More Than a Prophet

More Than a Prophet completes the Forerunner’s life where the tradition insists it truly unfolds: beyond the grave, in the Church’s living memory, his icons, his feasts, his relics, his intercession. Written from within the tradition, warm, learned, and unhurried, it moves you from knowing about John to genuinely knowing him. Friend of the Bridegroom, the Forerunner’s enduring teaching of holy diminishment: he must increase, but I must decrease , as a whole way of life. Standing at the Right Hand, the Deisis: what the great icon of John beside Christ reveals about his place in heaven and his nearness to us. The Three Findings of the Precious Head, the astonishing history of his relics and the centuries of veneration that kept their witness alive. Six Feasts, One Life, the Nativity, the Synaxis, the Beheading, the Findings: how the Church year returns to the Forerunner again and again, and why. Father of Monastics, Angel of the Desert, how the first citizen of the wilderness became the pattern for every ascetic who followed. Book Three of The Voice That Ran Before: A Life of Saint John the Forerunner, for the faithful who have stood before his icon and hungered for a richer encounter, for catechumens drawn to his fierce and tender witness, and for every reader who honours the Prophet and Precursor.