When Elizabeth gave birth to a son, her neighbors and relatives rejoiced with her that the Lord had shown her great mercy. On the eighth day, at the circumcision, they wanted to give the child his father’s name, but Elizabeth said he was to be called John. They asked Zechariah by signs, and he wrote on a tablet: “John is his name.” At once he regained his speech and, filled with the Holy Spirit, praised in a prophetic song the God who had visited his people; of his son he said that he would go before the Lord to prepare his ways.

The Church prays with their words every day. The Canticle of Zechariah, which begins with the words “Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel,” is sung every morning at Lauds. We repeat Elizabeth’s greeting in the Hail Mary, and the Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that Elizabeth was the first of many generations to call Mary blessed.

The Gospel is silent about the later lives of Zechariah and Elizabeth. The apocryphal Protoevangelium of James, from the second century, tells that Elizabeth hid the little John from Herod’s soldiers and that Zechariah was killed in the Temple because he would not reveal where his son was; this is legend, not historical record. Both are venerated on the strength of the ancient tradition of the Church, without a formal canonization. The Church celebrates the birth of their son as a solemnity on June 24.