Saints Zechariah and Elizabeth, parents of Saint John the Baptist

A righteous couple

Luke presents the couple with rare precision: Zechariah is a priest of the division of Abia, one of the twenty-four priestly classes; he serves under Herod the Great. Elizabeth is of the family of Aaron. Both are blameless before God, observing all the commandments and all the ordinances of the Lord, without reproach (Luke 1:5-6).^[6][7]

They are advanced in years and childless. In the culture of Israel, barrenness is a disgrace: it speaks not only of the absence of an heir, but also, in the eyes of the world, of a lack of blessing. Luke notes this trait without pressing it: the couple has grown old in fidelity, and prayer has never ceased.^[8][9]

The annunciation to Zechariah

On a day of service, as he offers incense in the Sanctuary, Zechariah sees an angel of the Lord appear to the right of the altar of incense. The angel is Gabriel. He tells him that a son will be born to him, whom he will call John; this son will be great before the Lord, will live in the Spirit and the power of Elijah, and will turn many of the sons of Israel back to the Lord their God (Luke 1:8-17).^[10][11]

Zechariah answers the angel: “And how shall I know this? For I am an old man, and my wife is advanced in years” (Luke 1:18). For this doubt, Gabriel tells him that he will remain mute, unable to speak until the day that these things take place. The sign is thus taken from speech, and given back to events.^[12][13]

The muteness and the return

Zechariah leaves the Temple unable to speak; the faithful understand that he has had a vision. When his service is ended, he returns home. After those days Elizabeth, his wife, conceives; she remains hidden for five months, and she says: “Thus the Lord has done for me, when he looked upon me, to take away my reproach among men” (Luke 1:23-25).^[14][15]

Kinswoman of Mary

Luke specifies that Elizabeth is a kinswoman of Mary (the Greek word is suggénès, Luke 1:36). It is from this bond that the Visitation springs: when Gabriel announces to Mary the birth of Jesus, he tells her also that Elizabeth, “she who was called barren”, is with child six months already, “for with God nothing is impossible” (Luke 1:26-37).^[16][17]

Mary rises and goes in haste into the hill country, to a city of Judah. When Elizabeth hears the greeting of Mary, the child leaps in her womb, and she is filled with the Holy Spirit. She cries out: “And why is this granted to me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me?” (Luke 1:39-45). The account is the origin of the feast of the Visitation, and the starting point of the Magnificat, the canticle of Mary (Luke 1:46-55). Mary remains with Elizabeth about three months, then she returns to her home (Luke 1:56).^[18][19]

The birth of John

Elizabeth bears a son. On the eighth day, they come to circumcise the child, and they want to call him Zechariah, after his father. His mother objects: “No; he shall be called John” (Luke 1:57-63). They sign to the father, who asks for a writing tablet and writes: “John is his name”. At that very hour his mouth is opened and his tongue is loosed, and he blesses God.^[20][21]

Fear falls on all their neighbours, and all these things are reported through all the hill country of Judea. Those who hear them keep them in their hearts, saying: “What then will this child be?” (Luke 1:57-66). And Luke adds: “The hand of the Lord was with him”.^[22]

The Benedictus

The canticle of Zechariah (Luke 1:68-79) is one of the great hymns of the New Testament. Zechariah blesses the God of Israel “because he has visited and redeemed his people”; he speaks of a Saviour of the house of David, of a prophet of the Most High who will go before the Lord to prepare his ways, to give his people the knowledge of salvation in the forgiveness of their sins. The canticle closes on God's tender mercy, which makes the light rise for those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death.^[23][24]

It is this text that enters, from the beginning, into the prayer of Lauds. Each morning, the Church takes up again the word of a father to whom speech was given on the day of his son's birth.

The Protoevangelium of James

The Protoevangelium of James (2nd century, apocryphal) tells of the murder of Zechariah: at the massacre of the innocents, he is said to have refused to reveal his son's hiding place, and to have been killed between the Temple and the altar. This account is late: it is not in the New Testament, and it circulated in varying forms.^[25]

Origen, in the 3rd century, suggests that the Zechariah son of Barakia of whom Matthew 23:35 speaks (“from the blood of Abel to the blood of Zechariah, the son of Barachiah, whom you murdered between the temple and the altar”) might be the father of John. Tradition has sometimes held to this identification; historians judge it uncertain, for Matthew names a Zechariah son of Barachiah, and not Zechariah the father of John, priest of the division of Abia.^[26]

Distinction from other Zechariahs

This is why the article on Pope Saint Zachary is another subject: the confusion of the two figures is a classic of popular piety, and it must be cleared up in preaching as in catechesis.^[27][28]

Relics and tomb

Several relic traditions surround Zechariah. The Chronicon Paschale reports that relics were brought to Hagia Sophia on 4 September 415. The church of San Zaccaria in Venice keeps a relic tradition. In Jerusalem, the inscription known as the tomb of Absalom (4th century) bears an inscription mentioning “the tomb of Zachariah, the martyr, the holy priest, the father of John”; the pilgrim Theodosius (6th century) corroborates it. Modern scholars (Zias and Puech, 2004) however attribute this inscription to another Zechariah.^[29]

The memory of Saint Zechariah and Saint Elizabeth falls, in the French usage followed by Nominis, on 5 November. The notice of this day names them: “Sainte Elisabeth Mère de Saint Jean-Baptiste (Ier siècle)” and “Saint Zacharie Père de saint Jean-Baptiste (Ier siècle)”.^[30]

The Roman Martyrology (2004 edition, p. 532) keeps the feast on 23 September. The Orthodox Church celebrates them on 5 September. French and English Wikipedia also note these two dates. The article and the calendar of the platform therefore keep 5 November, which is the date of the French notice, while explicitly flagging the other usages.^[31][32][33]

The representations of Zechariah and Elizabeth fall into two great families. The first is the Visitation: Mary and Elizabeth meet, most often in a landscape or at the door of a house; one cites the medieval Georgian fresco of the Monastery of the Cross in Jerusalem, the paintings of Ghirlandaio (“Mary and Elizabeth”, 1491) and the Visitation of Peter Paul Rubens.^[34]

The second family is the extended Holy Family, with the child John the Baptist and his parents: such is the canvas of Jacob Jordaens The Virgin and Child with St. John and His Parents, where Zechariah and Elizabeth surround the Virgin, the Child and the little John. One cites as well the miniature of the Paris Gregory (9th century) and the fresco of the Tornabuoni chapel by Ghirlandaio (“Zechariah Writes Down the Name of His Son”, 1490), which shows the moment when Zechariah writes: “John is his name”.^[35][36]

• Saint John the Baptist: their son, whose birth is announced by the angel Gabriel and whose mission the canticle of Zechariah sings.
• Pope Saint Zachary (died 752): another Zachary, an 8th-century pope, unrelated to the father of John the Baptist.
• Mary of Bethany (1st century): another female figure of the Gospel, sister of Martha and Lazarus, close to the Virgin Mary in the memory of the Church.